All right. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. This is a wonderful topic that I think a lot of us are very interested in. I've had a lot of conversations with folks from time to time about this, so I'm excited to have an expert in to talk to us. Help me welcome Valerie Nash. She is the owner of 821 Consulting, LLC. She's a seasoned human resources professional with 30 years of experience in both the private and public sectors. Valerie is a senior certified professional with the Society of Human Resource Management and a former certified labor relations professional. And I'm Janelle Woods. I have been co-chair of the Women's Initiative, who's sponsoring this session today. So help me welcome Valerie, and I'm going to go ahead and turn this over to her to get us started. Thank you, Janelle. I really appreciate it. What I'm trying to do now is pull up my slides for everyone. I'm just trying to figure out how I'm doing that here when I'm not the owner of the Zoom link. So I thought it was there, but it does not seem to be there. So I am do you have them on your side, Janelle? Yeah, give me a second and I will. Yeah, sorry about that. I don't seem to be pulling up on my end. Do you have your PowerPoint open? I do. I have everything open on my end, but it just doesn't seem to be sharing. Yeah, it doesn't seem to be sharing the way that I would imagine that it or the way that it does normally when I'm yeah, let me move into a slide a slideshow here and I can do it for you. Okay, sorry about that. Yeah, no, no problem. Sorry, everyone. Is that what you're seeing? You see the slideshow? Yep. I am. Okay. Just tell me when to change the screen for you. Well, you just turn it into a slideshow because it's on like your full screen. Is it? Yeah. Perfect. Did it work? No, we're still on the screen. Sorry. I know. It's crazy. Sorry, everybody. This is the part we probably should have practiced. I apologize. Oh, that's funny. Is it working now? No. All right. I'm going to stop sharing then. Heidi, are you able to pull them up on your side? Yes. Hold on. Okay. Sorry, everybody. Okay. All right. I'm going to stop sharing then. Heidi, are you able to pull them up on your side? Yes. Hold on. Okay. Yeah, it did seem to be a slide in slide. I think somebody said that in the chat, but you know, we'll figure it out. Sorry, we'll get there. We will. That's the good thing about it. That's one of the things you guys are going to learn today is you got to be flexible. One of the things I'm going to tell you is that, you know, when you go in with a solid plan, and trust me, that plan is like, you know, when you have a plan, God's laughing at you. This is exactly what happens when you're there. We are exactly. Is that it? Does that work? That's it. Perfect. Okay. All right. So we can go ahead and advance to the next slide. What we're going to talk about today, folks, really, you know, kind of why do we go through this process? You know, what is this dance that we do? And I can tell you right now, I'm in the process of working with a client and just made one offer for them and I'm going to be getting ready to make another offer for them for an executive director. And I'm a pretty transparent recruiter. And not everyone is like that. And I was sharing that with Heidi. So my experience, right now, the way that I operate as a recruiter is a little different than maybe some of the folks you all have been or are working with. And I do know that when I was working for other companies, that is not how my companies always operated. So I have lived on both sides of this. But one of the things that I want you to understand is that when you're negotiating anything, I want you to know that these skills do translate. So it's not like we're just using them here in the world of pay and salary. So everything that we're talking about today, you really can use whether you're buying a car, whether you're purchasing a home, you know, negotiating things, you know, as small as, you know, benefits even on the side of your compensation package. So understanding that pay and negotiating that component really is a much broader skill base that a lot of us need. And understanding the work that all of you do in this this professional association, I have to assume that for a lot of you, you do negotiating a lot, you're just not harnessing it perhaps in the this certain specific capacity. So all right, Janelle, let's move to the next slide. Okay, it's not letting me advance. Not letting us advance. What's the keyboard shortcut? Oh, is it letting me advance? Nope. Somebody just did. Oh, okay. Okay, so what's the purpose of negotiating? So here's your purpose. It's not necessarily the company's purpose, but your purpose is it sets the tone. And what do we mean about that? Your salary is basically a fundamental consideration when you take a job, right? When you're taking a job with your company, there's two things at play here. It's your personal livelihood. It's also your professional value. So this is really encompassing all aspects of who you are, as a person. It's the side of you that's making your living. It's how you're affording things. It's how you're caring for yourself, and the people who live in your home. But it's also the value and worth that you have on the professional side. So as I was coming up in the professional world, I was a single mother. So my compensation mattered a whole lot. Because I had this little person that I had to take care of and put food in her mouth, let alone my own. I had to make sure I had a running car, had to make sure we had lights on, all those things. The other side of it is, when I was a working mother, I really knew I wasn't willing to give