Seven Basic Salary Negotiation Tips

Money is the most sensitive issue in the whole hiring process. Discussing the compensation often causes anxiety on both employee and employer. Here are seven ways to make the process of salary negotiating efficient… 

1) Research: Before the interview process begins, contact the professional organization that represents your field of career. As soon as they provide you with your salary information, you can now examine your monthly cash requirements. Remember that once your taxes are added to your paycheck, approximately 30% of your gross monthly salary 

is deducted. 

2) Determine your skills: You should understand that different segments of the economy require a variety of skills depending on the industry setting. Once you have established what your skills are and what they are worth to the current employment market, you would know the limitations of your negotiation. 

Salary range information is available at American Almanac of Jobs and Salaries, National Association of College and Employers, Career Center, and professionals in your related field.

In stating your salary range, avoid basing your desired salary on your current salary. Always tell the truth when it comes to your past salary. It is acceptable to extend a range to approximately $6,000 to show that you are within the company's price range but interested in more compensation. 

3) Weigh the company's compensation package: To determine your fair market value for a specific job, you should consider the economic, geographic, and industry factors of the job offer. Weigh the benefits of compensation and promotions, insurance, allowed time off and retirement settlements of the offer to ensure a fair proposed salary. 

4) Sell yourself: If you know what you could offer the company requires a larger income, never say it directly. Once you sell yourself discreetly, the interviewer would understand that the proposed salary is not appropriate for your background. 

5) Have a positive attitude: In negotiating, never compete. Negotiation is basically a process which could benefit both parties. Understand your needs and those of the company. 

6) The final offer: Be aware when the negotiation is done. Pushing further when a deal has been set could give a negative first impression on your part. 

7) Show what you are made of: The interview is only the first step in having an enhanced compensation. Once you are hired, offer your skills to the company and prove your worth by doing quality work. You may even get a promotion for doing so. 

Based from a survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, four out of five employees are willing to negotiate compensation. Understanding these basic tips will allow you to enhance the terms of your new job.

Employment Job Searching Using the Internet

Finding employment opportunities has never been easier than now- with the consistent and constant growth of the Internet. Using the Internet, job seekers can simply find vacancies of their choice in the location of their choice. With a simple click of the mouse, a huge list of job opportunities is literally at their fingertips…

Once upon a time, the only way job seekers can find jobs is by browsing the classifieds section of the paper. This method of job seeking is not only tiring (what with the small prints) but it is limited within the area where the job seeker is residing. Job seekers who wish to find employment outside of their state or county will have to get their hands on classifieds of the state itself. Although this is not an entirely tough thing to do, but at the end of the day, you would have to sort through a huge stack of newspapers just to find the job that you want!

One of the most amazing things about finding employment on the Internet is that job seekers can sign up a membership account. Membership accounts are usually free, but with the free job seeker account, the options are limited. With a paid job seeker accounts, you’ll have more freedom and can place more information and details into your portfolio. However, millions upon millions of people have successfully found their dream jobs by using the free membership accounts offered by these employment agencies.

With an account with the employment website, the job seeker can place their personal information, contact details, education history and history of employment directly into the website’s database. Some employment websites even allow job seekers to place their recent photos into the database, which is useful to the employer, for verification purposes. With the entire resume placed in the database of the employment website, the job seeker searches through the database of vacancies in the website. A simple search can be done through the employment website’s search engine. You can fine tune the search by category, location, country, area of expertise, job type, and more. Interested job applicants with their resumes in the database will only have to log into their employment account, click apply, and the resume will be automatically sent to the potential employer.

Compare this with the way things were done about a decade or more ago; in order to apply for a job, you have to type a whole cover letter individually, print out your resume and send it by post. Although this task is not very hard to do, but it limits the choices of the job seeker down; and the process is slow, if the application actually reaches the employer or not. The postal industry did not have such a smashing record at that time.

