You got the secretive phone call. You met the head-hunter in a discreet pub or café. You jumped through the hoops, passed the tests and sailed through the interviews.

Now there’s only one step before you make the jump: negotiating the right deal.

Because you’ve been headhunted, the negotiation is slightly different from when you answer an advertisement or otherwise find your way to a new job.

People asked you to come and work for them. They paid an expensive head-hunter to find you, woo you and tempt you into taking their approach seriously.

Face it, they aren’t going to go to all that trouble and then lose out on winning your skills because of a few dollars here and there.

Negotiating a deal

If negotiating a deal is like a game of poker – and there are similarities – then you’ve been dealt a decent hand. But as any card player will tell you, the cards you are holding are only part of the game. You still need to keep your wits about you.

Most people understandably reduce an employer’s entire offer to its cash equivalent when evaluating salary offers. This makes a lot of sense and I’m not going to disagree with the general principal.

However, it is worth paying close attention to working conditions while in negotiation.

For example, if you don’t like overseas travel – maybe you have a young family – make sure there’s written agreement on the amount of required overseas travel.

Likewise this is a good moment to ensure you have adequate support staff, the right working environment, a budget that covers your expected expenses and so on.

Hours and leave

This is the best time to talk about working hours and annual leave entitlement. Once you sign it’s too late.

It’s usual for today’s employers to talk rather vaguely about you technically being paid for a working week of so many hours, but being prepared to actually work as many hours as it takes to complete the various tasks that are assigned to you. This is fine up to a point, but if your employer is effectively asking you to commit to unlimited hours, it is not unreasonable to put some qualifications. For example you might ask that you never have to work on Sunday because you’re an active member of your local church.

Annual leave is a sticky issue. You’re entitled to a certain amount of leave by law. In practice the amount of leave your employer will permit you to take will probably be considerably less than your legal entitlement and will almost certainly be less than the amount nominated in your contract. These days most people get a handsome payout for unclaimed holiday pay when they leave a job. The money can be nice, but time to unwind can be better.

A long time ago I worked with someone who quickly climbed through the ranks of a sizable organisation. Each time he was promoted he negotiated a deal that increased his annual leave – in many cases he traded leave entitlement for pay.

The result was he reached a level where he was entitled to 10 weeks leave a year. This might not be possible today, but the principal is good. For most of us cash-rich, time-poor knowledge workers annual leave is a luxury.

In my opinion it is a good idea to actually specify some leave dates when negotiating initial terms and conditions before joining a new company. Try and get them written into an agreement. If you’ve been headhunted the employer will almost certainly agree to this as it seems a cheap way to complete a deal. Even if you haven’t been headhunted, the salary negotiation is your best opportunity to fix this.

Get professional tax advice

It might pay to get some professional advice about the salary component of any deal. The big trap people fall into when head-hunted, is to overlook the tax considerations of any extra salary. Unless you’ve been hired by a US company to work in the states, you will almost certainly already be on the highest rate of income tax.

This means that looks like a 20 percent pay rise on paper might actually be as little as a 10 percent increase in take home pay. In many cases it is possible to negotiate terms that minimise the tax impact.

Finally, there’s a little twist to negotiating salary when you are headhunted. In many cases the head-hunting recruitment process is one long whirl and very flattering. It’s possible to have your head turned by the process – you may laugh, but many headhunted executives end up with poor deals because they have been charmed or otherwise wooed into accepting far less than their new employer is prepared to play.

It doesn’t help that these processes tend to proceed at a breakneck pace. The usual rule of salary negotiation is to do plenty of homework and benchmark your salary against industry norms – if the employer is in a hurry there may not be time to do this properly.

If possible try to slow the process down. Don’t make it look as if you are dragging your feet, but buy yourself some time to do the research. A few days shouldn’t make any difference to your new employer, but they can make a big difference to you.

By Bill Bennett

You aren’t likely to get head-hunted unless you are already near the top of the career tree. In Australia, real head-hunters don’t tend to look for people to fill positions paying much less than $150k because there’s scant reward for the effort involved.