up the working side. I knew I did not want to be that person who wanted to make a choice. So from that situation, I wanted to have a professional career. So I also knew I needed to kind of raise up in my professional career. So it does set a tone. According to Glassdoor, only about 46% of women actually negotiate salary compared to 52% of men. And when they do negotiate, women typically ask for 30% less than men. So only 46% of us are even doing the negotiating to start with. And when we do, we're asking for 30% less than men are. If you start with a lower salary, this is what matters. If you start with a lower salary, the studies show that the lower you start, the magnitude over the lifetime. So the younger you are on this call, I want you to really get it because some of us are stuck now. So I'm 53. So the younger you are in this call, so Janelle, listen up, right? I want you to listen. She's the only one I can see y'all. So I have to talk to her. So the younger you are, for every one to 3% that you are behind, it can translate to $1 million in your lifetime. So understand that impact. So it does set truly a tone. The other thing is, it does show potential to your employer for both valuing yourself and your skills. And then, frankly, a lot of employers expect it. And you're going to see that in some of the things that I'm going to show you in terms of how we're doing this. All right, let's move on. So when do we get into the negotiation tactics? I'm sorry, some of those things are coming up really light. Hopefully, when you print the slides, they won't be so light. It does say timing is everything in life. And it truly is. So when an employer makes an offer, we're ecstatic, aren't we? We're just like, oh, my goodness, I remember when I got my first big girl job, right? And you just want to say yes. But again, I was a single mom. And so I had to call my parents and make sure this is the sounded good. And I'll never forget the gentleman who offered me the job. We are such good friends to this day. And he said he was shocked that I didn't just say yes right then because the increase he was giving me was so dramatic. He did not understand what was wrong with me that I didn't just jump on it. But he said it was so telling to him that I paused. And this is y'all this is 28 years ago, I think how my daughter was 28 years ago that I did this. And to this day, whenever we get into nostalgia, he brings that up, that I made him wait, even though he was giving me this $17 an hour pay increase back then. It was dramatic, but I still made him wait. But I really was only making him wait because I had to call my mom and dad and tell them. So that was the only thing. But if you understand the delay is necessary. So resist the urge. So this gentleman I called the other day to make an offer on behalf of a company I'm working for. He said yes right away. Now, I want to tell you the reason he said yes is because I set it up for him to say yes. And I did that because I think I'm a really good recruiter. I'm very transparent. I'm very open about the process and the salary range upfront. So he knew where we were from the beginning. So in my situation, it was a best offer and he knew that. But again, understand the situation. The other thing to know is that you never start negotiations. Let the employer come forward with a salary when they are ready to make the offer. Do not negotiate at any time before a salary offer is on the table. Right? So when they come forward, they have the offer and the salary. Do not begin negotiating before that. So the big question that we all get right is, Valerie, what about when they say, well, what are your salary expectations? Or they have the field on the employment application that says, what are you expecting in salary? So I know a lot of you were hoping that I answered this. So here you go. Put 0.00 on that answer. And I mean that. And if an employer gets mad that you put that, it's not the employer for you. Because in today's day and age, first of all, any employer who's asking you that is out of touch with reality. Because right now it's an employer employees market. And we all know it. We all know it. So the fact that they're forcing you still to this day to tell us what your demands are, they're archaic, and they are out of touch. And if that's who you want to go work for, then put a number down. But I'm telling you to put 0.00 if it's an electronic application, and it's forcing a field, put 0.00. If they ask you the question, and they say, so what are your salary expectations? This is the answer I would give. And I would expect somebody to give me if I were so uneducated that I asked that question. I would expect someone to say, well, once I'm aware of the salary range that this company is willing to offer for this particular position, I would be better equipped to answer it. I have researched similar positions for similar companies. So I am quite aware of what this position pays in other companies. But I'm not sure if this company is competitive with those other companies. That's how I would answer. Because we forget that interviewing goes both ways. And this is an employee market. It's like the housing market. It's an employee market. You have choice. So please understand that, that you have choice. And if you are begging, inviting to get into a company, and you're taking whatever slop they give you, that's how they're going to treat you the entire time that you are there. So please know that. So if you're willing to get it, they'll take it from you. Trust me. I love this. I'm just looking at the question. Joshua says as an employer, he has a salary range in the posting at all times. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Joshua. And if I post a range too, so for my last position, I had a range. So let's say it was 10,000 to 15,000. It wasn't, but let's say. What I say is, as you saw, my posting is 10,000 to 15,000. Are your salary expectations within that range? And every candidate said yes. But if a candidate said no, then we were done because I'm not changing my range, right for you. And you're not changing your salary expectation for me. That's fine. We go our mutual ways. Separate. Let's go. You have your needs. I have my needs. The CEO position that I'm hiring for right now, a gentleman, he came in, he's making 185,000 plus a car. He expects to be paid 200,000. This position is paying 125 to 150. We agreed to go our separate ways. Easy as that. There's no reason for us to continue the process because we're wasting each other's time. I can never get to $200,000. He's never going to take a pay cut to 150. And that's the top of the range. So what if there's no pay increase? So make sure that you know what your bottom line is, right? What's as low as you can go, and what's as high as you think you can go and be prepared for that. All right, next slide. So this is where I said, this is where you're going to realize that a lot of employers won't be surprised if you ask. So I want you to do your research. So the myth is, and this came out of a career builder survey, the employer will think I'm greedy. So in this career builder survey, over half the employers said that they intentionally reduce the salary offer to leave room for negotiations. So they come in and they offer 10,000 because they're willing to go to 12. Right. So they're willing to play the game with you. So know that, know that they're willing. They're prepared for it. So Michelle asks, what can you do when looking at smaller companies where they may not even be sure about their budgets for a position? Ah, Michelle, I'll tell you, there's the positives and the negatives of smaller companies. You know, the positives are you don't have a lot of, you know, bureaucracy, you don't have a lot of politics, you're probably going to get exposed to a lot more things. But more than likely, you're not going to get paid as much either. So because they just don't have the diversity to be able to pay you, and they probably don't have the budget to pay you. And so a lot of times, they don't know what the market is paying, or they may know what the market's paying, but they can't justify, or they can't come up with the benefits to give you to match what another employer is. In those instances, they try to come up with other things, like maybe there's a lot more flexibility in remote, maybe there's a lot more flexibility and, you know, kind of time off or how you schedule your time. You know, they may offer other perks. So to me, it's really what kind of environment are you wanting to be in? When I left my, the corporate world, and I worked private, and I worked public, 30 years I spent. So when I did, when I decided to leave, and I was telling this group of professionals that I'm working with this one particular client that I'm working with, I left a very good salary, and went on a cruise, my husband, daughter and granddaughter. And we've been talking about me starting my own business and decided to quit my six figure job. My husband retired out of COVID, he's older than me. My daughter's living with us with the grandbaby. And she's a teacher, she works in a school system. So it's not like she's bringing home the bacon. And I make this decision to step out of the workforce. So at some point in your life, you're making decisions about what's priority for you. In different points of your life, priorities change. Early in my professional career, I was building. And I was, I was working and building and amassing the salary and shooting for those six figures. Then I got to a point where that wasn't my focus. So it's where do you want to work? Do you want that small environment that may not have a grasp on the budget and may not be able to pay you, but there's other things that are important. So that that's a personal choice. So the hiring manager is already offering the best deal. 84% of the employers said it's not their best deal that they're offering. So they're willing to negotiate. And then the employer will rescind an offer if I asked for more. 87% said they have never yet withdrawn an offer because someone asked for more. So there you go. A good friend of mine once said, I would never lose a candidate for $10,000. Like you'd have to go beyond $10,000 before I'm losing a candidate. So think about that. That's, that's a lot of money. And a lot of you are coming in with like 1000 like, you know, I want to go from, you know, 5200 to, you know, 53, or 52,000 to 53. And I'm telling you that my recruiter friends are telling me I won't lose a candidate for $10,000. And don't don't get that greedy. But I'm just saying their mindset is that. So now in my recent situation, when we were interviewing, I put it on the table, my range was, I think it was 59 to 89. So they knew the range up front and I offered the guy 84. So he already knew we were, we were best offer, right? He already knew we were there. And I said, this is the best offer I can offer you. I don't fool around. I don't want to go back and forth. I don't pull punches. This is the best I can offer you. The only thing he came back with is that his current employer offered paid 12 week paid paternity leave. His wife's due. I said, well, I can't offer you that, but let me see what I can get you. So I came back and said, we can get you. And it wasn't much, but it was something because he's entitled to nothing in February. They're they're a small