As you can see, finding employment on the Internet is not only free, it’s extremely convenient. On top of that, you can search, browse and apply any time you want, irregardless of whether it’s office hours or not! 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – the employment website is available to every single one of their job seeker members.

By Dakota Caudilla

Are Your References Keeping You From Getting Hired?

You make it through the final interview with flying colors. The hiring manager all but offers you the job, but needs a few days to check references and complete paperwork before making you an offer. Then, silence. You never hear from him again….

If this scenario sounds familiar, you might have a bad reference on your resume.

Most people assume that former employers won't give a negative report when potential employers call for a reference. But that isn't necessarily true. Even though corporate guidelines may state that only your employment dates and position titles can be confirmed, it is not necessarily illegal for a reference to give negative commentary about a former employee, says Jeff Shane, a spokesperson for Allison & Taylor, Inc., a professional reference checking and employment verification firm.

"References can, and very frequently do, offer considerably more commentary to your prospective employer than simply verifying your employment dates and title," Shane says. "As a result, many job-seeking candidates who expected a favorable, or at least neutral, assessment from their references unknowingly lose out on employment opportunities that are torpedoed as a result of a negative reference."

If you fear that a former supervisor may be "torpedoing" your chances for a new job, you have a few options:

·         Pursue Legal Action. Not all negative input is unlawful. It is illegal if it involves discrimination, defamation, retaliation, disparagement or sexual harassment, Shane says. It's unlikely that you'll ever know what specific negative feedback a reference gave - because a prospective employer will rarely share the negative reference with a job candidate for their own legal protection. But if a third party can document that a reference gave communication that was wrongful, inaccurate, malicious or illegal, you may have legal recourse. Talk to an attorney about the possibilities.

·         Send a Cease and Desist Letter. If a reference's negative input is not unlawful, but is restricting your ability to get a job, you can typically address the situation by sending a cease and desist letter. This letter must be issued by your attorney to the senior management of the company where the negative reference originated, and the letter is designed to alert management of the negative reference's identity and actions. "Typically, the very act of offering a negative reference is against corporate guidelines, which normally state that only a former employee's title and dates of employment can be confirmed," Shane says. When a cease and desist letter is received, the negative reference will be "cautioned by management not to offer additional comments and, out of self-interest, is unlikely to offer negative commentary again," Shane says.

·         Find out the Truth. If you don't know whether or not a negative reference is impeding your job search, consider hiring a third-party reference checking firm. Such a firm can interview your references and document everything they say for your review. According to Shane, approximately 50 percent of all reference checks conducted by Allison & Taylor uncover negative input from the reference. And the report provided by a reference checking firm can be used for legal action or to develop a cease and desist letter.

By glassdoor.com

4 Internet Job Search Mistakes to Avoid

The Internet is easily the world's most powerful employment tool. With the Web, you can access millions of job openings on thousands of sites. With email, you can quickly contact employers and ask for interviews…

Yet, if used incorrectly, the Internet can actually prevent you from being as productive as possible in your search for work.

How? Why?

Here are four mistakes that commonly befall job seekers using the Internet. Avoid them, and get hired faster.

1. Don't Email Your Resume Wrong

I've written before on how to create a text version of your resume for emailing to employers. Because not everybody has Word or WordPerfect, the only way to be sure employers can read your resume is to email them a version in plain old ASCII text.

Make sure the resume you email looks good upon arrival, with no funny line breaks or garbage in the text. How? Use yourself and at least two friends as guinea pigs.

It's easy. Practice formatting and emailing your resume to yourself and others. Open the email. How does your resume look? Good? Good. Garbage? Reformat and repeat until your resume goes through cleanly every time.

2. Don't Forget The Email Cover Letter

When emailing your resume to employers, don't dash off email cover letter as an afterthought or, worse, fail to include one. Treat email as you would postal mail -- always email a solid cover letter with your resume.

Your cover letter has many functions. Chief among them are telling the reader what job you're applying for, where you learned of the job, and your specific qualifications for doing it.

