The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!

Moggy knows.

Had my annual appraisal at work today, impostor syndrome was in overdrive! Think it went pretty well in the end though thankfully! :toot:

We have to fill out a "self review" type form electronically - strengths and weaknesses, what you think has gone well this year etc. Things not to accidentally copy and paste into this form before you submit it: a post you made on this strawberry floating forum! :fp:

Luckily it was fairly innocuous - something about my PS4 dropping connection a lot, but it could have been so much worse - imagine if I'd accidentally pasted something from the No Context Thread or one or RichardUK's imperialist rants! :slol:

A friend gave me a heads up there was a Comms/PR role coming up near her so I sent an email to her contact. Got an email from the head of the department saying we should talk and we just spent an hour chatting about the role.

The job is in another country, Luxembourg, so would require me to move away from my wife to take it. It's not my ideal role but could potentially pay more money than I ever thought I could realistically earn. And this potentiality is the problem; she refused to give me a salary when I asked how much it paid, instead saying that when I formally applied (because apparently I hadn't?) I should provide an expected pay range.

Is this strawberry floating commonplace these days? This is the first salaried role I've applied for in a few years and it just seems ridiculous to me that they can't tell me how much money they'll be paying for my services, like it's some sort of secret.

Trying to get salaries out of employers these days is painful. There seems to be a trend of putting the onus on the applicant to provide an expected salary, basically so they can low-ball you.

I think the higher paying, less defined and more unique the job, the more likely that is going to happen, but it can happen regardless. When I applied for my job I basically had to tell them what I wanted to be paid. They probably have quite a big range in salary that they will pay for the job, depending on the person and their experience, and don't want to either limit their applicants or promise a higher salary to a less experienced candidate by giving a number upfront - so they just say "competitive".

Makes it difficult to know what to pitch yourself in at. My only experience of it was easy because it was my first job out of uni with no job experience so I lowballed myself and have climbed up subsequently in pay reviews.

With yourself you have the experience, and the added complication of not coming from a salaried position that you can easily compare to. Given the upheaval the job would entail I'd say you may as well go in high rather than low, but that would be me.

Problem is too that Luxembourg is on a completely different payscale to the rest of Europe. The minimum salary is £2000 odd a month, with the average wage being around €55-60k a year.

I have literally no idea what the job I'm applying for would pay, even less so after the chat I had with the department head.

Just ask for like £80,000-odd and see if they'll talk you down. The whole "what are your salary expectations" thing is a horrid practise and somehow it still seems to be the done thing despite it playing a massive hand in the wage gap.

Even in my relatively short working life the way that salaries are discussed (or rather, tip-toed around) has changed, and not for the better. It used to be that you'd apply for a role and at some point in the process they'd give you an indication of what they're looking to offer, and you'd go from there. In the last few years it's definitely changed so that the onus is now on the applicant to provide a figure of what their expectation is. The last job I applied for there was no guide or hint from the employer side. I waited for them to broach the subject and it was "what are your expectations?". I had a figure in mind, and was told "well it's different here to the UK" (this was an international role) but I knew that was bullshit.

As OrangeRKN said, the more senior or higher-paid roles, the more vague it seems to be, and it's about low-balling wherever possible.

Worth saying as a wider point that you can sometimes get salary ranges from Glassdoor and LinkedIn, but also just using a search engine to find current vacancies as well as expired job postings can work. Even in a small market like Luxembourg there must be some online postings that give an idea of salaries.

Just got an estimate from my friend's source and it's way less than the minimum I'd require to uproot my entire life. Considering what this woman told me would be expected (basically creating and maintaining an entire communications strategy, running a TEDx type yearly conference and providing daily content both copy based and video) it's a c omparatively very low number.

I could apparently expect €3k a month net, so gross this is around €42k a year. This sounds a lot (to me at least) but the average price for shared accommodation, ie a room in a house, in Lux is €1000 with bills on top, and it's one of the most expensive countries in the world to live. That salary is about on par with that of an administrative assistant, which is a strawberry floating poor show given what's required.

Considering the average salary is €55k that's about what I'd expected.

Scotch that one then.

Tafdolphin wrote:Just got an estimate from my friend's source and it's way less than the minimum I'd require to uproot my entire life. Considering what this woman told me would be expected (basically creating and maintaining an entire communications strategy, running a TEDx type yearly conference and providing daily content both copy based and video) it's a c omparatively very low number.