company. They're not even FMLA eligible. He won't have been there 12 months anyway to be qualified. But I got him some unpaid time off to be with his wife. So for him, that was more important, some time off to be with his wife and family when she delivers. So sometimes money is not the issue. When my daughter was first getting back into the workforce, after she had her daughter, she nannied for a while. And when she was on the clock to get a new job, they told her that they were maxed out. This was a unionized environment. She was at the top of the scale. I said, ask about a signing bonus. Because there was nothing about a signing bonus in the contract. And I know all about union contracts. They said, wow, no one's ever said that. So we did the math. Now, that's not earnable income. So it's not going to continue to grow with her. But what I knew it would do is it would pay her daycare for the first couple months. And it would relieve her of those first couple months while she could get going with daycare, which is what we were concerned with. Daycare is stupid expensive. And I said, ask about a signing bonus. She calls them. They negotiate a signing bonus. Instead of negotiating the pay, we negotiated the signing bonus. She gets hired. The lady says, is your mom Valerie? And she says, yes. And she goes, I should have known. Who would have thought about a signing bonus to replace the money we couldn't give you? And she was like, yep, that was all my mom. So sometimes you also have to not think we couldn't be fixed on the dollar value, right? We had to get off the dollar value. So we had to be flexible. And we had to think, what is our goal? Our goal is to get daycare taken care of. If we get three months of daycare taken care of so that you can get in the groove of things, we'll be good. Put it in a signing bonus for us. We'll be good. That's what we did. So be flexible. All right, Jane, depending on whether you have the capacity to outwork others, you can always state you're willing to outwork mediocre candidates. You just need to mean it. Employers know that initially you will be paid more than you're worth if you can set yourself as a star, raises and promotions. Jane, you can. You can set yourself apart. Absolutely you can. But they don't know that, right? You're right. Absolutely right. Every new hire is a gamble. Every one. So the guy I just hired for this client of mine, absolute gamble. My reputation is on the line right now for that guy. Every reference I unearthed is on the line for that guy. Like I want to go shake people and be like, are you telling me the truth? Because like my reputation is on the line. I tell my recruiters when I was working, your job is not to hire the wrong person. That's absolutely your job. And if any of you have hired, it happens to all of us. We all get snuckered. Absolutely we get snuckered. Now once you get in the door and you're good, then you can do that. So we all get snuckered. All right, next slide. So how do you prepare for success? Your research industry standards. So in your world, what are the industry standards? What are people making? You research your company's standards. And this is whether you're getting hired in or you're looking for a promotion. And when I say standards, I don't just mean pay, folks. I mean, what are the expectations? So my first many years were in health care. Health care is a corporation and it is politics and bureaucracy at its finest. And you had to play the game. There were some games I wasn't willing to play. But there were other games I was fine with. You had to walk the walk, dress the dress, talk the talk. And you had to look the part. You had to speak the lingo. You had to do it all. You had to work the hours. Everything mattered. I was a single mom for most of that career. It wasn't until I went into public service that I met my husband, got married, he adopted my daughter. We were in a different situation. So during the time that I was living the most hectic part of my professional career, I'm having to explain to my daughter why I'm late to PTA meetings, why she's the last kid getting picked up, the first kid getting dropped off. I remember one meeting, I get there, I'm there volunteering and she's like, why do you always have to come in a suit? I felt like the proverbial garbage man that always shows up and she's embarrassed of me because I'm there in my suit and every other mom is there in jeans and the school t-shirt or sweatshirt and I'm too dressed up. She was so embarrassed by me. Fast forward, her eighth grade year, I was her room mom and you'd think I gave her a million dollars because she was so happy I was a room mom. So what does your company expect of you? Because that determines in a lot of instances what your pay is going to be. It is what it is, folks. You either got to like the game, there are parts I chose not to play, there are pieces of the game that weren't for Valerie, nope, no thank you. And there were parts of the game that I willfully participated in. And you have to know where that line in the sand is for you. And then what do I bring to the table? You know what I brought to the table? I was a hard worker. There wasn't a job I wasn't willing to do, I was always, I would get you your coffee at the same time I would take notes, I would turn those notes around as quick as I could. I was the first person there with the binder. I was the one who could remember everything. If they needed something, they were the first people to say, let's ask Valerie to be on our team, Valerie will get it done. There's a promotion, let's give it to Valerie. My name started to become the name. So as I worked it, I got the promotions, I moved up. So I was bringing