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Negotiating your salary in a lateral move

August 23, 2012 / Staff

Here are some interesting tips on how to gain maximum leverage in negotiating your salary when you are making a lateral move:

If you’re about to make a lateral move, you should list and monetize everything your employer has to pay for in order to secure your services. You may not have stock options, but you probably get a yearly bonus, vacation time, medical and dental benefits, life and disability insurance, free or low-cost parking, continuing education, professional fees and dues, subscriptions to professional journals, and the like.
To escape the strong anchor of your current salary, estimate how much each of those benefits would cost if you had to obtain them in the local market. The final number you calculate will be your “total compensation package.” That is the figure to use when your prospective employer asks you what you’re making now. And the term to use is “my total compensation package” or simply “my compensation.”
When you’re asking for more money than you’re currently making, you’ll also want to take a look at what you’re leaving behind. You might, for example, be giving up retirement benefits that haven’t yet vested, earned vacation, or a year-end performance bonus. You’ll want to ask your new employer to compensate you for the benefits you’ll be leaving at your old firm by making the transition to your new one. In Mayer’s case, that accounted for $14 million of her total compensation.

Read more about using that power and information to your advantage.

Your Career, Your Compensation

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Open-ended vacation policies

August 19, 2012 / Staff

The lines are blurring between work days and off days, along with workplace and home environments, as technology makes us more accessible. One trend emerging has to do with open-ended vacation policies.

Unlimited paid vacation is the new trend, as you encourage workers to be responsible and take the time off they need. This makes workers more productive. The idea is a Results-Only Work Environment. Not many companies are doing it, but it’s becoming popular in the tech field.

Your Business, Your Career, Your Team, Your Workplace

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The importance of focus for entrepreneurs

August 16, 2012 / Staff

Many of us are guilty of this. Instead of focusing on the execution of our most important initiatives, we keep coming up with new ideas. In some ways this is critical in the new economy, where everything moves very quickly. You have to be alert and opportunistic.

That said, there’s a real danger in spreading yourself too thin. You have to learn to focus on what’s important. This article explains the concept in the terms of domain names for Internet entrepreneurs. If you have over 300 domain names, maybe you’re brainstorming too much and not executing enough?

Your Business, Your Career

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How to get a job at Google

August 12, 2012 / Staff

The interview process at Google has become legendary, and many people are curious about what it takes to get a job there. William Poundstone explains the secret to getting through the interview process there. Here’s an example of one question:

What is the single hardest question they ask you when interviewing at Google?
“What number comes next in this sequence: 10, 9, 60, 90, 70, 66…?”
This question is hard because you either see the “trick” or you don’t. Nothing you learned in school is likely to help. Try spelling out the numbers—you’ll see that they are in order of the number of letters in the word. “Sixty-six” has eight letters, so the next number must have nine. One possible answer is “ninety-six.”

Poundstone goes on to explain what Google is looking for in interview answers and the type of people, extremely bright extroverts, that Google wants. Your thought process is just as important as your answer. Read the whole article and see if you might fit in.

Your Career

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Casino workers count on tips

July 29, 2012 / Staff

It used to be that you had to go to Las Vegas or Atlantic City to start a career as a poker or blackjack dealer, or to get other good casino jobs. But all of that has been changing for years as more and more states legalize casino gambling. While the patrons at all these new casinos learn the poker rules and rules for other casino games, they don’t always understand casino etiquette.

Most people understand the idea of tipping waitresses, so that’s not new in a casino setting. But unless you’ve been to places like Las Vegas, you might not understand that dealers also count on tips. So often the ideas of casino etiquette and tipping are not obvious to people frequenting these new gambling spots. For example, Cleveland recently added a casino, and the Cleveland paper then published an article about tipping workers in the casino.

Now, if you’re going to work as a dealer in a casino, you need to do your part. You don’t always have to be charming, and that’s difficult when you’re tired, but being generally nice to the customers will go a long way towards generating more tips. This may sound like common sense, but even in Vegas you’ll be shocked by how many dealers don’t seem to care. Of course dealers share tips, but it’s always good to carry your own weight. So be nice.