A brief introduction

• The Problem: the concept of negotiating salaries is flawed and leads to suboptimal outcomes for both the employee and employer.

  It’s a painful experience. There’s information asymmetry. And, in most cases, there is a power imbalance. They have something. You want something.

• The Solution: over the past few years, I’ve started to advocate for what I call ‘Best Foot Forward’ offers. It expands on the idea of ‘no negotiation’ offers, with a concerted focus on building and maintaining internal equity.

  The concept itself is simple: give your candidate your best offer so there is no negotiation. Show them you value what they will bring to the team.

Where we’re headed

Over the past few years, there has been a large movement towards salary transparency. It’s difficult for many organizations to do. And a transition, even if desired, takes a significant amount of work to put in place.

Salary transparency will soon be a legislated reality most everywhere. Better to be proactive than to wait until legislation makes you.

Naturally, as candidates (and employees) have greater visibility into their potential compensation, the need for greater structure emerges.

Now candidates know where they are within a band. It is on you as an employer to make the case for ‘why there’ within that band.

Building blocks to put it in practice

Let’s agree on what a modern (mid 2020’s) tech company should be doing:

• Companies should operate with defined salary ranges based on some sort of career framework.
• Those ranges should be known by all parties: the candidate, the hiring manager and the recruiter.
• The company should conduct competency-based interviews that determine proficiency within a level, which forms the basis of the salary.

If we have all the above, we’ve automatically made it easier for everyone (employer and candidate / employee) to operate on an even playing field.

Framework for implementation

In practice, the roles and responsibilities are a bit different. Hiring managers focus on determining proficiency while the People team focuses on compensation calibration.

First, candidate offers are determined by an assessment of the individuals proficiency within the level for which they are being hired.

Proficiency is based on one of three buckets:

• Developing: an individual who has mastered their prior leveling and has demonstrated initial development towards the competencies of their evaluated / current level.
• Proficient: an individual who consistently demonstrates the competencies associated with their level who is building towards mastery.