No B. S. Hiring Advice: Your Best Salary Negotiation Strategy

In this video, Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter points out what he believes is your best strategy for negotiating salary,

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A friend emailed an article from www.law.com to me that I thought was interesting.

In In re Rodriguez, No. 06-1988, --F.3d--, 2007 WL 1827284 (6th Cir. June 27, 2007), the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a summary judgment award in favor of employer, FedEx Freight East, Inc., which allegedly denied an employee a promotion due to the employee's accent and speech characteristics. The appellate court concluded that the employee had provided direct evidence in support of his national origin discrimination claim.

The employee was not selected for a supervisory position he sought. A manager allegedly told Rodriguez that he would have hired Rodriguez but for the supervisor’s stated concern that Rodriguez's accent and speech pattern would adversely impact Rodriguez's ability to rise through the customer ranks.

Another FedEx manager allegedly told Rodriguez that his supervisor said he did not promote Rodriguez because of Rodriguez's accent and "how he speaks."

lower court granted summary judgment to FedEx on Rodriguez's race discrimination claim (which the 6th Circuit later reclassified as a national origin discrimination claim) over the promotion denial.

As the lower court viewed the statements about Rodriquez's accent and speech, the court decided that the employee must establish that he was a member of a protected class, that he was qualified for the position applied for, that he was denied the position and that similarly situated employees who were not members of the protected class were treated more favorably to state a prima facie case of discrimination. The burden then shifts to the employer to articulate a legitimate nondiscriminatory reason for its actions. The burden then shifts back to the employee to demonstrate that the employer's proffered reason was a pretext for discrimination. Applying that standard, the district court found that Rodriguez had failed to establish a prima facie case because Rodriguez did not establish that he was qualified for the promotion or that he was treated differently than a similarly situated non-Hispanic employee.

On appeal, the 6th Circuit reversed the lower court’s decision in favor of grant of FedEx on Rodriquez's promotion claim. The 6th Circuit concluded that the district court erroneously treated the negative statements about Rodriquez's accent and speech pattern as circumstantial evidence of discrimination and improperly analyzed the evidence under the McDonnell Douglas burden-shifting framework.

Rather, the appeals court concluded that such statements were direct evidence of discrimination. Direct evidence of discrimination is "evidence, which, if believed, requires the conclusion that unlawful discrimination was at least a motivating factor in the employer's actions." Jacklyn v. Schering-Plough Healthcare Products Sales Corp., 176 F.3d 921, 926 (6th Cir. 1999). Once a plaintiff provides direct evidence of discrimination, the employer has the burden of showing that "it would have terminated the plaintiff's employment had it not been motivated by discrimination."

The appeals court concluded that the comments showed that a FedEx decision maker denied Rodriquez the position because of his accent and English language skills. The court noted that "accent and national origin are inextricably intertwined." The court also noted that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulations recognize "linguistic discrimination as national origin discrimination."

It is not a huge leap to see how this case could be applied to hiring and show how a person rejected because of an accent has been discriminated against.

Jeff Altman
The Big Game Hunter
Concepts in Staffing
thebiggamehunter@cisny.com

© 2007 all rights reserved.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter, is Managing Director with Concepts in Staffing, a New York search firm, He has successfully assisted many corporations identify management leaders and staff in many disciplines since 1971. He is a certified leader of the ManKind Project, a not for profit organization that assists men with life issues, and a practicing psychotherapist.

To receive a daily digest of positions emailed to you, search for openings that The Big Game Hunter is working on, to use Jeff’s free job lead search engine, Job Search Universe, to subscribe to Jeff’s free job hunting ezine, “Head Hunt Your Next Job, or his staffing ezine, “Natural Selection”, or to learn about his VIP program, go to www.jeffaltman.com. Job Search Universe is also available at www.jobsearchuniverse.com To add your firm’s career page to “The Universe” email the url to jobsearchuniverse@gmail.com.

If you would like Jeff and his firm to assist you with hiring staff, or if you would like help with a strategic job change, send an email to him at thebiggamehunter@cisny.com (If you’re looking for a new position, include your resume).

If you have a question that you would like me to answer pertaining to job hunting or hiring, email it to me at:
thebiggamehunter@gmail.com

6 Reminders When Hiring

Having worked closely with managers and business owners for many years, I have seen their hiring process fall on its face because they have forgotten several important rules. Forgetting any of these principles may bog you down, slow down your hiring process and ultimately foster the new hire failing even if you stumble into the “right” person.

1. Don't expect to hire a replica of yourself! You are not the “be all and end all’ of great talent and, as such, don’t expect to hire a clone. First of all, one factor to consider when hiring may be to hire someone who complements your skills and talents rather than replicates them.

If you are looking at junior staff, you may accidentally place an angelic halo around someone because their experience or behaviors may remind you of yourself and, by doing so, may fail to adequately investigate their experience.

Lastly, by doing so, you may foster an environment where you fail to adequately interview and hire people from racial, ethnic, religious and other backgrounds and experiences far different than your own that may foster “lock step thinking” and behavior and, obviously, bias.

