Unfair Pay?
+ LinkedIn Live recap
I’m continuing to tweak this format, to share as much practical advice and insight as possible.
Here’s the next iteration - new content and a recap on the Q&A in my LinkedIn Lives with Simon Ward.
1/ Unfair Pay?
"It's so frustrating salaries are going down when cost of living is still going up."
A common line when I ask about the state of people's job searches.
It may seem that companies are taking advantage of people, yet often they're reacting to market conditions.
Supply and demand.
When there's a volume of great candidates for a role, salaries are often suppressed.
Is this cynical behaviour?
In some situations, yes, though it's often more nuanced.
Consider that, when skills are scarce, salaries tend to jump significantly to be attractive.
Look at what happened in 2021/22 with the Talent Acquisition and Front End Development markets (and others).
When the market flips, expensive hires can become an unsustainable overhead, salaries normalise, and if new roles are hired, budgets consider the current state of the market.
It is true that many companies employ on a commodity basis, and don't consider what else is going on. Paying below living wage in this market isn't a great sign!
However any company that has a practical eye on the future looks at sustainable hiring as key to reducing risk.
If you find yourself in this situation, I'd look at salary trends over the past few years and what a weighted average is now, to establish how fair pay on offer is.
Consider that there may well be people with comparable skills for whom this salary is similar or even an uplift. It might be that previous roles paid you above market average.
Salary trends should reflect the domain you work in, your level of experience, volume of competing candidates, and where you are based.
The more senior you are, the more percentage points reflect thousands in real money, so your roles are more likely to be affected by 'cost savings'.
Look at what's sustainable for you, to get back into the role you want.
2/ LinkedIn Live Q&A
One of the nice features of LinkedIn Lives is that viewers can pose questions in the comments section.
If you’d like to see the full broadcast, it’s available here:
Q: (Regarding CVs) What would you advise, and how much editing would you recommend should be done from application to application?
I’m an advocate for forming an objectively ‘good enough CV’ that puts your best foot forward through readability, SEO (keywords and Expertise-Experience-Authoritativeness-Trustworthiness), showing context, measurable achievements and putting your readers’ needs first.
You can read how in, Principles of a Good CV.
There’s a lot of advice on tailoring CVs for maximum effect, but my strong belief is that if you need to spend more than 10 minutes tailoring a CV, your time is better spent on other endeavours.
Spending hours crafting the ‘perfect’ application only to be rejected in seconds, perhaps because you applied too slowly, is the path of crashing and burning.
However, what you can do straightforwardly is incorporate the language of the advert / job description you are reading, and highlight directly how you meet their essential requirements.
If your candidacy is not evident from your core CV, anything beyond these tweaks is a marginal gain not worth finding.
Comment: Selling oneself with superlatives is not something we're really raised to do in the UK
A great point - we're often worried about coming over as arrogant about our abilities.
However, it's also a misleading notion because few people have ever hired based on an adjective.
And if adjectives aren't hiring decisions, why worry about them at all?
Especially when most adjectives are over used. If everyone's the #1 salesperson, can you believe any are, or indeed anything else that person says?
Adjectives and other generic phrases (such as duties from job descriptions) are available to everyone, and one reason CVs come across as same-y.
Even hard skills and qualifications may not stand out, if there are many great candidates competing for a vacancy.
What does stand out are the two elements that are more unusual.
1. The context of your career - that third dimension behind where you worked, the structure of your teams, the situation they were in, and the part you played
2. Your achievements shown with measurable evidence. No one can take your achievements away from you. This is how you helped, and an indication of how you might help. What problems did you solve, what outcomes did you reach, how did you support or enable your team, what changes did you drive?
Get these right, and these are factual points you can support through discussion. There's no need to rely on superlatives or selling yourself, when the facts speak for themselves. Just make sure you are telling the truth.
Help CV readers see you as an individual through your achievements and the context of your work, beyond the journey of your career.
While the funny thing is, as much as gen-AI is discussed, it can't be used in this way, because it doesn't have the situational insight to glean and present this information.
And if you are suited to a role, this human insight gives you the "best" shot of being considered.
Q: How do you find a job in the UK without UK experience, any ideas??
Context: UK Citizenship, Sales & Marketing experience abroad.
I’d start by talking to people in the domain you want to work:
People doing the job already in-region. What are the differences - compliance, culture, ways of working?
Specialist recruiters. Have they experience of placing similar people? What do they see as the hurdles?
Research the market you have experience in. Industrial experience may well translate directly, or it may not - establishing the facts is key.
E.g. I’ve placed two South African HR practitioners with British Passports into UK roles with no local experience. The overall approach of HR is similar, with employment law based on similar principles. There are differences, such as discrimination law, but these are achievable gaps to overcome.
Speak to people who have gone through similar experiences. Can you find online or offline forums for immigrants / ex-pats?
Q: wondering what your thoughts are on candidates bringing notes into an interview?
My view is we should make recruitment as accessible as possible. We don’t know what accommodations candidates might benefit from, so why not provide the same to all?
Disability and Neurodivergence benefit from different types of support, but are also areas that are discriminated against - candidates may not want to divulge information that may preclude them.
Moreover, what about people who don’t realise they are, for example, ND, and would benefit from help?
If a role requires traits like reacting to new situations quickly, or anything impromptu, these can be built into the recruitment transparently:
“These are the standard questions. We will also ask three questions to establish how you react to situations that need a fast decision.”
Then it becomes a choice to take part, not feeling like an attempt to be caught out.
From the other side of the fence, I’d play by the rules. Ask the question, don’t assume.
That’s it for this week. Do come along on Wednesday if you’d benefit from our next Live. Or send me any questions you’d like me to cover.
Here’s the link:
Regards,
Greg