I could apparently expect €3k a month net, so gross this is around €42k a year. This sounds a lot (to me at least) but the average price for shared accommodation, ie a room in a house, in Lux is €1000 with bills on top, and it's one of the most expensive countries in the world to live. That salary is about on par with that of an administrative assistant, which is a strawberry floating poor show given what's required.

Considering the average salary is €55k that's about what I'd expected.

Scotch that one then.

If you'd decline anything less, you may as well give a figure in that case.

However the absolute rule of salary negotiation is to never give a figure.

If they ask, something along the lines with you obviously have a much better idea of the value you expect this position to give, so if you give me a range I can tell you if it's in the right ball park.

Last edited by Tafdolphin on Tue Aug 13, 2019 7:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah. Truth is I'll probably still apply and give a range with the minimum a fair amount higher than that. Decision's in their court then.

It was always a long shot tbh.

Mentoring with the Prince's Trust is sunsetting after 3 years, better sort something else out. Can feely totally and utterly lost after a matter of days when you're literally alone 90% of the time at work. It's pretty gooseberry fool. Hopefully I can pay someone or get a bank involved. I probably did the right thing not taking out a low interest loan on top of existing debts, as if more funding makes you less isolated.

I'll either get slowly more impostery and confused as time moves on or I'll freak out and do more to interact with my customers and stuff but I will miss having someone to talk to about my work purposefully just once a month.

It's something I would be legally entitled to in a normal workplace so it's not really asking for more than that, the point is I have to sort it out myself. Not that my experience of "normal" work actually works out that way; I've never been provided with any additional support through Access to Work or similar. They just told me to get the company to pay for it and it goes around in circles like that, even if it's against the law to fail to provide adjustments. They can just come up with some other excuse to get rid of you.

Taf, the simplest and most incisive strategy for this in my experience is to come up with a profit/loss based on the lifestyle you want and then double that amount. It's far easier to go down in price than up. Sometimes I quote £500 per day which in full time terms would be almost £150 grand :lol:

but hourly rates or in some cases even dayrates for my kind of work are complete nonsense (experience and skills are far more important) in this day and age so I quote for how effectively I am going to solve the problem rather than how many wheels my car has driving to the same destination or how fast I work with x cups or tea or y hours of sleep etc. Don't sell time, it's a meaningless commodity provided you are diligent and can meet deadlines by actually having the skills needed to solve the problem.

Tafdolphin wrote:Yeah. Truth is I'll probably still apply and give a range with the minimum a fair amount higher than that. Decision's in their court then.

It was always a long shot tbh.

Yeah it’s worth going for and make sure the bottom end of your range is slightly higher than your actual minimum. Don’t go too much above but give yourself some leeway if they try and offer you less than the range you give them.

Right, some weirdness is happening at work with regards to interviewing etc, wanna see what GR thinks. Were hiring at the moment for a junior software QA position, its entry level, looking for recent graduates, people with little to no practical experience, fairly obvious from the job titile and the job spec that its aimed at that sort of person.

So 2 weird but possibly related things are happening, first is we are getting mostly experienced people applying for the role, they have multiple years experience and their salary expectations are way above what the position pays. The other weird thing is when we send an invite to a phone/video interview they ask for the job spec, do people apply for jobs without reading a spec? Do people apply to so many jobs they lose track of who they applied to? Is this normal? Am I the weird one for knowing what I apply for and expecting others to do the same?

Are they coming through via an agency? They will often strawberry float up things like matching experience to a role, or just sending you candidates without giving them all the information / specifications.

Yep just what I was going to say - sounds like agency shenanigans.

Once they get people on their books they will put them forward for all sorts of stuff that is vaguely in their field and the candidate often doesn't even get to see the details of what the agency is putting them up for.

If the job is posted online then yeah you're probably just getting mass applications.

If you were doing it through an agency they would screen applications for you.

Never thought of the agency idea, the only time I used an agency to get a job they contacted me about every application and stuff first so I hadnt considered that possibility. Also the applications came through a theird party website website so its possible they have an auto apply thing setup. Another mystery solved by GR, good work folks.

Just had a response to an application email (good!) that asks a question answered in the second line of said email (bad) then asks for samples of my work (link provided on the 5th line)

Looks like the person literally didn't read the email (weird).

The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!

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