to the table, I wasn't waiting for somebody to come around the corner and go, there's a girl in a cubicle, maybe she could do it. And I think sometimes that's what people are waiting for. They're waiting for somebody to see them. I have a sister who, she's younger than me, but not by much, she's younger than me. And she's like, the Hallmark movie, she wants to be like, swept off of her feet and driven down the street on the snow covered day with the big truck and find her man. And I'm like, well, in the Hallmark movie, they go out of their house, like you don't go out of your house. So you're never going to find the guy with the apple tree in the forest that you're going to get married to on the Hallmark movie, because you don't go out of your house. Same thing, you don't leave your cubicle. If you don't go to the corporate events, if you don't volunteer to do stuff, nobody sees you, nobody's going to promote you. It's not going to happen. So prepare for success. Next slide. Do all companies negotiate? If they're not, then again, they're archaic, they're not moving with the times. And I don't know that you want to work there. But in today's labor market, they better be, because people are asking. And if you're not asking, then you're not keeping with the times. The only companies that I see who are not negotiating right now is if they have a fixed salary. And that's because typically they have unions, or they're already minimum wage jobs, retail, fast food, you know, things like that. So they're already paying minimum wage. So they have no room for movement. So entry level type jobs. But beyond that, most people are negotiating some component of the wage and compensation package. Some people don't even know that you should be negotiating your time off. I have a part time job. I work at the airport and I work for Allegiant. And when I started, I know I had to have a wedding coming up in a couple of weeks. I knew that last December when I started this job. So they've known for over a year, they keep wanting to act like they forget it. But they know I have a job or I have a vacation. When I went in, I said, I knew I had two weddings because I had my niece's wedding and I have this wedding. They got those both in writing. This is a non-negotiable for me. I will be happy to work for you, but I will not work these times because I will not be available to you. So when my niece's wedding came up, they got all like, why are you off? Because I told you I would be off. In writing, here's the email, remember I sent you after you offered me the job. And I said, I will accept with these conditions. So that's the other thing. When you're negotiating, yes, pay is a piece of it, but there are other pieces that are important to you. So make sure if you're not negotiating pay or you can't, you still can negotiate your time off. And like in the case of my fellow who is, you know, accepted the salary, his only ask was Valerie. And the only thing he asked was, could I be off when my wife has the baby? He happened to mention this benefit that he was leaving behind. I'm the consultant. So I said, let me see what else I can get you. Because I'm kind of working, you know, I'm working for the association that's hired me, but I'm there to take care of him too, because I want him to be successful because my name's on him. So, you know, I don't want them to forget that, that my name's on him. So next up, what am I really worth? This is probably the biggest bane of my existence. I think a lot of people over-inflate their financial worth to a company. And what do I mean by that? You have to know financially what your value is to a company. Because the reality of it is, is that if most of us walked away from our company, we're replaceable. Absolutely. 100% replaceable. How do I know this? Because when I turned in my retirement, I retired from my work, just not old enough to draw from my pension yet, but you know, I'd worked 30 years, did my retirement and, you know, they had a party for me and everything else, filled my job before I left so I could help train. Some people boohooed when I left, but I talked to maybe four people, two of whom I see regularly, the others sporadically. I saw a whole bunch of them earlier this week because I was asked to speak at a conference that a lot of them go to because it's their field, but they don't care about me. I'm sure they blame a lot on me because I was HR and that's what you do to HR. They don't care about me. They moved on and they're going to move on when you leave. So I say that out of realness, out of practicality. So my worth to them is she was maybe great when she was here, maybe people like me, maybe people hated me. I don't know, but I'm replaceable. So the first stop is we got to know our financial value. When we move to another company, what am I worth to the new company? And it's usually valued around when I step into your company, what's the length of time it's going to take me to get up to speed that I can begin functioning on my own, that I can learn the lingo, I can learn the work and you don't need to hand walk me through everything in your company. If I'm promoting, it's the same thing. The difference is you kind of already know the lingo, you know, the players, you know, where your stuff's at. So your uptick is actually less. They give you less room for error when you promote, which is really even worse. They give you less room for error, but they give you a whole bunch more responsibility. And sometimes you're actually moving in a different area to learn all these things that they would give an outsider a whole bunch more time to learn. So when you think about it, that's what they're looking for. They're