Feature Article: Achieve the Job Offer You Deserve by Avoiding These 10 Salary Negotiation Mistakes
Special Feature: Use Your Resume to Help Negotiate a Higher Salary
Bonus Feature: Six-Step Process to Conducting a Year-End Review of Your Career
A Quintet of Quick Questions: QuintZine's Q&A with a Career Expert
Quintessential Site: Featured Career Web Site of this Issue
Latest Additions: What's New on Quintessential Careers
Q TIPS: Quick and Quintessential Tips to Guide Your Job Search
Notes from the Editor: About this Issue...
If you were savvy enough to take advantage of the year-end job-search climate and find a new job --
or if a new position is on the agenda for 2008 -- you'll want to negotiate the best possible salary.
Articles by Dr. Randall S. Hansen and Deb Walker will help you do that.
Then, sit back and take stock of where your career is and where it's headed.
Dr. Hansen's year-end review article will guide you.
We wish you a joyous holiday season and a fabulous 2008. We'll be back in
mid-January with an exciting new issue on the Global Job-Search.
--Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., Master Resume Writer, Credentialed Career Master,
Certified Electronic Career Coach, and editor at
kathy@quintcareers.com
QuintZine Letter to the Editor
MBA student Ignacio de la Torre makes a great
point about our article on resume fonts
from two issues ago:
One more thing to be concerned about when using "out-of-the-box" fonts on a resume would be how those
will be read by scanners in the HR department and what font does your CV defaults to when the one you used
is not available in the HR computer. I for sure would hate using an exotic typeface and then finding out that the
system where my CV is read doesn't have it and my font defaults to something less than optimal.
Regards,
Ignacio de la Torre
MBA Student, 2008
Feature Article: Salary Negotiation Mistakes
Achieve the Job Offer You Deserve by Avoiding These 10 Salary Negotiation Mistakes
by Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D.
Whether you're new to job-hunting or a seasoned pro, whether you love the art of salary-negotiation or dread it,
the truth is that knowing salary negotiation tactics -- and avoiding salary-negotiation landmines -- are key to obtaining
the job offer you seek and deserve.
While much is written about the tactics of salary negotiation, our full article
focuses on negotiation techniques you want to avoid --
salary-negotiation mistakes that could result in a much lower job offer -- or worse -- losing the job offer you worked so hard
to obtain. These 10 mistakes can be easily have been avoided
by following the advice in our article.
Ad: Get a New or Improved Resume Today!
Are you thinking about engaging the services of a professional writer for your resume, CV, cover letter,
thank-you letter, or other career-marketing correspondence? Before you take this step,
consider how a professional resume writer could benefit you.
Most job-seekers believe that salary negotiation starts once they have an offer in hand, but nothing could be further
from the truth. In fact, your resume can make the difference between negotiating at the top end of the salary range -- or the
bottom end -- in your next job offer. If that sounds strange to you,
consider the points in our full article.
Bonus Feature: Year-End Career Review
Six-Step Process to Conducting a Year-End Review of Your Career
by Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D.
The end of the year is often a time of many events -- wrapping
up business for the year while also wrapping holiday presents.
Our full article
presents something you can give to yourself -- something that
you can get done during the holiday lull or over some vacation days
-- a quick and easy process for examining what you've accomplished
in your career this year and where you want to go with it next year.
Of course, you may have already done at least some preliminary work on reviewing the year -- especially if your employer hands
out year-end bonuses or conducts year-end performance reviews -- and if so, that's a good place to start your year-end review.
But unlike your on-the-job performance review, the purpose of this article is to suggest you consider conducting an even more important
assessment -- taking stock of your career. Now is the perfect time to review where you are, where you've been, and where you want to go.
Ford R. Myers, M.Ed., president of Career Potential, LLC.
"Many candidates react too quickly when they receive
an initial compensation offer," said Ford Myers
in the Q&A interview we did with him. "They tend to hear only
the salary figure and make a judgment based solely on that,
without waiting to hear all the other elements of the compensation
package. So, I teach clients to patiently go through the entire
offer and consider all the factors before making a decision or attempting to negotiate."
Read more about salary negotiation and job offers, as well as how NOT to
act like a job-seeker and how to employ tools for finding your career passion, in
Read our full Q&A interview with him.
PayScale provides global online compensation data based on the world's largest database of individual employee compensation profiles.
PayScale's real-time profiling system indexes custom employee attributes (such as industry-specific certifications)
and specific job titles for every industry.
Job candidates can use PayScale to evaluate a job offer or raise; employees can use it to evaluate salaries for current jobs; and
job-seekers can check salaries for future jobs. You can get accurate, real-time salary reports based on your job title, location,
education, skills, and experience.
Users can also get sample no-cost Salary Reports and see a sample PayScale Premium Report.
big4careers.com --
a UK (mainly) and international job site for audit, risk management, corporate
finance, corporate tax, international tax, forensic accounting, and business analysis professionals.
Search job listings (by discipline and location) and apply online with registration. No cost to job-seekers.
iHireSecretarial --
a job site for secretary and clerical professionals -- including
executive secretaries, executive assistants, administrative assistants, office managers, and clerks --
where job-seekers can search jobs (by job title and zip code), post your resume, and receive
email notification of job matches. No cost to job-seekers.
Jobs in Zurich --
a job site for English-speaking professionals seeking job opportunities in Zurich and parts of the
rest of Switzerland, where job-seekers can browse job listings by industry, with links directly to
the employer sites. Includes helpful resources. Part of the JobsinHubs.com family of sites.
No cost to job-seekers.
