Guidance Counselor 2.0 + How to Tackle Salary Negotiations

All righty, do this.

Do it.

Good morning everybody, good morning, good morning. We are live. I'm just dropping into the Torque Discord real quick and alerting the troops. See here.

Yeah, you guys are getting me early this morning. Uh, yeah, I'm on the West Coast, so it's, uh, half past 7 right now. Oh, well, thank you.

Yeah, you're, you're, uh, you're the West Coast crew. Whenever I, whenever I try to book somebody from the West Coast, they're all like, ah, it's a little early. I'm like, well, I like to stay consistent on times.

So, uh, yeah, well, I think that's smart for your audience, especially if you're live. And, uh, it's not a problem for me really. I love— I wanted to be on your show, so I love it. Here I am.

I love it. Well, uh, good morning, y'all. Please say hey, would love to hear from you. Um, we are back from, uh, with another, uh, edition of Guidance Counselor 2.0. Um, and, uh, I'm pumped for this one. I'm pumped for this one. I think it's going to be, uh, very applicable to everybody who tunes in now or listens in the future. Uh, but before we get started, as always say, please say hey. Um, would love to hear from you. I see the comments already trickling in. Um, and, uh, you know, I, I tell folks this, and I was telling, I was telling John this backstage, that I mean, this thing's kind of morphed. Uh, uh, you know, really, uh, I have actually— I can go ahead and say I've been doing this for 6 years, um, because March of 2020 is when COVID hit, and, uh, and that's when I started to do this show. And so it is March. So we've been doing this thing for 6 years now. And, and so I am pumped for this guest. And it's like I tell folks, like, this is a networking event, like flat out. Please connect with John. I will drop his link afterwards. But please connect with John, say hey. You know, he and I were chatting backstage. He, he's a fantastic resource. Um, and, and I'm sure we'll get into it, uh, briefly, but he was a recruiter before the internet existed, which I tell people is a whole other ball game. Um, so I would love to pick his brain a little bit on what that used to look like. Um, but again, connect with people in the chat, DM them, let them know like, hey, it was good to see him on Guidance Counselor 2.0, uh, this morning. Um, and, uh, and, and again, just the, the power of networking in these things is, is incredibly important. especially in today's world. Before we get started, as always, uh, want to kind of give, uh, you know, kind of a quick run-through. Um, so first off, uh, I am an Appwrite hero. Um, me and my guy Jason Torres, both Appwrite heroes. Check them out. Um, great product, great team. Um, also too, uh, Torque— listen, we got a lot of things going on in the Torque community. Uh, would love for you to check out our page. Um, you know, we— golly, I mean, we got live events going, we got some in-person, uh, in-person events going. We also too, I probably should put this as a banner and probably just direct y'all to this, tork.dev/newsletter.

I believe that's it.

Jason, correct me if I'm wrong. But we finally have like a public landing page. If you just want to like be kept up to date of everything we're doing, I know it's a lot, right? Our Discord is averaging 10,000 messages a month. It can be a little extreme for people who don't always want to be in the chat. So I would just go sign up for our newsletter, and you can literally get updates every week on what we're doing, discounts. Uh, you know, we partner with conferences on discount codes, we give away free tickets. So definitely go join. I would love to have you. Um, also too, as always, if you want to be kept up to date when I go live with guests like John, shoot me a text. This is my number. Also, if you have any job search questions, I always go to this number first. Um, and I would love to have you. Uh, and then also too, um, kind of the unofficial sponsor of coffee, sponsor of the show, Seek Coffee. Listen, uh, most coffee, John, I don't know if you knew this, but most coffee is— it has trace mold in it. So there's a founder in Nashville, uh, called Caleb, uh, named Caleb, called Caleb, named Caleb. Um, and he has a company called Seek Coffee. Um, use the code TDESEYN for 15% off. Um, and, uh, I really need to follow up with him to get a Torque membership as well. for the community. But definitely go try them out. Great coffee. I'm drinking it right now. It's fantastic. All right. So enough with me yapping. Again, it's great to see everybody this morning. John, let's give the people what they want, man. Who are you? What do you do? And I'll start peppering you with questions.

Well, thanks very much. So I'm John Gates, the Salary Coach. Some people call me the Sultan of Salary or the Professor of Pay. You know, those, those are fun names that my clients have given me throughout the years. But I am a former head of global recruiting for Fortune 500 companies. So I've been the guy responsible for bringing executives into the company, managing the internal corporate recruiting team. Sometimes that's dozens of recruiters all working on things. So I can answer questions about what it's like to be a recruiter, how you should interact with them, why recruiters are weird or do the unexpected things sometimes.

Yeah.

But I started Salary Coach about 4 years ago. And I've been a consultant though, since 2016. And so Salary Coach 4 years ago, I recognized that we were entering into a pretty weird job search season. I think we are going to have a lot of applicants, more so than stuff happening on the recruiting front. And so I started asking myself, what can I do to help people. And maybe it's a new product line for me. And I've always been the negotiator on the other side of the table. In my career, I've overseen 75,000 job offers, if you can believe that.

Yeah, I believe it.