And don't get sloppy with tone or punctuation in email cover letters. You're not banging out an instant text message to buddies. You're writing a letter to the person you want to work for. There's a difference.

3. Don't Be Passive

It's easy to sit back and wait for postings to appear on the big job sites. But if you confine yourself to this passive technique, you're missing out.

That's because most jobs are filled by employers before they're ever advertised online or in the newspaper. By some accounts, this figure is as high as 80%. So it pays to be proactive -- use the Internet to get into the heads of hiring managers before they pay for a job posting online.

An easy way to do this is to use a networking Web site, such as Linkedin.com or Ryze.com. At Linkedin.com, for example, you can search profiles of 1,214,000 registered users (as of this writing) to find people who went to your school, have the same hobbies, live near you, etc. You can also find out where these people work -- and this is critical.

Because, once you find and contact someone who shares an affinity with you, and works in the company or industry you want to work in, you can make valuable connections that lead to interviews and job offers.

Tip: never approach networking as a one-way street. You become road-kill and get ignored that way. Instead, give back to the people you meet, online or off, before expecting them to favor you with job leads. You must prime the pump before you get anything out.

4. Don't Forget Who Really Hires

Throughout history, there is no record of any person ever being hired by a computer. It's people who hire people. Yet, some folks spend days or weeks searching for jobs online without ever meeting a hiring authority face to face.

This is a mistake that happens when you confuse process with results.

Using the Internet to find a job is a process. The results you want are a job. At some point, you have to get off the Internet, get off your duff, and go shake hands with live humans. Never lose sight of this.

That's what it all boils down to, doesn't it? To get hired, you have to meet and impress a living, breathing employer.

Go do it!

 by Kevin Donlin

The Top Eight Reasons to Get a Seasonal Job

Some people are forced into seasonal jobs , mostly because they need the money.  The rest of us like to enjoy our holidays in a turkey-casserole-pies-sweet potato-stuffing-gravy coma parked somewhere between the warm sofa cushion and your favorite afghan handmade by your grandmother circa 1976. Wait! Before you get started on your thirteenth leftover sandwich, maybe you should give a seasonal job some thought…

  Here are eight reasons why a seasonal job might be a good idea (we aren't including the fact that it will burn off those holiday dinner calories).

1. Make money for the holidays. Whether you already have a full-time job and you want to work part-time to supplement your income, or you just need extra money for gifts, you’ll definitely have more green in your wallet after your first paycheck of the season.
2. Flexible scheduling. Are you a student on winter break? A parent who has to watch your kids now that school is out? Holiday jobs offer a variety of scheduling options, and because stores and restaurants are open later, there’s bound to be a shift that fits your needs.
3. Get a great discount. Don’t want to wait until Christmas Day to wear that sweater you’ve had your eye on all season? Many companies offer their workers employee discounts on merchandise, even if they’re only on the staff for the holidays. So you can get gifts for everyone on your list—including yourself—at cheaper prices.
4. Learn a lot in a few weeks. Though holiday jobs can start anytime in October, November or December, most are over sometime in January, making seasonal employment a great way to test the skills you already have, as well as pick up some new ones to use in your next job search.
5. Find your next job. A seasonal job is a great opportunity to get your foot in the door and make a good impression, which can turn into part-time or full-time work after the holidays. Some employers ask superstar seasonal workers to remain on the staff once the holidays are over, so if you do your best, you could have a spring and summer job as well.
6. Test drive a new job. A part-time jobduring the holidays allows you to try out a job you're interested in to decide whether or not it's really right for you. Whether you end up loving or hating it, your pockets will be fuller either way.
7. Make new friends. Most businesses are fully staffed during the busy winter months, so you'll have plenty of opportunities to meet new people and bond with coworkers. Suggest a company Secret Santa drawing and you could even get yourself an extra gift.
8. Get a reference for your next job search. When the hustle and bustle of the holidays is over, ask your boss if he or she would be a reference for you when it comes time to search for summer jobs.

Browse our seasonal job listings now!