2. Know exactly what you expect from your new hire. It may seem obvious in an era where job specs are approved at many levels before a person is actually hired but, again from experience, I know how often people ignore what is on the job description to hire someone who doesn’t fit in some key way or another (for years, the Wall Street Journal would publish a statistic that approximately 20% of all people hired did not fit the job description. That was 20% who admitted it!).

3. Know exactly what you expect from your new hire. What will someone need to do in order to be successful in your job? Do you know? How will you know that this person can actually perform as you hope they will? What will you ask to find out? No matter how junior or senior the person is you need to be able to know your expectations of them and how you will measure their potential for success before you actually hire them.

4. Set aside time. T may seem obvious but you can’t hire someone without making the time to interview them and making sure that your team has time, too. Try to anticipate when there is a lull in the action and avoid interviewing people when you and your team have far too much to get done. Don’t expect that job hunters will be willing to keep visiting your offices or plant time and again because you are too busy. They get the message that they will be overworked and that manners are not important. After all, they took time off from work or to make arrangements to meet you at a time that you said would work. How rude is it on your to push them away and make them return.

5. Create a training program. It may be a simple as “When you have questions, ask Jeff over there” how to handle it. Far better that that is a few days of immersing the new person in your company or group’s practices and processes so that they know what is going on, they know how to handle the basics, and that they learn the informal rules of the road.

6. If you aren’t sure, ask for advice or help. It never hurts to get a second opinion from someone if you are wavering. And after you get the second opinion, if you still aren’t sure, reject the person and keep looking!

Taking the time to do these things will go a long way toward helping you as a manager, a business owner or as an HR professional focus in on the success points to hire someone who will succeed for years to come.

Jeff Altman
The Big Game Hunter
Concepts in Staffing
jeffaltman@cisny.com

© 2007 all rights reserved.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter, is Managing Director with Concepts in Staffing, a New York search firm, He has successfully assisted many corporations identify management leaders and staff in technology, accounting, finance, sales, marketing and other disciplines since 1971. He is a certified leader of the ManKind Project, a not for profit organization that assists men with life issues, and a practicing psychotherapist.

To subscribe to Jeff’s free job search ezine, Head Hunt Your Next Job, or receive a daily digest of positions emailed to you, go to http://www.jeffaltman.com

If you would like Jeff and his firm to assist you with hiring staff, or if you would like help with a strategic job change, send an email to him at jeffaltman@cisny.com (If you’re looking for a new position, include your resume).

The Single Most Important Thing You Must Do During Every Interview

While evaluating a candidate for a client, I learned that the job applicant was also interviewing with two investment banks and was about to begin second rounds with those firms for positions that seemed very good but not as well-suited as my client's job was.

My person did well on his first round and was invited back for a second interview for a position and firm that he seems to like more than the others. That's good news for my client and good news for me.

Yet one thing about this is troubling me--my client has been focused exclusively on evaluating and assessing the candidate and taking almost zero time to do something that is absolutely critical to win the person if they want to hire them.

Want to know what it is?



Sell their company and the position to the job applicant.


Why should someone come to work with your firm?
How will this job fit their needs not just now but for years to come?
What do you like about working there?
What will they learn that can benefit them?
What career path exists? Does the firm even look at upward mobility?
What are bonuses like?
What are benefits like?
Why do you enjoy working there?


I'm not speaking about with the candidates you are interested in. I'm speaking about every single person.

You're saying, "I don't have time to do that."

Let me offer another way of looking at this.

Imagine that every person you interview is favorably disposed to working for your company so that when you make a job offer they are all leaning toward saying yes. Google has this advantage and so does Goldman Sachs. How can you create this for your firm?

The simple answer is to send people into the world with stars in their eyes excited about the possibility of working for your firm. Obviously, not everyone will be hired, nor is everyone qualified. But if you can get them to think, "WOW! I'd really like to work for them some day," they will chat up your firm now and for years to come.

When someone is interviewing at your firm years from now, they will speak favorably about it.

So take the time to speak about your firm and the opportunity and what's in it for the candidate to join . . . especially now while there are labor shortages that will make the market for talent competitive for years to come.

Jeff Altman
The Big Game Hunter
Concepts in Staffing
thebiggamehunter@cisny.com

© 2007 all rights reserved.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter, is Managing Director with Concepts in Staffing, a New York search firm, He has successfully assisted many corporations identify management leaders and staff in many disciplines since 1971. He is a certified leader of the ManKind Project, a not for profit organization that assists men with life issues, and a practicing psychotherapist.

To receive a daily digest of positions emailed to you, search for openings that The Big Game Hunter is working on, to use Jeff’s free job lead search engine, Job Search Universe, to subscribe to Jeff’s free job hunting ezine, “Head Hunt Your Next Job, or his staffing ezine, “Natural Selection”, or to learn about his VIP program, go to www.jeffaltman.com. Job Search Universe is also available at www.jobsearchuniverse.com To add your firm’s career page to “The Universe” email the url to jobsearchuniverse@gmail.com.

If you would like Jeff and his firm to assist you with hiring staff, or if you would like help with a strategic job change, send an email to him at thebiggamehunter@cisny.com (If you’re looking for a new position, include your resume).