I believe that is a lot of them. And so I started tracking many years ago how much money people were leaving on the table. Because being in corporate recruiting and being a recruiter, you're at a lot of career risk. You're vulnerable to being laid off, as you can probably guess. If a company decides to get smaller, the people who make the company bigger are easy layoff targets. So I didn't want to be laid off any more than normal. I wanted to justify why I was important to the company.

Sure.

So I started tracking how much money people were leaving on the table. Basically, how much money was I saving for the company In negotiations. And it is a shocking number. I find that 80% of people don't negotiate at all.

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

You know, and those people immediately leave money on the table.

Yep.

10% negotiate effectively and 10% negotiate disastrously. So those were my statistics as I was looking at 75,000 job offers. And the average person, I think, is leaving 5 to 6 figures on the table, and they don't even know they are doing that.

Huh.

That's the— like, people like me are able to convince you that the offer you just accepted is the best it can be when there's still a $20,000 signing bonus out there on the table.

Yeah.

That I didn't have to use, whatever. So when I was a corporate recruiter, I set a goal to replace my annual salary every month in negotiation savings.

Okay. Okay.

And I got to be so good at that when I was, you know, a frontline contributor before I had a team, that pretty, pretty soon I had a team. And pretty soon I was the inside guy that was training the other recruiters on how to talk about money with candidates.

I love it.

And So now I'm kind of like a, uh, a— I'm a, I'm a former prosecutor who's become a defense attorney. Sometimes people, um, describe me like that. So I'm on, I'm on your side of the table now. Yeah, helping you to get the, the most you can get with the least amount of risk.

I love it, I love it. Let me ask you this. Jason brought it up early in the chat. Talk about that Deep sea helmet back there you got there.

What's up with that? Yeah, so, uh, quick story on that. I have a friend who owns a junk store. Okay, he's the kind of guy that will go buy storage units or whole estate sales or something like that. And so I was playing poker one night with him in his junk store after hours, and I walk in and there it is sitting right inside the door covered in dust and cobwebs. I said, that is the coolest thing I've ever seen. Surely that's going in your living room. And he said, John, um, I don't know if you know this, but I own a junk store. You should see my living room. I'm gonna sell it. So before the night was over, I had, uh, negotiated an offer on the helmet. It was mine, and it took me about an hour to polish it up, but it is super cool. And I bought it for 2 reasons. Like, one, is it reminds me of the old Scooby-Doo cartoon. You know, there was this ghost with the, you know, with the lights coming out of the diver helmet.

I remember.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But also it reminds me that, um, you need to push your limits. Every day I look at that and it's— if you can imagine putting that thing over your head and then going underwater with that on, it's— it is a stretch. It's a stretch for your anxiety and your fear and, and everything else. And pushing your limits is a good thing. It's the only way we grow, and it's uncomfortable, but it reminds me to push my limits every day. I love that.

I love that. So, so there's, so there's, there's, there's a lot to unpack based off what you just said. Uh, let's, let's just dive immediately into the salary negotiation stuff, right? Where— let's, let's start super high level. Uh, let's, let's just— yeah, why do you think people don't negotiate?

Ah, that's a good— that's a good question. Why do 80% of people just accept the offer that comes in? Uh, I think it's fear. That is the primary, um, reason. Um, and people don't want to talk about money at any step of the process.

Sure.

People, you know, you go and apply for a job and you see a box on the, uh, on the screen that says, what's your pay expectation or your salary requirement or whatever? And people know that if they put in the wrong thing there, they won't get a call.

Right.

And the anxiety, it's like, oh, what do I do? Do I put in a low number or do I put in a high number? What if, what if the number's too high? You know, it's like they They freak out, and then in the phone screen, the question comes up again, and they're afraid that if they answer that wrong, the screener is going to bounce them out of the process before they even meet the hiring manager. And then when the offer finally comes, they're terrified that they will lose the offer if they rock the boat. And when I was writing my book, I asked about 100 job seekers, why don't you know, what prevents you from negotiating? Fear was the primary reason. But if you kind of zoom in on that a little bit, there's a difference in how men and women answer this question that I found interesting. So the men were afraid of losing the offer. And that was the major, like, It's not this way across all men, but it's like the majority of men were concerned that they would lose the opportunity, and the majority of women were concerned about damaging relationships.

Okay.

So, you know, I'm afraid of making HR angry. I'm afraid that I'll get off on the wrong foot with my new boss. Um, so the good news is the Salary Coach method that I developed over time removes those risks to a great degree. Like, the process is very collaborative. If anything, you're gonna strengthen your relationships coming at it the way that I suggest.

What— so that being said, what do you suggest? Like, let's start to break it down a little bit.

Good. So what I suggest overall, there's a A long whole process for the Salary Coach Method. But I think if you zoom out, I suggest that you become collaborative instead of oppositional in a negotiation process. Most people think that, you know, if we just say, how do you negotiate your pay? This is what most people think. They think they're gonna have to become super aggressive or—

Yeah.

You know, they're gonna have to stand up. You, you find this advice everywhere. It says, do your research, stand up for yourself.

Yeah.

You know, when you start to hear stand up for yourself, what is that? How does that resonate in your core?

Yeah, I mean, it kind of is like, you kind of, yeah, have to be a bully.

It's like, well, I'm gonna have to be brave, and I'm gonna have to do things that I'm uncomfortable with, and I'm gonna have to Especially for me, it sounds like that's risky. I'm going to stand up for myself and be somebody I'm not and be aggressive. Most people also think that negotiation is win-lose. The best negotiations are set up to be a win-win.

