Preparing For The Return To The Office

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Ready or not, your boss has told you that the time for everyone to return to the office is rapidly approaching. Yikes!

As more and more people get vaccinated, it’s clear that the pendulum is swinging back to the pre-Covid era, and that means some type of return to “the office” for employees who were fortunate enough to continue working from home through the pandemic. When, what, and how is the latest debate. For most employees, the dream of working remotely is coming to an end.

Few people have ever had to come up with a checklist of how to deal with something like this before and there are no standard rules or ways of going about it. Each company will decide for itself how to proceed and there may be a period of trial and error before settling on the most productive path forward. 

As you can probably surmise, employees hold varying and conflicting opinions on critical issues related to returning to the office, many of which may be in direct opposition to whatever model a company chooses, including being back in the office full time. You’ll need to make your own preparations; here are some suggestions for how to get ready for the “new normal” – whatever that may mean. 

1. Adapt your mindset. You enjoyed the advantages of working from home but are now faced with the announcement that you are expected to return to your company’s office. You’ll be expected to be on board with the transition. If you’re not, your resistance will be noticed, so pretend if need be! Management will expect employees to adapt without (or at least, minimal) complaint.

2. Be flexible, nimble, and agile. The move back to the office is evolving. The “new normal” you are initially told to expect may change direction over time. For example, some companies plan to try a hybrid model at first, then re-assess. You may be back for only a short time before you’re told to be back in the office full time every day. If something goes wrong (e.g. an outbreak), the reverse is possible. You may return to the office only to learn you will be going back home for a while as workplace protocols are reimagined.

3. 3Speak to your manager. Get ahead of the transition by having a conversation with your manager about the new workplace requirements as well as what your position will really look like once you’re back in the office. Most likely, it’s not going to be the way it was before with the simple addition of hand sanitizer. The way your office functions has a direct correlation to the way your work will be conducted. For example, if you’re part of a hybrid model, what are the textures and expectations of days in the office vs. days at home?

4. Maximize your presence during your time in the office. No matter how many days you are in the office per week, be visible, available, and diligent. Remote employees tend to be forgotten (sorry, it’s true), so maximize your presence when you’re there. Strengthen your co-worker relationships and collaborations as you all learn to navigate new safety requirements and new ways of doing the work together. Any systemic change presents opportunities for you to step out and shine.

5. Prepare to make your own career assessment and act accordingly. Since this is a fluid, dynamic situation you don’t exactly know how things will be until you are doing them. If you return to the office and you do not like whatever version of the new normal has been pursued, it is difficult to imagine a scenario where you can negotiate yourself back to working from home every day. Be ready to search for new opportunities that align with your desires.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

Sealing The Deal: The Salary Negotiation Endgame

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After slogging through the interview process, you’ve received an offer and reached the end of the end game. You’re ever so close.

A company has made you a great job offer and you really want to work there, but as you review the deal points a few things make you hesitant. Whether it be the pillars of a typical compensation package –  salary, vacation time, health benefits, and retirement funds  – or other types of perks such as bonuses, the devil is not only in the details but in the negotiation over them.

This is not the time for recklessness – negotiations over salary are where many job offers tend to fall apart, and sealing the deal can be tricky. Here are some recommendations that may help you navigate this crucial final step:

1.    Take a deep breath. Then take an objective and emotionless look at the deal points that are the cause of your consternation. How would you rewrite them so that you would sign on the spot? For example, let’s say the issue is salary. You may feel the offer is too low – is it a knee-jerk reaction that you should get more, or have you done your homework and know empirically that you should get more? Have you done your research? Have you gone to payscale.com to gather market data? If you want to get additional compensation, quantifiable data from reputable sources can help you demonstrate that you should be paid at a higher level. “I want more” is not quantifiable data.

2.    Stay on target. If you want the job, and believe the compensation is near or within range, your goal is getting to a situation where you and the employer both agree to “Yes.” The pitfall here, unwitting or not, is turning a valid negotiation over a valid offer into a confrontation that suddenly slips out of control. Taking an adversarial approach or tone may place you in jeopardy of losing the offer altogether. Keep the mindset that agreeing on the terms of your employment is a collaboration with a common goal – “Yes.”

3.    Remember – the company wants to close the deal, too. Recruiting candidates and hiring new employees requires an enormous amount of time and effort. The company wants to make a deal. Nobody in the chain wants to start over. If you come to the table with reasonable arguments and viable solutions, the company should be receptive to the conversation.