Some work on a commission basis, taking a percentage of the recruit’s first year’s salary. Others get a fixed fee. Either way head-hunters are expensive from an employer’s point of view and can only be justified for senior appointments. Of course, the salary threshold will differ in other countries.

There are exceptions to the salary rule. Head-hunters are occasionally asked to fill particularly hard to-fill-vacancies in specialised niches and occasionally an organisation hires a professional head-hunter to woo a specific person – possibly from a rival company.

How head-hunters work

A head-hunter’s operating style makes a huge difference to the way you should deal with them. As a rule fixed fee head-hunters receive a payment whether the candidates they find are hired or not. Typically these head-hunters are only interested in recruiting for the very top jobs.

Once they have a curriculum vitae they are unlikely to punt it around the industry if they fail to fill the original vacancy. While they may keep it on file and use it later if a similar position comes up later, they probably won’t do this without first getting permission.

It’s not always true, but the head-hunters operating on a commission basis tend to work for a number of clients at the same time. Typically they’ll operate at a slightly lower level. The often build databases of potential candidates: be warned once you are ‘in play’ they might hound you until they find you a new job.

If people understand a head-hunter earns commission they often fall into the trap of assuming this means the head-hunter has a vested interest in negotiating a high salary. In practice they can maximise their income by turning over more business than by squeezing an employer for a few thousand dollars here or there.

So, while they are happy to see you get more dollars, don’t push your luck in negotiations. If anything they are keener to close the deal than win more money.

Interview coaching

Some commission head-hunters will coach you before an interview. They’ll do whatever they can to help you secure the job. At times you may feel like you are being pushed – maybe because you are being pushed.

It’s not unusual for rival commission head-hunters – even from within the same recruitment organisation – to have candidates in line for a single job. While you’ll get a lot of push from these guys, you probably won’t get a huge amount of attention, that’s because they have so many irons in the fire. And, although it might look like you have a job in the bag, you might be only one of many candidates.

Fixed fee head-hunters will spend a lot of time with you. They probably won’t coach you, but they will help with negotiations and finding information. You can expect to get lots of feedback about how the process is progressing. By the time you are in front of a company, you’ll be one of only two or three short-listed candidates – the job isn’t yours yet, but you will almost certainly be a good fit for the job, much of the remaining work is determining if you are the best fit for that employer.

Negotiating position

Another dangerous assumption is that a call from a head-hunter puts you in a strong negotiating position. After all, in theory it’s easier to extract better salary, terms and conditions when someone else is doing the asking.

To some extent this is true, but don’t get carried away, head hunters spend their working lives recruiting people, you only change jobs once in a blue moon. You certainly have some negotiating leverage, but remember you’re up against professionals and they will have seen all this before. What’s more, their clients are the employers, not the candidates.

If they have done their homework properly the prospective employer will already have a very definite idea of your worth to their business. They are prepared to negotiate and may even go past their expected limits, however, you should remind yourself that they probably have other candidates in the pipeline too.

Despite this, a call from a head-hunter is an excellent way to boost your salary or job. After all, if they want to tempt you away from your current position, they are going to need to offer something attractive.

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Computerworld Australia reports IT job advertisements continued their slide in May, which is bad news for tech-oriented knowledge workers. Overall job ads fell by 4 percent in May and 52 percent for the 12 month period ending in May. The number of IT job ads fell 58 percent over the 12 months. The numbers are taken from Olivier job index

The good news is the decline is is slowing down and part-time and contract positions were up during the month.

via IT jobs slump 5% in May: Olivier – Computerworld.

On Wednesday Paul Smith wrote Job seekers are frozen out of market for the Information page in The Australian Financial Review.

Smith says almost half of Australian organisations have imposed a freeze on hiring information technology workers. He also said more than a quarter of IT employers have laid off staff this year.

The story is based on research by Hudson, a specialist recruitment agency which says the financial and professional service sectors have been hardest hit and the situation is most difficult in Western Australian.