Sure.

And I've been on the other side of the negotiating table for so long. There's an offer approval process that happens before an offer ever goes out to you. Right? So in order for a recruiter to extend an offer, it has to first be approved. There are approvers. And so I think it's a mistake to imagine as well that the negotiation process begins when you have an offer.

Yeah.

You know, those approval chains are often really political. They're political. The hiring manager wants to hire someone. They are putting a price on that hire that has to be approved by somebody else that never met you. So the manager is putting together a justification for that. And So they're saying, I want to hire Taylor for this much, and I know it's high, but this is what Taylor's going to do for us. And they're justifying for the approvers. And so if you wait to negotiate until the offer is extended, like, you can modify the offer a little bit at that point, and you should try, but—

Sure.

There's a lot that happens up to and before that point that you have to be mindful of that shapes the offer.

So what, what are we— what, what are just some word tracks or some positioning that people can have? I mean, we want it to be collaborative. We want folks to be able to have that conversation, head off that conversation early. What are some things that people could do, say, that perspective?

Great. Well, yeah, let's— we could do a deep dive even on this up until, say, the offer is presented to you. But, um, yeah, I think there are several things. One is that you should be positioning yourself as top talent all along the way. And What this looks like is, you know, top talent is in demand. Even in this, in this weird job market that we're in, you might be top talent and it might be 3 months since you had, you know, an interview somewhere. It can be like that, especially like if you're living in the— say you're living in Silicon Valley in California, where there have been massive AI disruptions to the workforce in that area. Um, Opportunities can be thin, but I think you, you can invoke competition at every step.

Yeah.

So when you are getting phone screened and they ask you how much money you need to make, you can provide an answer, but you kind of frame that up in, this is the ballpark that other companies are discussing with me.

Yeah, yeah.

So if you have to start looking like top talent, if you have nothing going on, nobody's calling you, um, somebody who's employed is gonna see that as, what's wrong with this person? Why? Yeah, why have they been on the bench for so long? And things like that. They start to wonder what they missed in looking at you. that other people have seen, um, being in competition, putting them in competition with somebody else. Some folks think that sounds risky, that companies are just going to back away, but the odds—

Yeah, it's helped me actually. The reason why I got an offer at Torque is because I flat out told my boss like, hey, and, and I was being for real, I was like, another company's already offered me a spot, so if If, if you want to move, we need to move. And it worked out.

Yep. There's a, there's a concept, a psychology concept that I put in my book called mimetic desire. And so the example that I use in the book and often out in public is imagine a room that's got 100 toys in it. I don't know, are you, are you a father, Taylor?

I have 3 kids. I just had our third 2 months ago. So, yes.

All right, well, you can, you can relate to this. If you had a room with 100 toys in it and you have 2 toddlers in the room, and toddler A picks up one of those toys—

Oh yeah, happens every day at my house.

Which, which toy does toddler B want all the time, every time?

Yeah.

This is, this is why you want to bring subtly, not, not like a sledgehammer, but you want to carefully bring in Competition into this thing because everybody always wants the toy that somebody else has more than the toy that's laying around on the ground. It's just human psychology. It makes you more valuable. It also— they pursue you more aggressively too. The timelines tighten up. There's a whole bunch of other side benefits for doing that.

Yeah.

But, um, yeah.

One thing, one thing too that I'm interested to hear your thoughts on that I've kind of done throughout my career is, and, and I've, you know, I always tell people this, that I think recruiters, both agency and corporate, you've spent time in both, are really the best people to help you in your career, right? Resumes, career coaching, salary negotiations, because we have been in it Every day.

Every day. Yeah, we know. Um, we also know that sometimes those resume writers that want to get money out of your pocket, uh, or career coaches that are telling you that 80% of jobs are hidden jobs, never posted, you know, I know that that's BS.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So one of the things that I've, I, I've told people And, and it's kind of— and I see some questions coming in that I definitely want to get to. Um, so if you have questions, keep asking them and we'll get to them. Um, as I tell people, because people can get weird, it's like a lot of people don't want to say where they're currently at because that could plant the seed to like offer only a little bit more. What I tell people is, what is your bare minimum to jump to a next role?

Mm-hmm.

And then what's the number that signs on the dotted line tomorrow? So what that does is that you, you give 2 data points to a recruiter, which is better than 1 data point, and you don't have to give off where your current salary is, right? So, so if I were to make a jump, what is that number for you to even start the conversation for the next jump?

Yeah.

And then what's the bigger number that's gonna make you be the no-brainer? And if you can give that, to a recruiter, that gives them 2 data points without telling where you're currently at. I'm kind of curious to hear your thoughts on that.

That's true. All that's true. Um, but what if there was another $20K on top of the no-brainer number? That's what you have to ask yourself, you know. And sometimes that's the case, right? There could be, there could be money, um, up above that. So it's, uh, It's always good to set your range to where the top number makes you mildly uncomfortable.

Yeah.

Asking for that. And I think that we undervalue ourselves all of the time. And so the number that makes you mildly uncomfortable is the number that really should be in your discussion because it accounts for how we undervalue ourselves all of the time.

Yeah.

