Photo by Dex Ezekiel on Unsplash
As we approach the end of 2021, how are you set salary-wise?
Do you have resources that you pull from or use when negotiating compensation for yourself or others?
When you’ve been in the recruiting game long enough you start to field more and more compensation questions. Some of these come from candidates and some from companies trying to accurately price the market. “What is an accurate salary range for a Senior Product Engineer living in Albuquerque with six years of experience?” “How would you recommend crafting our commission structure for this Regional Sales Manager?” “We’d like to provide a fair equity allotment for this incoming COO, do you have a ballpark number of shares we should dole out?”
Certain companies attempt to provide these answers as their core business offering. At Hunter Crown, we are more than happy to have these conversations but with one caveat. We will always gather as much information as we can from candidates, companies, and the market. We will always let you know that although our aim is to be as accurate as possible, we can never be 100% sure that these figures won’t fluctuate. There is no definitive playbook for this sort of thing. Glassdoor may act as a reference for a Software Engineer II at Google, but in the water/wastewater industry, salary figures are much less structured.
The best way for us to accurately quantify salary figures is to know exactly where the candidate is right now and where folks are compensation-wise at that same level in the organization. As a candidate, realize that a company is only going to pay you what they are going to pay you. In addition, it’s hard to justify moving positions if there isn’t an economic advantage for the candidate. As a company, candidates are only going to move if the stars align and only one of those stars (albeit a very bright and shiny one) is compensation. Sure, maybe there is more growth potential in the new role. Maybe the candidate’s current company is stagnant or even going in the wrong direction, or maybe layoffs are on the horizon. There are individual cases that differ in every situation.
More base salary? Less base salary and more variable compensation? Guaranteed commissions? Signing bonuses? Relocation assistance? Uncapped variable compensation? Cash now is always more valuable than cash later, right? Alignment in the mission between employer and employee is key. Does it make more sense to take more cash away from the business now or bet on growth and “real money” via equity down the line?
Much like in life, there is no one way of doing things. That basically sums up the salary playbook...there isn’t one. However, we love having these conversations with clients and candidates and we do believe we can provide value in these discussions thanks to our decades-long experience in recruiting.
But like in any other aspect of our work, we’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback on this: How are we doing with our information related to compensation?
Written by: Rob Scherer, Vice President at Hunter Crown, LLC
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