A man dying of thirst

When you are not physically starving, you have the luxury to realize psychic and emotional starvation. (Cherrie Moraga)

A man dying of thirst

Buzzards circle overhead. Struggling across the desert mile after mile, a hiring manager finally can walk no further. He starts to crawl. A candidate drives up in a jeep with 100 gallons of water. He offers the hiring manager a ride to a hotel and all the water he can drink if he'll split the cost of gas. The hiring manager says, "I'll only pay you for the water. You are going that direction anyway." The candidate shakes his head and drives off.

Everyone wants a bargain. It is just a fact of life that candidates want more money and hiring managers want to pay less. Your lifestyle is affected if you earn less. So is the lifestyle of the hiring manager. Managers are evaluated based on overhead. Even if they are rewarded on output, they want to cut overhead. It is their nature.

There is no magic chart that tells what you should be paid as an employee. I know one programmer who got a 40% raise when he finally realized he was worth more. He went to his manager and said, "Everyone else on my team is earning $50,000 per year. I'm better than most. Why am I earning so little?" What bothers me the most is that the manager and the employee felt good about the raise. How about a bonus to make up for the previous years?

Even if you are the only person in the country who can save his company, the owner is going to look for a bargain. They just do. In the same vein, you will want a raise immediately after finishing training the company pays for. For some reason, a man dying of thirst still wants a bargain on a bottle of water. That's why you have to be worth 10 times as much to be paid 2 or 3 times as much. (That was yesterday's lesson.)

Something To Do Today

Think about your job search. Just think. And then take notes about your conclusions.

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For 2 weeks: Zen and the art of getting a job

Tomorrow: Perception really is everything

Later: Character counts

Diamonds in the rough

Cleat marks up your back

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My job journal blog is www.reallygreatjob.com . What I am working on.

My newsletter blog is www.howtoreallygetagreatjob.com/blog/

Archived articles are available at http://www.getresponse.com/archive/dailyjobhunter

Thank you for joining my (usually) daily job search newsletter. It will have an attitude and ideas to help you in your job search every day. I'll tell you things I have learned in over a decade of Connecting the Best People, With the Best Companies. Feel free to send it off unchanged to anyone you would like. Or send them the link they need to start receiving their own copy: All they have to do is go to www.agicc.com/lists.htm .

Copyright 2005 by Bryan Dilts. "How to REALLY get a GREAT JOB" and "REALLY get a GREAT" are trademarks of Bryan Dilts. Connecting the Best People, With the Best Companies is a trademark of AGI. All rights reserved.

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Message Added: November 28th, 2007 at 5:21 am