So yeah, offering a range is a smart thing to do. Um, you know, I always advocate for my clients to get the budget of the company before answering the pay question.

Really?

Yeah, there's a specific, um, strategy for doing that that I employ, and I'll spill the beans right here. Yeah, so if you're, if you're listening, here's a great script that you can grab and use next time you're on the phone with a recruiter who's calling you. And they're gonna ask you like, what's your pay expectation? What's the min— they might ask it in just the way you framed it. What's the minimum? What's the maximum? Usually they're more interested in what's the minimum that it would take to get you to make a move.

Sure.

They want a number out of you more than anything. And so the key to succeeding in the phone screen is to use a range in the early phase. Don't give them a number. Because as soon as you give them a number, they're gonna write that down on the resume somewhere. They're gonna say, I could get John for $240,000. And more often than not, that's what the offer ends up being.

Right.

And keep in mind that you haven't met the hiring team yet, and there's a great opportunity in the interview to move up in your value.

Yeah.

You need to preserve that. So when that question comes at me, here's what I say, and here's what I coach my clients to say. when you're getting screened before you interview. And that is, I'm so glad you asked that question because I wanna have a really transparent conversation with you about pay to make sure this is a great match. But first, can you tell me what your budget is for the position?

Do you think people are gonna get a little weird about that?

The receiving end of that? No. I think that recruiters are generally cagey about numbers because, um, they are because they, they don't want to screw up the negotiation at the end. Like, we get judged based on offer closing at the end. We don't want it to fall apart. So, um, no, most of the time— and I'll just spill some insider secrets here— Most of the time recruiters are going to under-promise and over-deliver because they want to close the deal at the end. So they will often not give you the true range. They're going to hold back some high end. And this is why psychologically, let's just say I asked that question, you know, what's your budget for the position? And then I'm going to get a range from you probably. And then my next question is going to be, does that— is that salary only, or does that include incentives? I want to shift the conversation into a total pay opportunity conversation so I can compare apples to apples if I'm comparing multiple opportunities, because every company has a different pay philosophy.

Sure.

Some companies will pay all salary and so on. But the recruiter's gonna say, well, okay, our range including incentives is like $150,000 to $165,000 or $175,000 or something. Let's just say that that's the response.

Sure.

If the top number is $175,000, what do most candidates say? They might say, well, $175,000 might work for me, or that sounds like a good range, whatever. Now, if $175,000 was the very top that you could actually offer, And you just set the candidate's expectations at $175,000. I mean, when's the last time any company ever hired anyone at the very top of the salary range?

Yeah.

They just don't do that because it's, it's pain. Like, the internal equity goes out of whack. You can't give somebody a raise at the end of the year. There's all kinds of reasons why hiring managers don't do that. So $175,000 is probably just the top of the realistic offering range. And then, you know, but if you knock their socks off in the interview, $185,000, $192,000, you know, those numbers might be possible.

Yeah.

So yeah, I don't find that quite like corporate recruiters are having dozens of conversations every week with candidates. They're asking the pay question all the time. They're having relatively open conversations about the pay structure, what it's made of. Here's the bonus structure that we have for this position. There's stock, there's not stock. They have— this is a normal conversation. So I don't want people to feel like asking for the budget puts you at risk.

Yeah.

It really doesn't. And I'll give one other tip here. When you ask that question, be silent for about 8 seconds.

Yes.

Yeah. And what you probably know this trick too, like I was, for years, I taught hiring managers and hiring teams how to ask tough interview questions of candidates. And tolerating the silence after a tough interview question is a key technique that I teach. and another human psychology. Like, if you just look at your watch and you are silent for 8 seconds, that is a long time, and it becomes uncomfortable, like a vacuum. It's gonna suck words into it. So yeah, if you ask that question, what's your budget, you're gonna get one of two answers. One is the budget or a range of some kind. Um, another question or another answer could be, we're not sure because it's a newly created position. We're just checking to see what the market is like. And I've used both of those as a recruiter and there are different ways of handling it in each case.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. Yeah, silence I think is massive. I think a lot of people, Uh, in my experience, you know, they, uh, they say what they think they want and then they start backtracking immediately. Oh, you know, I want $175,000. Oh, but it— but I mean, but it's fine. Like, I mean, I mean, if you can't get there, like, you know, I understand, blah blah blah. And you're automatically— so like, say the number, be quiet, let the other person, uh, you know, say something, I think is incredibly important. Um, let me ask you this. Uh, I, I do want to go, um, to a few questions. Uh, somebody goes, yeah, I wish I listened to this before an interview that I had yesterday. Um, uh, let's see here. In my experience, recruiters have gotten around that question by saying the budget hasn't been released yet, but they would love to get a ballpark figure. How would you— there's some red flags to me with this response.

Ron, I think that's a great question. If you get that from a recruiter, it's unlikely unless it's a newly created position. Most of the time, this might be a soft lie from the recruiter, maybe even a hard lie.

Yeah.

But the mistake that most people make is buried in your question, which is the ballpark figure. So most recruiters do have a range in their mind. They've had this conversation before they even start the search.

Yep.

Even if a range hasn't been established yet, they do have a ballpark idea of what this is going to cost. They know it's a director-level job. They know director-level jobs usually pay X, or it's a developer of some kind. It's gonna— maybe it's a wide range, but they have a range. Now they ask this question, they're trying to get a number out of you because it's easy to know if a number, a point on a number line, is in or out Are you in or out?