If you have a question that you would like me to answer pertaining to job hunting or hiring, email it to him at:
thebiggamehunter@gmail.com

6 Steps to Guaranteeing Successful Hires

Hiring people is not a science. Like riding a bike or cooking, it is a skill that can be learned.

Try to master the six points I’ve made.

1. Don’t be distracted by appearances. Substance should be your most important benchmark for hiring

He or she arrives and they are treated like a rock star. They are good looking and have a great wardrobe. Their credentials speak for themselves. You’ve Googled the word “success” in your industry and their picture is the top response.

If you think I’m kidding, I’m not. People are too readily influenced by unimportant qualities such as appearance to the point where they do not investigate the individual’s credentials adequately. The questions asked are easier. They are given “a pass.”

It is important to scratch below the surface and get into the muck of the individual’s experience to see if there is something worthwhile there.

An early lesson I learned before becoming The Big Game Hunter was to ask simple open ended questions early in the interview, listen and then become progressively more pointed with my questions.

For example, I might start with the usual soft question of, “Tell me about yourself and what you’ve been doing professionally?” Eventually, I might progress to, “You say you increased sales by 42%. How much of that would you attribute to a better product offering for your firm and how much for you?”

“You increased your sales by 42%. How much did your costs increase during that time?”

“What might you have done differently that could have improved them to 46%”

“Everyone makes mistakes. Tell me about a professional mistake you’ve made and what you learned from it.”

And I’ll ask detailed questions based upon their answers.

2. Make sure you’ve decided what someone really needs to know and how you will measure for it. Communicate what is needed to the search firm, agency or recruiter.

It is fascinating to read some job descriptions. They go on for pages and spell out in incredible detail what is being looked for. Then, following an interview, when I ask the candidate what was asked and what was explored, I hear about questions that don’t in any way relate to the position description. As a result the search goes on far longer than it need to with suitable consequences to all concerned.

Try to identify the four or five key points or experiences your new hire must have in order to stand a chance of being successful and then, ASK QUESTIONS TO DETERMINE THE SKILLS OF THE PEOPLE IN THOSE AREAS.

Communicate what you want to the search firms, recruiters or agencies you’re working with and how the requirements and your thinking evolve. Recruiters are incapable o mind reading. You’ve hired them to help you hire someone. Tell them what you want and they’ll find it for you more quickly than if they have to piece things out based upon the information you share when you reject someone (BTW, the person is never “too light.” Tell them where their skills or experience was deficient).

3. Make sure everyone who is part of the hiring process understands their role and what they are there to determine.

It seems peculiar for the programmer to reject the project manager for their management experience yet it happens all the time. It is also odd to have the programmer ask esoteric questions, interviewing by the seat of their pants. Insure tat everyone knows their role I the process and what they are there to evaluate.

4. Put an end to wishful thinking

If a person has only worked in temp jobs or as a consultant, it is probably not their fault that they have worked at a lot of companies. Sometimes, layoffs occurred. Sometimes, projects were abruptly cancelled.

Many times, though, if you investigate, you’ll find that the person plays the employee version of “My way or I take the highway.” As skilled as they are, you can’t fix them.

5. Be prepared to answer one question

When you are about to extend an offer to someone, answer this question:

Why does this person fit my job better than anyone else I’ve met?

Compare your answer with your “Must have” list and your preferences.

6. Correct mistakes quickly.

The biggest mistake you can make is one you don’t fix. Putting your head in the ground and praying for a miracle will lead to both you and your employee being shown the door. Correct your mistakes quickly. Remember it is YOUR MISTAKE, not the employees. Arrange for a kind severance. Do not blame them or the search firm for your hiring misjudgment.

Jeff Altman

The Big Game Hunter
Concepts in Staffing
jeffaltman@cisny.com

© 2007 all rights reserved.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter, is Managing Director with Concepts in Staffing, a New York search firm, He has successfully assisted many corporations identify management leaders and staff in technology, accounting, finance, sales, marketing and other disciplines since 1971. He is a certified leader of the ManKind Project, a not for profit organization that assists men with life issues, and a practicing psychotherapist.

If you have a question that you would like me to answer, email it to me at: thebiggamehunter@gmail.com

To receive a daily digest of positions emailed to you, search for openings that The Big Game Hunter is working on, to use Jeff’s free meta job lead search engine, Job Search Universe, to learn about his VIP program, or to subscribe to Jeff’s free job hunting ezine, “Head Hunt Your Next Job, go to http://www.jeffaltman.com. Job Search Universe is also available at www.jobsearchuniverse.com To add your firm’s career page to “The Universe” email the url to jobsearchuniverse@gmail.com.

For Jeff’s free recruiting ezine, NaturalSelection Ezine, to help human resources professionals, managers and business owners make even better hiring decisions, ,subscribe at www.naturalselectionezine.com .

If you would like Jeff and his firm to assist you with hiring staff, or if you would like help with a strategic job change, send an email to him at jeffaltman@cisny.com (If you’re looking for a new position, include your resume).