looking for somebody to come in, learn it, prove that they can have continued elevated learning. Right. So they want you to be able to go up and forward, continually, gradually learning. That's what they want. And you're producing, you're executing, you're visionary, you're strategic, all those big buzzwords. So that's what they want to see in the interview, is they want to see those traits and predict them for the future. But when we get into valuing ourselves, we value ourselves oftentimes based on the work we've done. And not based on the potential of the work we're going to do. So we get it wrong. And we say, I deserve an increase, a pay increase, because I'm really good at the job I'm doing today. And your employer says, why would I pay you more to do the job you're really good at today? Because you've been doing it today at the job, at the rate I've been paying you today. So I want you all to make sense of that, right? Like make sense that he's paying you on Monday, $5 to do a job. And you want him on Tuesday to pay you $7 for the same job. That makes no sense to an employer, it just doesn't make no sense. Now if on Monday, you're doing the job at $5, and on Tuesday, you want to do more job and get more money. Now we can start talking about it, right? Now we can talk about that. But people want more money with no more job because they think they're doing a greater job than somebody else. So we assess it wrong. So how are we going to do it? So I'm going to walk you through the steps to do it for yourself. So that when you go into an interview for a promotion, a new job, whatever it's going to be, you're going to sell yourself the right way. So let's turn the slide. First thing you're going to do is you have to go through a self-assessment. When I do professional development with someone. And I've got about eight people that I'm currently doing professional development. I have two that are about to be done and I've got the others that are somewhere in the middles. I do a self-assessment with them. I make them do a list of their hard skills and their soft skills. Like what are all, what are all the things that are hard skills? And hopefully you all understand what I mean there. Like I'm proficient in Excel. I'm, you know what I hate when people put on their resume, I'm proficient at the Microsoft suite. And the first question I ask is, oh, so you know how to do Access? And the person will go, no. Well, stop putting down the Microsoft suite because Access is in the suite. Just put down Excel and Word because those are the two you know how to use or PowerPoint. That's it. The suite includes Access. So stop putting the suite down. Yes, it's a jerk question, but it's still the question. So just be honest. So what are your hard skills? You have your education in this. You have all these things that are tangible. What are your soft skills? Oh, I'm patient. Are you? I have not yet met a leader who is truly, truly patient. We want things when we want things. So clarify that for me. What do you mean you're patient? I mean that I'm able to hear people where they are, to see them where they are. So clarify those words for me. Don't use buzzwords. Don't use labels. Tell me what they mean. So if you're in professional development with me, I don't accept patient. I don't accept compassionate. I need you to tell me what those words mean to you, for you. But you know what people do? They just write words down because they sound good. And we dig. I dig. I want to know what they really mean. What's your accomplishment review? What have you done? So when you want to sit down with an employer and go through something, I interviewed this person the other day. And you know what she did? She took her resume and the job description. And she did a literal side-by-side chart and gave it to us with her resume and her cover letter. And she listed every accomplishment she had at her prior employers with the things we were asking for in the resume. It was so, I've never seen someone do it before. Well, it's for an executive director. So, I mean, you should be, you should up your game for that. But it was absolutely incredible. And when this whole thing flushes out, I'm going to ask her if I can redact her name and use it to show people. Because it is that incredible. She took the time to show us her accomplishments next to that. Oh, thank you, Joshua. It is so cool. I'm telling you what, I'm in love with it. Oh my goodness. I love it. Where we talked about financial acuity, she showed us what she did in terms of budgets at the different employers that she has ran. It was phenomenal. Yes, it was great. And I'm sorry, Jane, I missed your point there. But I had a job, I was relaxed, a ton of experience. Yes, yes, Jane, you have to practice. That is so good. I'm so sorry I missed it, Jane. I apologize. You want to quantify your achievements. She put dollars. She worked at one place, saved them from closing. She talked about where they were from a deficit budget into a black line budget. It wasn't much, but guess what? They were closing. When she got there, they stayed open. So, she turned it around. And then feedback collection. Are you going around and asking people how they see you? And are you willing to hear negative stuff? Because if you're not willing to hear the negative stuff, you're not ready to do this, folks. You're not ready. And are you willing to tell people I'm ready to hear the hard stuff? Because people are just going to tell you what they think you want to hear unless you really give them permission, to be honest with you. And if all you hear is good stuff, they don't believe you. They don't believe you want to hear it. Right? They don't. Next slide. There's