Yeah.

That's what they want. Like, a recruiter on a phone screen is looking to see if you're qualified, if you're interested, and if they can close you. Can they get you is the question in their mind that they are asking. So they will press you for a number, and the appropriate best answer at this point is a range. So don't give them a ballpark figure. If it's the if it's the range that I mentioned before, say 150 to 175, you can say that's great because the range that I'm discussing with other companies right now is 160 to the high ones. Yeah, and so what I've done instead of offering a number that fits in their number line, which is what is. Convenient and comfortable for the recruiter. I have offered reassurance. That's great. I feel like we've got a lot of overlap here, but my range is now overlapping yours and my high point is above your high point. This allows you later to scoop up the money that's still on the table if they can come up above $175,000, even if the salary is maxed there. There are a number of negotiating fronts, like signing bonuses are a great example. Um, it's, it's not unusual for, um, seasoned professionals to leave a 5-figure signing bonus on the table that's even pre-approved. It's just sitting there.

Yeah.

Hey John, use this. You've got a $20,000 signing bonus that you can use if you need it. When they— when I had it and I didn't need it, that's what I wrote on my spreadsheet to replace my annual salary when I was tracking this stuff.

Yeah, yeah, uh, yeah. And, and Chris brings up a good point. If they, if they don't have the budget, the job could be pulled, right? So like, you know, my, my thought with Ron, with your question, is, is I would go back and be like, hey, listen, I— if, if the budget hasn't been released yet, then Then how, then how are we talking?

Yeah, if the budget hasn't been— that's a very good question. Um, but if somebody's come out with that, they're not going to say, oh yeah, I forgot the budget is this. So if you, if you approach it in that way, you could be viewed as adversarial. And you can say, well, okay, if, if this is the answer and they don't give you a range of their own, like the response should be a range That's wide. So, and you can say I'm talking with a number of other companies. Some are in different geographies. The jobs are slightly different in terms of scope and scale, but the range that I'm discussing with other companies, and I know this is wide, is mid ones to mid twos. And you just what you want to do is create an overlap and make that recruiter or screener feel like you're going to be. Gettable in the end. And that's so important, guys, because this is the biggest egg on the face of a recruiter. If they, if they tie up a short-staffed team with somebody who doesn't close after doing that, the trust is broken with the recruiter and the hiring manager.

Yeah.

So they are, they're going to try to— and if they poke at that, they say, well, that's, that's a really wide range. You could say, yeah, It is, but, you know, some of these companies have extensive, um, you know, incentive programs. Some are in different locations, but that's the range that I'm talking about for jobs kind of in this ballpark scope.

Yeah.

Now, I'm sure that, uh, you know, and I promise you can promise to narrow this range as you go through the interview process, but You know, I'm gonna stick to a range at this point because I haven't met the hiring team yet. I'm not sure of the impact that I would make. I want to make sure I understand what the true scope of the role and expectations are before I can kind of map this to the other opportunities that I'm exploring.

I like that. I like that. My buddy Steven, Steven's coming on the show here in the next few weeks. He's a recruiter as well. He goes, man, oh man, This is a conversation I had with a buddy multiple times. Whose side are we on, internal recruiters or agency recruiters? I love it.

I love it.

Yeah. I mean, again, you have to remember, and I love what John said, recruiters talk salaries all the time. So don't be worried to talk about it. I love that. Let me ask you this, John. One thing that I've— another thing I want to pinpoint too that John's been saying that I really like too. Is giving— give them market data, right? So if somebody goes, what's your salary? Be like, well, hey, I'm interviewing for companies, uh, and give them a range that allows them to like be like, oh, well, we're underpriced. That recruiter can go back to the hiring manager, be like, I just talked with Taylor. I think he's a great candidate, but he's saying that he's talking to companies this— at this price point. Maybe we're underpaying. So I love that. I wanna give that a call out as well.

Yeah.

Let's see here. I'm gonna go kind of, if you have any more questions, throw them in there. We've had a few.

Let me go here.

So I like, this is another question by Ron too. What is the groundwork you are doing to build the leverage from the beginning? Do you have some thoughts? Yeah, yeah.

This is a great question from Ron. Thanks, Ron, for this. There are several things that you can be doing in the beginning. So your strategy in the application is to get a phone call. You want a resume and, and a number in the salary requirement box that's going to get the phone call. Then when you get the phone call, you're reframing into a range. You have zero leverage At the application stage. You might be one of many.

Yep.

And the recruiter has a very limited time, very limited time to get on the phone and talk to people. So they're only going to do that with people that are, that are gettable, that fit the requirements and things like that. And if there are a lot of people, the what's in that salary requirements box becomes a big funnel point. It's a choke point in the funnel. So that first number could be like medium-low for you maybe to get the phone call, but you have to reframe into a range or you'll be stuck with that medium-low number. You do that in the phone screen. Um, in the phone screen, that's when you begin building leverage.

Yeah.

Because now they've narrowed the field. They only have time to talk to 6 or 8 candidates. They're going to present 3 maybe to the hiring manager. That's a typical recruiter screening process. So, they've invested time in you, right? If they like you and they want to move you forward, dropping the competition line is something that helps you to build leverage. I'm discussing with other companies a range of A and B. Um, you can sabotage your leverage here by hinting that you've got nothing going on, that you're desperate, things like this. That reduces your leverage and your value.