4.    Call the person who made the offer. Once you have your strategy mapped out and your corroborating information at the ready, pick up the phone and call the person who extended the offer. Do not email. Do not text. Things get misconstrued in emails and texts. Do not leave a message saying you have “problems with the offer,” or other negative-sounding language. You’re close. So close. Don’t play games. Stick to your script.

5.    Try to understand the company’s compensation philosophy. They don’t know you from Adam or Eve. When you receive a company’s initial offer, it’s often a standard contract that matches their idea of how they pay their staff – they often have specific salary ranges for levels of skills and experience. Ask the recruiter how they arrived at the figure, understand their thinking, and then present your perspective.

6.    Negotiate strategically. There are many ways to prepare for a negotiation and if you have a tried-and-true method that works for you by all means stick with it. If you don’t, one simple and easy way is to structure your conversation into three parts.

• Share your excitement for the opportunity to join the company and your gratitude for the offer. 

• As concisely as possible, detail places in the offer where you believe there are gaps. articulate the reasons for your positions and present quantifiable data to back up your assertions. And if you’re willing to trade certain aspects of the offer (such as being willing to forgo additional salary in exchange for more paid time off).

•  Reiterate how much you want the position, demonstrate gratitude for his or her help, and strive to leave him or her with the impression that you would be a great person with whom to work. And close with an incentive – if they can meet your request, share that you’re willing to sign on the dotted line.

7.    Know when the end of the endgame is over.  Once you’ve laid out the details of your position on sticking points, it’s the company’s turn to counter-offer. Be aware that if the counter-offer fully addresses your concerns and meets you all the way, you will be expected to accept (doing otherwise would demonstrate bad faith). Don’t overstay your welcome. If the counter-offer still has a deal-breaker or two, there is wriggle room for one more try. But once it’s over, it’s over, and you’ll have to decide whether to accept or walk away.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

I Submitted My Application to the Company and Never Heard Back – Should I Be Offended?

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When you contact someone it’s human nature to expect a response – any response – and that extends into our professional lives. It’s bad for business to leave colleagues and clients hanging in silence.

To go a step further, when you spend a great deal of time creating accounts, filling out multiple online forms, uploading documents, and any other job application requirements, it feels that common human decency would dictate the expected response in this situation more than any other. Unfortunately, that is often not the case.

Should you be offended? Probably. The process is broken. And while this is not an apology for employers who don’t get back to you, it’s fair to offer an explanation for what may be going on behind the curtain. Let’s agree on this – the process is not great, but to understand why involves basic math. 

Corporate recruiters get that they have extremely limited time and resources to fill a job with a good candidate – and are under intense pressure to do so. 

An in-house corporate recruiter at a mid-sized company may have 20-50 jobs to fill at once, so for the math let’s say 35. The same technology that allows you to submit a job application online allows thousands of other people to do the same thing at the exact same time and suddenly there are 5,000 applications per job. 35 x 5,000 = 175,000 applications and resumes to wade through. That’s inhumane to the recruiter and the candidate, and simultaneously results in nearly impossible odds of being found.

Additionally, companies measure the performance of their recruiters by several metrics, which can often be at odds. These include “Days to Fill” (emphasizing speed), “Quality of Hire” (emphasizing candidate credentials), and “Cost per Hire” (emphasizing filling jobs without outside help from agency recruiters or expensive sourcing tools). What you end up with is a frazzled recruiter who is frequently under-resourced and saddled with unrealistic expectations.

Therefore, rather than spend time lovingly going through all the resumes received to find the ideal candidate, the focus is on letting their computer systems rank the candidates based upon the match to the job description, and to as quickly as possible gather a stack of five to ten resumes of qualified candidates to present to the hiring manager.

Make no mistake, the process is broken from the applicant side, too – follow-up, responses, or other communications are rare – but this is the reality.

If you submitted an application and feel slighted you haven’t received a response, consider the following recommendations:

• Be focused with your follow-up. Find the right person, and send them a note just once.

• Research and find the name of  the hiring manager. If you are able to follow-up directly with the hiring manager you will ease pressure off the recruiter.

• Be respectful and empathetic in all of your interactions with whoever is involved, from the recruiter to the receptionist.

• Be prompt and be prepared. Do not spend considerable time and effort breaking down the door and then fumble around for something to say.

•  Know when to move on to pursuing the next job opportunity. It’s not a great idea to put all your hope into one posting with one company; apply to jobs at other employers, too, since there’s a possibility this one could fall through.

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Philip Roufail contributed to this article.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, career coaching services, and outplacement services. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.