another question here, Valerie, for Michelle. I know you can see it. I just wanted to point it out if you wanted to answer it. How do you negotiate the job description itself? The other duties as assigned category. Yes. HR folks, we love that. That's our way of saying we may come up with a harebrained scheme and we want you to do it and we don't want you to tell us it wasn't in your job description. Or something may come along and we think it fits in your job duties. I would ask about it. I would just say are there things you have in mind that would fall into it? One of the things we talked about with the new person is there are some times when they have conferences that this particular new position has to help out with them. It's not part of their day-to-day work to do conference work, but they do help out with it. And, yeah, I mean, you could say, well, could I just have that as a bullet point on here? And then if there's something added, could we just, you know, just redo my job description? Absolutely. Now, some employers interpret that as you being a that's not in my job description kind of person and they see you as possibly not being a team player. So you do risk that. But if you've worked for an employer before who has constantly gone to other duties as assigned, you may be realistically cautious about things. So it's really where your experience lies in that. So I get that, Michelle. All right. Market research, not your opinion. You're going to do some salary benchmarking. What's important here is you look at your industry and your geographic location. Okay. I live in Stark County, Ohio. What I get paid as an HR consultant in Stark County, Ohio, is not what you're going to get paid in New York City. When I get paid even in Stark County, when I charge people here is not what I'm going to charge somebody in Columbus, Ohio. So I live in Canton, Massillon, Ohio, for those of you who maybe know those words a little bit better. I'm south of Cleveland. So, you know, when I'm servicing a client who lives in a rural place, I'm not going to charge them the same thing I'm going to charge somebody who lives in a big city. So you have to understand where your location is, isn't always going to match what your industry is. So you've got to balance that. Some people want to live in smaller towns and they're willing to take a smaller salary to live in a smaller town, or they're willing to drive to a bigger city and have that commute to make more money, but live someplace smaller. Networking, you have to have people. I promise you who you know is about 70% of the 30% against what you know. And then what are some trends? Are you on top of what's going on in your field, in your arena? Do you know, can you speak to it? Because if you don't know what's going on out there, you know, just like in my world, if people come into HR and they say they don't know what a stay interview is, where is your, where have you been? You got your head in the sand. I mean, why don't you know what these things are? If people aren't talking AI and HR and how we're using chat GPT to do resumes or to do job descriptions and job posting, what's going on? I mean, you're speaking a language that we now think is foreign because we're all doing it. So you have to know what's going on in your world. All right, next step. Setting goals and career development. What are your short term? What are your long-term goals? I just told my husband a year ago, I remember setting up my office. I just had celebrated my one year anniversary. I call it my 365th day anniversary because I felt every 365 days days of starting my own business. And I remember us sitting down here and I said, do you think I'll have business? And as the months went by and things build up, I'm so busy right now. We just looked at my calendar and next week, I, Monday I'm down in like kind of the Cincinnati area. And then I'm like three days in Columbus. I come back for a day. I'm four days in Columbus. I'm back for a day. Then we leave for a cruise. I come back. I'm a couple of days in town. I go to Phoenix. I'm in DC. I'm just like everywhere. And I said, and my long-term plan is I want to be busier than I am now next year so that I can hire an assistant. Like that's where I'm at. So what are your goals? Like, where are you at? What do you want to be doing? And I promise you when I started in my career, I knew that HR was what I wanted to do and be. Cause we didn't have HR degrees when I came out of school. When I knew HR was what I wanted to do and be, I knew I wanted to be the head of an HR department. I knew I wanted to make six figures seemed like a dream back then. Cause back then, if you made your age, you were doing great in life. So if I was 28 and I was making $28,000, that was great. Yeah, I'm old. So anyway, so I had goals. None of them were that I would ever start my business back then. So at some point my goal shifted. Continuous learning. I go to training for Valerie. I do not know everything. I know a lot. I like to share what I know, but I like to learn. I need to learn. Y'all need to learn. And then what are opportunities for you to get new challenges? Are you part of the committees or the opportunities that this association offers? Are you part of other opportunities that are available to you? And then when to fold? Janelle, turn the slide. If you already accepted a low number or you told them a low number, you can't come back and renege. They tell you it's their best offer. It's their best offer. They can't go anymore. But remember, you can try creative. Go some other direction. Get there some other way. You have no justification. You just are trying a number. You just are fixated on something. You