Yeah.

And then in the, in the interview process, when you make it to that point, you're also talking about competition, but you are positioning yourself as somebody who is high value, that can solve expensive problems. But it's more than that. Like, you want to be the person who's going to help the hiring manager make their bonus. Like, I'll tell you just how self-centered the hiring process is. Like, managers hire people that are going to make them look good. That's, you know, and if you can be that person more than other folks, more and more leverage. They don't want to lose you to a competitor. So, um, this tends to produce the highest initial offer, and I have very specific techniques for doing all these things.

Yeah. Um, I, I want to get to Eduardo's, uh, you know, I, I don't know if John could speak to specifically LATAM or other places of cost of living, but I, I think when we talk about leverage in general, I think it's trying to— and I've talked about this in past content— it's trying to zero in on why the person is hiring for the role and how you can solve that as fast as possible.

Yeah. So yeah, yeah.

So like when I was interviewing for the last role I was at before Torque, I, I was like, hey, do you guys have any sort of content? They were like, no. I said, okay, do you guys have any sort of livestream? They were like, no. I was like, do you guys have any sort of— I was like, I was like, and they're originally hiring for a sales role. And I was like, well, I've brought in this many clients and passed through content. So basically what I try to do is I tried to zero in on their pain points and address it Immediately. So in terms of geography, I can't speak to that. But when it comes to what to leverage, it's trying to figure out what a company needs as fast as possible. Thoughts on that, John?

Yeah, I agree with you. Um, it's an interesting question. I had my very first client come to me from Saudi Arabia recently, and I've never used, you know, done any— I've done a lot of global recruiting but never actually recruited anyone in or for Saudi Arabia. So I know though that the principles of pay negotiation are the same no matter where you are. The principles are the same. So scarcity drives value. That's what competition brings. Like there's only one of you. There are 3 companies chasing you. That drives your value up. Now every country has its own nuance.

Mm-hmm.

Um, in this process, like, um, some countries may have a very fixed approach to salaries, and some cultures don't offer signing bonuses, things like that. But they all have to recruit, they all have to hire people, they all have expensive problems. And so there's usually some area of flexibility, if not in salary or signing bonus, there's some other thing you could Some countries will have an employment contract. We don't have those in the United States except for maybe at the C-level or board level.

Yeah.

But so the question here is, you know, what about Latin America? There's a couple of things, like if you lived in Latin America, the company might say, I don't care where you live. Live anywhere. Here's how we pay. And the other response is, well, if you're living in a cheap place, we're going to pay you less money because our pay scales are regionalized. You know, you have an office in Washington, D.C., and you have an office in Atlanta. Atlanta, if you're working in Atlanta, it pays less. So in either of these cases, though, You maximize your value, um, and, uh, and so on by solving expensive problems, being the person that is a low-risk candidate, and, uh, invoking competition. These are the things that are universal leverage builders.

Yep, yep, absolutely. Uh, let me see here, going kind of going through Hashtag, you guys have been super active today. I appreciate it. Um, let's see here. All right, I think, I think we got all the questions there. Let me ask you this. What are some other— so, so let's say you get to the final offer and it's not quite what you want for salary. What are some other things you could negotiate?

Ah, great question. So Very often, um, at the high— well, I'll say this first. At the higher levels of the organization where there's only one of you, there's a lot more creativity in the pay package structure. There's a lot more elbow room.

What do you mean, like you're the only person, like the only position they're hiring for, or—

No, if there's only one of you on the org chart. So you're talking to a technical audience. There's a lot of developers on the call here. So If you're the VP of engineering and there's only one of those, you have a lot more negotiating latitude on almost every front. Now, if you're— if you are applying to a job as a developer and there's 20 other developers on the team, salary is a lot more constrained because they can't afford to make everyone else on the team frustrated that they brought you in at a higher level. So Salaries is constrained in that situation, so companies have to expand on other fronts. Upfront money or equity is an easy thing to negotiate on. Title sometimes, or even level, are things you can negotiate on. So if you're stuck in the salary, let's say you're applying for a Developer 2 job, could you be— could you qualify for a Developer So that we could close this deal and get into a different salary bracket. So you can negotiate on level sometimes. Incentive structure itself are sometimes viable. A lot of times companies will say, this is grade 30 position that provides a 10% bonus or a 20% bonus or whatever it is. And everyone that's a grade 30 gets a 20% bonus. So we're stuck there. We can't negotiate on that. But sometimes you can throw in like a milestone bonus. Let's say there's a really valuable project that's due in 6 months. If I get that project done on time and under budget, could we tie a monetary one-time bonus to that KPI? So you still have your 20%, you're not deviating from that, but you're, you're offering them different ideas, whether it's also, whether it's remote or hybrid or in-person, that's negotiable a lot of the time. The title is often negotiable, even if the internal title can't move.

Yeah.

You can, you can—

That's interesting.

Adjust the business card title. And that, that is the title that ends up on your resume. Paid time off is sometimes negotiable. I just had a candidate, our client, negotiate health insurance coverage.

Oh, wow.