In the earlier post Economy at risk as IT graduate numbers fall? I pointed out the weirdness of a story speculating about the shortage of computer science graduates triggering the collapse of New Zealand’s entire economic infrastructure at a time when US employers are sacking large numbers of IT workers.

It appears there could be a fresh supply of willing recruits closer to hand. In today’s Australia IT, Jennifer Foreshew writes:

The economic downturn has prompted jittery employers to force IT staff to take leave over the holiday season following a widespread slowdown in activity.

What’s more, she continues: “The moves come as the IT employment sector experiences a big slump, with job vacancies down as much as 30 percent compared with 12 months ago.”

Contrast that with this paragraph from the New Zealand Herald story which, presumably, is attributed to John Hosking who is a professor of computer science at the University of Auckland:

Parents often had a strong influence over their children’s career selection, and following the dot-com crash there was a perception that IT was not a solid career choice.

Which just goes to show. Mummy and daddy often do know best.

It’s a cliché to say half of today’s job titles didn’t exist a generation ago. But there is some truth in the statement. About one quarter of advertised job titles only appeared in the last decade or so.

We’re not just talking about those dumb name changes where say, a cleaner becomes ‘hygiene facilitation operative’. Nor are we talking about BS job titles, (while we’re on the subject can you believe this bloke is serious?)

Thanks to the rise of the knowledge economy, the nature of work is morphing at warp speed to embrace new skills, services and functions as well as new combinations of more established skills. To illustrate this phenomenon I’ve selected ten job titles that came into fashion in the last twenty years but already seem to be disappearing.

Web Master: In the early days of the Internet, the web master was a jack (or jill) of all trades, keeping the system running, maintaining data communications channels, designing pages, writing text, taking pictures and answering email feedback.

Today the nearest equivalent role tends to have a broad range of definitions, but they all involve responsibility for running and developing web operations. The job may involve managing content, but more often a new breed of specialist handles this.

Content Producer: It didn’t take web career paths long to bifurcate. While the web master did everything, the content producer concentrated on words and pictures. This mainly involved writing and commissioning editorial, but it also included responsibility for finding pictures and other artwork as well as overseeing page designs. For a while the content producer was to web media what an editor is to a newspaper.

Evangelist: Apple Computer started employing evangelists in the mid-1980s as a way of rallying the faithful and keeping waiverers on board during the competitive onslaught from Microsoft and Intel-based products. Their job was to ‘spread the good news’ by communicating with specialist communities such as designers, developers and other interest groups. Today a wide number of companies still employ people with this job title but it seems on its way out. In some respects evangelism is similar to public relations, but it tends to work more on a one-to-one basis and there’s often an educative element involved. Some companies employ Advocates to do similar work.

Web Cam Performer: Ok, this one is a rather small niche, but for a short time before and after the dotcom boom there were people who earn a crust by living their lives in front of a web cam. In many cases it’s just a thinly veiled form of pornography, but some  were genuine artists. You don’t see them around any more though.

Outsourcing Consultant: The rise of virtual corporations brought in its wake a new class of management consultancy which specialised in brokering outsourcing arrangements and getting such deals to work. The job required a mixture of business, legal, financial and technical skills. You needed to be good with people and patient. Today outsourcing is mature (some would argue it is in decline) and there’s less need for specialists to broker deals.

Business Coach: Think of these as being like personal trainers, only instead of making people fit, they knock companies into shape. In many cases they bring in skills that a business operator lacks, particularly in a lean, mean new era virtual business where there aren’t too many bodies. Business coaches were extremely visible in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but they’re not so common today. My guess is this career has morphed into something else – but I don’t know what. Leave a comment if you know where they all went.

Professional Surfers: Keeping search engines and portal sites up-to-date required a huge investment in time and money. Some of that investment was spent hiring people who working lives involved checking and rechecking information on web sites. It didn’t tend to be a high-paying job, but given that many people spend their whole working day browsing web pages anyway, it was popular for a while.

