The Value of the Role

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Prospecting for Gold If there is always one part of the early interview process that is a sticky wicket it is the, “What were you making at your last job?” question. This is a question that, particularly as someone who recently moved from NYC to Austin, Texas, is a problem to answer.

The bigger problem is having this question posed before there is clarity around the role in question. I have done Director-level work, Manager-level work and individual contributor work — in different types of organizations, under different types of circumstances. And some of them are more demanding roles than others (and, frankly, the Director-level stuff isn’t always the most demanding). The price needs to be based on the demands of the role.

But if I have no information about the role, then how can I have any idea what price I think is reasonable? I don’t know if the role is internal, or client-facing; I don’t know if the role has any direct reports, or is a traditional PM in a matrixed environment; etc. And, worse yet, the recruiter doing the screening didn’t have the answers to those questions (which is a whole different problem that I won’t go into at the moment).

Now, I understand that, for most people, there is a basic financial need that has to be met, and discussing a role that pays less than that is a waste of everyone’s time. And, as a time-sensitive person, the last thing I want to do is waste time – my own, or anyone else’s. But if my answer is, “I don’t know enough about the role” and “My priority at the moment is not salary, but is in getting back to a collaborative work environment” then pressing me and threatening me with not being able to proceed without a number is doing everyone a disservice.

Even worse, after telling me that they wouldn’t be able to proceed without me giving them a number of some kind (at which point I was sorely tempted to say, “Ok, then I guess we can’t proceed.”), she said, “Certainly there is some number that is not worth leaving your home office without?” Since I had just told her that the whole reason I was looking for a conventional employment arrangement instead of more client work was specifically because I do not like working from home, I find that question to have entirely missed the point.

At the moment, I’d be willing to seriously consider working at Starbucks or Barnes and Noble just to get out of the house. I can’t stand working from home. If I wanted to continue doing this, I’d find more client work — which, frankly, would probably be easier than finding a traditional ‘job’ if that’s what I wanted. So for her to ask me that as a means of getting a number out of me was actually a bit preposterous.

For as tiring as it was, there were some things about last week in California that were particularly wonderful — and one of the greatest things was visiting with some of the most brilliant people I know, all of whom I’ve worked with in the past. And whether it’s Kari (Director of Ecommerce at Design Within Reach) or John (mentor and former boss) or Josh (VP at O’Reilly) or any the other dozen or so people I saw, the one thing that was so clear to me is how ridiculous the ‘interview’ process is when it comes to ascertaining the value that a potential hire brings to a new role in a new organization. A ‘screening’ call like the one I just had cannot capture a fraction of what is valuable about any of these people. Or of me, either, frankly.

John told me last week that he refuses to look at resumes anymore, because he cares about the person — their attitude, their work style, their energy, etc. It’s about the person. And he finds a resume to be a distracting and often mis-representational distillation of their experience that gives very little indication of the value they bring to their role.

Unfortunately, unless you have such a great network that every role you get comes from people who already know you, we haven’t come up with a better way to weed out — even at a high level — people who are “close” versus people who are “nowhere near” what we are looking for.

Even more unfortunate, though, is that it’s still all just marketing. And whether it’s an employment candidate or a Big Mac, the real thing rarely ends up looking like the ad.

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