With, you know, a small company. Most of the time that's not negotiable because it's—

Yeah, that's—

Program that applies to all employees.

Yeah.

In this particular case, they— he said, well, you know, I'm moving, like my current company pays most of the premium. You're not doing that. So we could solve that in a couple of ways. You could pay me more salary, or you could pay the premium on the health insurance. The company chose to pay the premium on the health insurance.

So you bring up a really good point that I want to bring up here that I don't want to— want it to go understated. Your, your candidate, you just said He gave context. I think context is your greatest negotiating power, right? So it's like, hey, I'm about to walk away from a $40,000 bonus to take this role. What can you guys do? Can we do a sign-on bonus? Or, hey, my company paid most of the premiums. Can we— and I think that eases negotiation. And makes it more of a conversation. So I, I really want to call that out here.

Yep. And if I could just add to that, what you just did was not adversarial at all. It was— this is what I meant by you don't have to be somebody aggressive in negotiation. What you just did was a collaboration invitation.

Absolutely.

Let— I have, I have a problem. I want to say yes to you, but I have an obstacle. Can you help me to address the obstacle? Here are a few ideas that I have. What ideas do you have? How can we, you know, and that is what I mean by, yeah, this is how you reduce your risk. And I mentioned the very first of this broadcast that 10% of people negotiate disastrously. This is something that those 10% of people do. They change their personality.

Yeah.

In the negotiation process, they become somebody different because that's what they think they have to be. Yeah, you know, they think that negotiating is a scary, high-risk game of chicken, and I'm gonna have to be this uber assertive, you know, person in the process. This hurts you at the negotiating table. And I'll tell you how it can even get your offer yanked. I've had multiple hiring managers in my career call me to say, hey, John, like, we interviewed Taylor, we really liked him, we thought he'd fit extremely well into our team and into our program. But now that we're talking about money, a different Taylor is showing up.

Yeah.

And now I'm not sure who the real Taylor is. And the fit that we thought we had is now in question. Yep. And that can spawn more interviews, or it can even say like, uh, just, I don't want to take the risk that I'm hiring a different person. And yeah, so let's— so good. You know, we're going to use this negotiation as the excuse to just withdraw the offer. Yeah.

Let me, let me ask you this as we kind of wrap up our time here again. Y'all please, uh, throw up some questions, um, and we'll get to them. Um, you know, John, I, I— one of the questions I get a lot is, the offer looks good, should I still negotiate?

Yeah, I'll tell you a story about this. So I had this happen to me, uh, a few, a few months ago. I had a client who is a chief operating officer level client. His total pay package was about $800,000 all in, right?

Yeah.

$300,000, $350,000 in salary, and the rest were incentives. That happens a lot at the executive level. And he'd been an unemployed executive for the last few months and working with me for some of that time. He called me up and he said, John, I got an offer finally. I'm so excited. I think I'm just gonna take it. And everyone on this call has probably been tempted to do that at some point because the alternative sounds awfully risky and you're not willing to do that. But I talked him out of it. I said, hold on, let's, let's circle the wagons and figure out our strategy. We landed on a low-risk engagement strategy with the CEO. How we were gonna ease into the discussion in a very safe way, and we discovered in that collaboration process that there was still $613,000 left on the table. The guy, if he had if he had said that to me, I'm just gonna take it, and if he had done that, which he would have done, he had no idea that there was that much money on the table.

It's crazy.

And most people— that's why I say most people don't realize how much money they're leaving on the table— is like a couple of low-end Ferraris or a nice house in some markets. If you're in California, it's like a garden shed. But, um, you know, you know what I mean? That's a lot of money. And interestingly enough, only about $40,000 of that was salary. The rest was other stuff that we got tossed into the package. Uh, there was a 6-figure addition to the equity package.

So how do you have— how do you have that conversation? And again, I, you know, I know we got 12 minutes here, but how do you have that conversation if the offer's good and you don't have any more Like giving, you know, kind of that context we told you about, hey, I'm stepping away from a $40,000 bonus or whatever. Like, let's say you don't have any of that. Like, how, how do you still finagle that without coming across as super greedy?

Well, that's a, that's a, that's a closely held secret that I revealed to my coaching clients. But, uh, yeah, there's, there are ways that you can do that. I think you don't necessarily have to appear greedy though. I can say this. During, during the interview process, when they're interviewing you, they're asking you a bunch of questions. And you need to try as a candidate to uncover the financial value of you in the, you know, in the interview process. So you need to uncover what their big problems are, what their big risks are, the things that you're going to be working on, the Big deliverables that you will have. And then you can ask a question similar to, well, what, what is the— what happens if that isn't on time? Or if that's delayed? Or if that's done imperfectly? Or something like that? You can draw them into a conversation of like, well, it's going to cost us a lot of money.

Yeah.

How much? How much money? And Let's let's say if they hire you, they're going to get you know that you're going to solve a five million dollar problem for them or help them to avoid a five million dollar expense. This helps in their mind. You've you've kind of set yourself up to this is the justification that they're going to write on that offer approval form. Like you've just given it to them, offering you an extra fifty thousand dollars to solve a $5 million problem is, you know, that's, that's what we do. We're, we're angling, we're, we're trying to bring value in.

Sure.

