I Heard It Through the Grapevine
As you know, I have counseled thousands of job seekers and people looking to manage their careers. I sometimes speak with hundreds of people each month. Although I advise my clients on strategies to optimize their job searches and advance their careers, I am not the one out there doing the work, networking, and meeting potential employers. Fortunately, my clients love to share their stories with me; I, in turn, aggregate, analyze, and share the trends I hear and see with you. Here are some of the good things that I’ve heard about lately:
The Good
Salary history requirements are history. If you’ve been in the workforce for longer than ten years, you have undoubtedly encountered an interviewer who demanded to know what your current or previous salary is/was. Not only is this an invasive question, but it is also an irrelevant question. What you previously earned has zero bearing on the job you are discussing. Relying on applicants’ salary history is a poor way to benchmark compensation. (This practice has also been correlated with wage suppression among certain demographic groups.) Presently, more than half of all US states have banned employers from asking for salary history, and I’m hearing that the question rarely comes up anymore, if at all. This makes sense since two states with bans in force are California and New York.
Employers are being more transparent about pay. The days of tap dancing around the compensation question seem to be in the past. Clients tell me that most job postings now include a salary range. However, companies are not doing this out of benevolence. Laws have been passed in various jurisdictions requiring employers to post pay ranges in their job ads, with California and New York leading this effort once again.
Remote work is here to stay. Employers now have anecdotal experience along with hard data that prove that remote work has a positive impact on productivity and results. I am hearing from clients that more than half of the roles posted on LinkedIn are for fully or partially remote positions.
There are still a lot of open jobs out there. Despite the “sky is falling” reports about contraction in the labor market and highly publicized layoffs in the technology sector, my clients say there is no shortage of available positions. I have one client in the final rounds of interviews with a big tech company that has been in the news for eliminating thousands of jobs. I will discuss the irony of that situation in a future blog.
“Job hopping” is not a big deal anymore. We all know that the days of spending your entire career with one employer are long gone. The average worker under age 35 stays in a job for 2.8 years. What was taboo in years past is now standard business practice.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI] initiatives are strategic imperatives for companies of all sizes and industries. Promoting workforce equity and diversity used to be something employers were loath to do. There is no shortage of evidence proving that DEI initiatives and having a workforce comprised of people with different life experiences and worldviews are directly tied to increased revenue, profitability, and innovation.
That’s the good stuff. But we all know that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, so be on the lookout for my next blog that will go over the bad stuff I’ve been hearing!