SeasonWorkers.com --
a job site covering all aspects of worldwide working travel and seasonal recruitment -- including winter resorts,
summer resorts, outdoor jobs, and TEFL positions -- where job-seekers can search job postings
(by job category and country) and then apply directly to whichever one interests you. No cost to job-seekers.
Find even more career and job site additions to Quintessential Careers by visiting our
Latest Additions section.
Q TIPS: Quick and Quintessential Career & Job Tips
Compensation/pay, benefits, job security, flexibility to balance work/life issues and
communication between employees and senior management remain top
contributors to job satisfaction, according to employees surveyed for
the 2007 Job Satisfaction Survey Report released by the Society
for Human Resource Management (SHRM). In fact, over the past four
years, survey respondents ranked benefits and compensation/pay
as the top two aspects. Still, nearly eight out of 10 employees report
overall satisfaction with their current positions
Are you actively managing your own career? If not, you may want to make it a goal in 2008 to do what at least half
of employees were doing in 2007, according to a study of nearly 1,000 workers in 33 countries by BlessingWhite,
a global consulting firm based in Princeton.
Asked if they actively manage their career based on clear, personal goals, 51 percent agreed or strongly agreed. Moreover,
57 percent of participants do not expect their employer to provide a career path for them.
Among the study's other findings:
Four out of five employees do not think there is anything
wrong with staying in the same job if they have the opportunity
to try new things or develop their skills.
A majority of the participants (52 percent) indicated that they
are looking for work that is satisfying when they make a job change.
While 45 percent of study participants reported that that they
know what they want their next job to be, only 22 percent think that
they know what their employer wants their next job to be.
Half of respondents (48 percent) believe they have decent
career opportunities with their current employer, while more than
a third (39 percent) expect their next career move to take them elsewhere.
A few salary-negotiation tips from John D. Hoover of JobLynx:
Make your salary discussion a friendly experience. Assume
amiability when discussing salary, not conflict or controversy.
You should make the employer feel that you are on the same
side and working together to find a compensation package
that would satisfy everyone's needs. Anticipate a win-win situation.
Dispute any doubts about your suitability for the position.
You will have the most influence if salary is the only source for
hesitation. Make sure that there are absolutely no other concerns
from your employer or doubts that you are the best candidate
for the position.
Justify your cost-effectiveness. Try pointing out to the
company how your ability will help reduce costs through
your performance so you can justify higher pay.
Remain calm and poised. Once the offer has been made, and
appears too low, remain quiet as though you were pondering the
offer. This will imply your dissatisfaction with the offer, and the
uncomfortable silence may prompt the interviewer to improve
the offer on his/her own.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Choosing a College Major: Future-Focused Strategies for Finding
a Field Where You'll Excel
Quintessential Careers Publisher Dr. Randall Hansen has a new book!
If you're college-bound, you may already be wondering which major to pursue. This new book is for you!
This guide to majors, careers, and jobs helps students:
plan their futures by examining lifelong interests, skills, and passions
conduct career search through personal and experiential sources
decide on majors and minors by determining what's best for them
Real jobs for real majors. Readers can find practical advice and information on real job titles and careers for college graduates
with just about any college major, from business and the arts, o science and music. Each chapter includes information on
typical majors, background on various careers, skills needed, sample job entry-level job ads, industry resources and professional
associations, employment outlook, salary information, and other features.
If your school, organization, business or other
entity has a Web site, we welcome you to link to Quintessential Careers.
If you already have a link from your site, we want you to know we
appreciate it. If you don't have a link to us, please
send a request to your site's Webmaster to establish a
link to Quintessential Careers. Thanks so much!
For more details (including sample HTML copy), see our
Link to Us page.
Need a career expert for a story or article you're working on? Searching for college,
career, and job news? Interested in learning more about Quintessential Careers?
Our Press Room
is your one-stop location for getting the information and resources you need.
QuintZine: Topics in Upcoming Issues
WATCH FOR feature articles on these topics in upcoming
issues of QuintZine:
* Global Job-Search Tutorial
* Global Job-Search Do's and Don'ts
* State of Online Job-Search Annual Report
* Internet Job-Search Mistakes
* Career Focus Quiz
* Credit Reports and Job-Search
* New Grads: Expectation/Entitlement vs. Reality
* College Grad Job-hunting Readiness Quiz
* Using Mind-mapping Techniques for Interview Prep
* Interview Post-Mortem
* Hiring Decision-makers' Top 30 Peeves about Executive Resumes
* 10 Critical Interviewing Tips
* Study Skills
* Academic Success
* Wheel of Wellness
* 3 Generations of Workers: Y, X, Boomers
* Employee Healthy Benefits
* College Financing
* Scholarship Do's and Don'ts
* The Academic Job Search
* Perks of Working in Higher Ed
* Signs Your Job is in Jeopardy
* Blogging Way to New Job or Holiday Job-Hunting
* Office Politics
* Maternity Leave
* Jobs on the Cutting Edge
* Job Search IQ Quiz
* Resume Bullet Points: Before and After
* GLBT Job-search Issues
* The Value of Internships Abroad and Study Abroad
* Top 10 Fears of Job-seekers
* For Job-hunting Success, Develop a Detailed Job-Search Plan
* Keep Your Career Dreams Alive
* MBA Career Portfolios
* Pre-Hire Background/Credit Checks
* Financial Aid/Scholarship Timetable
* Build Confidence and Avoid Insecurity in Job Interviews
* Empty Nest Job-seekers
* Lifelong Networking
* Networking for the Shy
* Working Night Shifts/Odd Hours
* Quintessential Career Profiles of YOU, our readers
* Q&As with well-known career experts
* Book reviews
. . . and much, much more...