And you're going to remind them in this discussion that you're going to bring a lot. You're looking forward, you're excited about this opportunity because of the value that you're bringing, the impact that you'll make. You're reminding them of that equation and you're reminding them that maybe there are other people coming after you. Sure, if, if they can, that's great. If they can't, somebody else might take you. That tends to produce the best results.

I love it, I love it. All right, John, so, uh, and again, for those of you watching, thank you again. Uh, the chat has been, uh, off the charts, so thank you so much. Uh, so I have a rapid-fire round.

Okay.

So I want to ask you some rapid-fire as we kind of wrap up here. And again, thanks for everybody tuning in. Please go connect with John. Again, I will drop his link in the chat after the episode. But first off, what is one app, tool, software— could be AI, could be a mobile app on your phone— that you can't live without right now?

For me, that's ChatGPT. So I do a tremendous amount of writing and building out programs and strategic work. And I find that it is an absolute game changer. I went through an AI Black Belt program actually twice, and it has been incredibly valuable to learn this stuff. If you— if your hair is getting a little bit gray, you have to fight against ageism in the job search process, and it works sometimes. And so Part of that battle for you is going to be look at all the new tools all the time, make sure that you're on the cutting edge of what's happening in your environment, whether that's a new software language or a new application or something like that. Make sure you're always learning. And that is the proof that you're not what they think you might be if you have gray hair.

I love it, I love it. What's the very first— let me ask you this, let's go way back. What's the very first job you ever got paid to do?

Well, let's see, um, that would be picking strawberries when I was about 11 years old. Uh, right now you can't do that because of child labor laws, and it kind of breaks my heart a little bit. But growing up in Oregon, that was something that I could do. And you'd go out in the strawberry fields and fill a flat full of strawberries, and they'd have these little punch cards to show how many you got throughout the day. My mom would pack my lunch, I'd get on a bus, I'd come home with like strawberry stains all over my hands.

That's awesome.

That taught me at a young age though the relationship between work and money, and it was a really important thing for me. I love that. Um, so going back, still living in the young John age, what did you want to be originally when you Ah, my first remembrance of that is I wanted to be an astronaut, and I actually had a plan for that. So when I was in the 7th grade, I started asking, like, what is it— what do you have to do to become an astronaut? And I figured you'd probably need to be a Navy pilot because most astronauts are Navy pilots. And I started asking, like, well, what do you have to do to become a Navy pilot? Like, I was reverse engineering the path even at that age. Yeah.

So I love it, I love it. Um, let me ask you this. If, if I told you, uh, tomorrow that you could not do what you do for a living and you had to pursue a hobby for a living, what hobby would you pursue for a living?

Um, I think I'd do something in the not-for-profit world. Okay. Like, um, and I don't even want to say that you know, helping people or ministry or whatever is my hobby.

Sure.

But, um, it sort of is.

Sure.

I think I do. I would be doing something that helped people and probably in a Christian context because I am a Christian and, um, love, uh, I love doing that. I like edgy things like, you know, am I gonna have rescuing people from the sex trade or Um, yeah, something like that. And there are a lot of folks doing that work, and I want to join them in that. So that's what I love doing.

That's awesome. All right, last question for you, John, as we wrap up. The show's called Guidance Counselor 2.0 because we had guidance counselors in middle school, high school, and college, but now as adults, we don't necessarily have them to turn to. What would be your— if you can go back in time and tell young John something, what would be the biggest piece of career advice for young John?

Hmm, I think I would say entrepreneurism is safer than you think.

I love that.

And it's it's a viable alternative to the corporate world. You can you can do something on your own, and it took me a long time to start my first business. Looking back on my high school journals, I could see that I. wanted my own company even in a high, in high school level. But then I spent a long career on the corporate side. Now, in addition to Salary Coach, I do help people to launch a consulting business, which is a really cool new thing that I started doing a few months back. And I'm very excited about that work. Because it's a big leap. A lot of people don't want to take that leap because they're Afraid, but, uh, you've got a great path and a structured program to help people to do that. I love that. I love that.

All right, y'all. Well, that is it for today. Hopefully y'all, uh, got a lot of good info from it based off the chat. Uh, it, it is, uh, that is correct. John, do you want to plug, uh, where people can find you, how people can reach out, and also any, any books or any— just, just direct people somewhere?

Okay, great. So that book behind me on the bookshelf, Act Your Wage, is my book that outlines the entire Salary Coach method. It's available on Amazon. You can reach me at john@salary.coach. That's a direct email straight to me. So if anybody wants to introduce themselves, I would welcome that. LinkedIn is a great way also to connect with me and to follow. So I hope Since this is a networking opportunity, that the people here—I'll be flooded. I hope I'll be flooded with new LinkedIn connection requests. I produce periodic content on negotiation and starting your own business. So if that's of interest to you, follow me there. Connect with me. If anybody's thinking about a job change, it might be worth. a while to, um, connect with me privately.

Love it, love it. Awesome. John, stay on so I can say bye to you backstage. Y'all have a good one. Um, this is the only one, only Guidance Counselor 2.0 for the week, but we got 2 episodes next week coming at you on Tuesday and Wednesday. I have my dear friend Chris DeMars on next Tuesday and the great Aaron Francis, uh, on Wednesday of next week. So y'all have a good one. We'll see you in the Torque Discord, and, uh, y'all have a good Wednesday. Peace.