Chief Knowledge Officer: sitting at the top of the knowledge worker tree was a special breed of key executives who planned and implemented knowledge winning strategies for large corporations. Salaries tended to be upwards of $250k. In some cases the term was synonymous with Chief Information Office (CIO) but more generally there was a difference, while CIOs are often technical and have to worry about technology issues, CKOs tended to have a more philosophical bent and are more worried about ‘why’ and ‘what’ than about ‘how’. I haven’t seen this job title in ages. Does that mean companies no longer need knowledge?

Piracy Specialists: Working on the principal of ‘silver lining in every cloud’ a whole range of jobs briefly emerged to deal with various on-line nasties. Among them were Disaster recovery specialists who cleared up the mess after virus and hacking attacks. Elsewhere piracy specialists are hired by companies like Microsoft to hunt down and deal with people who illegally sell software. More recently piracy specialists have found work for record companies and film studios worried about illegal on-line distribution. In recent years these roles have all been wrapped into more general security positions.

Even at the best of times older knowledge workers can struggle to find a decent job. Employers view younger workers as cheaper and, with something still to prove, think they more likely to work hard.

Then there’s the currently fashionable ‘digital natives’ concept. It says the people who grew up with the Internet make better use of technology than the generation who designed it.

All of these ideas can and should be challenged. We’ll leave that for another time. In the meantime here are some practical steps older knowledge workers can take to get a new job:

Show where you add value

As a rule of thumb, older workers are paid more than youngsters because they have more experience and skills. Bosses may suspect those youngsters have more of the right kind of skills. Your mission is to show otherwise. Make sure your CV or resume lists up-to-date skills and shows at least a comprehension of modern technologies.

For example, if you’re a programmer ditch all the references to Cobol in favour of something more current. Demonstrate your practical understanding of Web 2.0 and social media. If you haven’t done so already create a Linkedin profile and point to it from your CV. By all means print copies of your CV if that’s what recruiters ask for, but have electronic versions and embed links to your Linkedin profile and other relevant sites.

It’s too late to start a blog if you’re looking for a job write now, but getting one up and running today might help in six months time. Make sure it’s about something useful and doesn’t read like the rantings of a grumpy old man or woman.

Crank up your personal network
Face it. We’re not all born sales critters. If walking into a function and handing out scores of business cards makes you feel like an Amway tout, then don’t do it. People will smell the desperation and unease.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t shake the contact tree. Over the years you will have worked with hundreds of other people who will know your strengths and talents. Some of these will have made through to the higher echelon. Others will be involved in hiring or can refer your name to people who are hiring. If it helps, don’t view it as networking, think of it as renewing old friendships. Get in touch, find out if they know of openings for your proven skills.

Use professional recruiters
You should at least let the professional recruiters know you are on the market. Many of them are particularly good at finding work for more experienced and highly skilled individuals. They can do a good job of selling you to employers and provide useful tips once you have an interview set up.

Some employers want grey hair
I was still in my 30s and dark haired at the peak of the dotcom boom when I picked up a consulting job. At the time the person hiring me said “we need some grey hairs on board”. His rationale was that having some mature people who understood his business would play well with customers and investors. This is still often the case – there are employers who want mature workers.

Prepare for a long haul
Sorry, there’s no sugar coating this pill. It takes older workers longer to find new jobs than younger workers. So be prepared for the long haul. And remember, it just takes longer that’s not the same as saying it doesn’t happen.

Get started straight away
Following on from the previous point, it will take older workers longer to find a new job so don’t hang around. Get organised the moment you hear talk of redundancies or lay-offs. Do not spend weeks having a well-earned rest, you may have an opportunity to do this before starting in your new role.

Target employers where the management is older
My teenage daughters think people in their late twenties are ‘old’. People in their 20s and 30s think people in their late 40s are old. Younger managers are far less likely to hire people they consider to be old. Older managers will understand your worth and will consider your age to be a good cultural fit.

See also:
Grey-haired knowledge workers get the short straw

Job-finding tips for older knowledge workers

According to ARN, the newspaper for the Australian technology channel, that country’s  IT recruitment is largely unaffected by the economic climate.

The story says 69 percent of employers are not affected by the downturn. Anecdotally things seem to be the same in New Zealand. If anyone knows of any hard data please get in touch.