don't have the chops to get something else. Think about it from is this your ego speaking and not the real reason why. So a couple of do's and don'ts to keep us all safe. The one thing I'll tell you is don't get emotional. Do not let your emotions take over. You want to stay calm. That's why you walk away. It's never Rome on fire. You don't have to have an answer at that moment. If they're saying they have to have an answer by the end of the day today and they just gave you the offer this morning, nobody should be doing that. Now if y'all have been going back and forth for a week or so and they definitely need an answer by the end of that week, they need to know because they've got other candidates that are hanging on needing to know what's going on. But if it's the same day, they've got some time. But if this thing has been dragging on, there does come a point where they've got to have an answer. Some other thing is don't seem desperate. Don't act like you've got to share all your issues with them. It's just desperate. What you can say is that you bring a ton of value. So I forget who said that in the questions. This is where you sell what you know and what you're going to bring to the table day one through 90. And those first 30 days, what you're going to see me do is I'm going to come in with all my knowledge, skills, and ability, and I'm going to be able to be bup, bup, bup, bup. I'm going to be riding side saddle with your current employees on a lot of these things because I've done this work. What I'm going to be doing is I'm going to this work. What I'm going to be doing is I'm going to be learning your lingo, your people, those things. But the work, I'm proficient at. And I'll be able to step right in. In a promotion, that's where you're really going to sail through is by really focusing on what you know already and how you're going to use it to catapult you further. Do not have a target salary and be so blinded by that target salary that you can't see anything else. Negotiation is based on compromise. You have to be able to give and take. The theory of negotiation is if everybody leaves a little happy or a little unhappy, that's success. No one is ever fully happy when there's a successful negotiation end. We got a little bit of what we wanted. They got a little bit of what they wanted. Understand that. And if you are so fixed on your target salary and they're not willing to give it, walk away. Just like the gentleman who wanted $200,000. As soon as he said it, I was like, well, I'm going to have to go back to my client because my client will have to tell me if that's even something that they can entertain. I was going back to the board president. And when I called the board president, he was like, oh my God, Valerie. So yeah, do not rely on a verbal acceptance. So if you guys go back and forth and you all come to an agreement, say to them very clearly, I'm going to need that in writing before I can turn in my notice or before I can fully accept. So my gentleman who accepted today, got the final he gave me his start date. We got the letter all set and done, sent it off to him today so that he can, he feels comfortable. He's got something in hand. He knows what it is. He feels comfortable that he turned in his notice. He's got a new place to go. He's got benefits. He's got a salary. You want to make sure you're ready to go. You want to make sure you're got benefits. He's got a salary. You want to make sure you have all those things. So again, last slide, negotiate like an expert. It has to be practice. You have to work it. It's a muscle and pay is not the only place where you guys are negotiating. You do it all the time. The three-year-old almost three-year-old granddaughter, we negotiate all the time with her. And I know all these people say, well, you don't negotiate with children. You're the parent. Listen, when we're trying to go to bed at night, we're negotiating like crap. When she's having a meltdown, we're negotiating. I do not do well at night. I like to go to sleep. I need my sleep. Listen, we're negotiating. She's, she's a terrorist and I cave, whatever she wants, she's getting, I don't care. So we all negotiate in life in our own little ways and that's what we do. So hopefully not only will you use this for pay, but you are going to use this in other aspects of your life. So what other questions do we have out there? If any, I don't see any additional questions in the Q and a, but I'll, I'll, I'll give our parting speech. And if anybody wants to put a question in here before we wrap up, we can get it answered. I do want to remind you that we do have a conversation circle scheduled for September 26th at 1 p.m. Eastern. That's free to attend. So if you want to continue the conversation, um, there's a lot of good points that Valerie brought up here today that we'll be able to talk about. And Heidi, uh, added the link to the survey in the chat box. So please, please, uh, complete the survey for this, uh, webinar. We'd love to hear your feedback and, uh, thank you very much for attending. So I think we're, I think that's it, Valerie. Thank you very much. Thank you all. Thank you all so much. I did send over a handout with some tips on it. So I know that, um, Heidi and Janelle make that available to you all. It was a pleasure working with your group and, um, hopefully if anybody has any questions, um, my contact information is also on the slide. So please feel free to reach out. All right. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

salary negotiations

Valerie Nash

Women's Initiative

821 Consulting

CareerBuilder

negotiation strategies

professional development

benefits negotiation

self-assessment

career goals