Securing Fair Compensation: Strategies for Job Offer Negotiation

Want to secure your worth and never leave money on the table again? Buckle up for an episode packed with insights and practical advice on negotiating job offer compensation. Our special guests today are Salesforce professionals, Fred Cadena and Jason Zikawitz. Fred shares about his recent podcast relaunch, Banking on Disruption, focusing on digital transformation in finance. Meanwhile, Jason, the latest Revenue Cloud Consultant, walks us through his recent shift from a training to a configuration role. We explore how the Salesforce ecosystem has significantly contributed to their professional success.

Have you ever considered what accepting a lower salary can do to your work relationships and performance? Jason shares his riveting account of how negotiation and self-advocacy led to a 25% pay increase in his new role. Taking us through the risks and rewards of negotiation, we discuss how settling for less can lead to resentment, affecting your job satisfaction and performance. From discussing the value of asking questions, to understanding how to deal with the risks associated with negotiations, this episode offers a goldmine of insights. 

Get your notepad ready as we share practical negotiation exercises that could make a significant difference in your next job offer. Hear how Fred interviewed a candidate who created an impactful interview presentation that resulted in a 20% pay increase. Vanessa and Jason also share their negotiation experiences and the importance of preparation and practice. Understanding the costs of negotiation can give you the upper hand, so don't miss out on this valuable discussion. Tune in, and empower yourself with the tools to ensure that your compensation matches your worth.

Transcript

Announcer: 0:02

And now the number one audio program that helps you to hire, get hired and soar higher in the Salesforce ecosystem. It's the Salesforce career show with Josh Matthews and Vanessa Grant.

Josh Matthews: 0:20

All right, welcome everybody. Thanks for the applause, barry, anthony. Okay, everybody sit down. Please have a seat. So welcome to the show, everybody, and to the live show and also to the podcast. This is your host, josh Matthews.

Josh Matthews: 0:37

Our co-host, vanessa Grant, is stuck in a little bit of traffic on her way to Tahoe Dreaming. We were hoping she'd be there on the street able to interact with some of the attendees, and we may get that a little bit later on in the show, but we also may not. But that's okay because we are well prepared. We have some fantastic people here on the panel, a lot of our usuals, including our friends Jason, fred and Anthony. We've got one of my partners in crime, steven Greger, from thesalesforrestrecruitercom. That's the business that I run and if you want to check it out, you can go to guess what Thesalesforrestrecruitercom and check it out.

Josh Matthews: 1:14

New website coming out in about a month. So what we're going to do today instead is we're going to have just a little bit of a chit chat, see how everybody's doing, and then we're going to dive into some good questions that we've received from our audience members. These are people who've listened to the podcast but maybe haven't been able to attend one of our live Twitter Spaces shows like we're on right now, so we'll get to the bottom of all good things. So let me just check in with our panel here. How's everybody doing today?

Fred Cadena: 1:43

Fantastic, it's a beautiful Wednesday.

Josh Matthews: 1:45

All right, and that's Fred Cadena. Fred, give us a little intro and tell us about your podcast, too, while you're at it.

Fred Cadena: 1:51

Sure, thanks. It's awesome to be here. I've been a long time listener and loved everything that you've been doing with the show and the podcast. Fred Cadena, I've been in the Salesforce ecosystem for about 16 years, six years as a customer, 10 years now in consulting. I also recently launched, relaunched a podcast. I guess I should say I launched it at the start of COVID, kind of petered out for a little bit, relaunched it a few months ago. It's called Banking on Disruption. It is about digital transformation with an emphasis on financial services, banking sector topics, but certainly not banking exclusively and very, very tied in with the Salesforce ecosystem. This last episode we had last week was all about AI. So if you're just in AI, please go check that out and you can find us at bankingondisruptioncom.

Josh Matthews: 2:46

Thank you, fred, and are you available on all the major platforms, including Apple, spotify, etc.

Fred Cadena: 2:54

Apple, Spotify, the whole gamut. So if you can find us, you're not looking.

Josh Matthews: 3:01

Okay, terrific. Now, as I mentioned, we have some questions that were sent in by the audience and we're going to go ahead and address that. In the meantime, we've got Vanessa has joined us. Welcome, Vanessa.

Vanessa Grant: 3:13

Hi, sorry I'm driving. I'm on my way to Tahoe Dream.

Josh Matthews: 3:17

Okay, all right, vanessa. Vanessa, give us a quick rundown. Who are you? What are you all about?

Vanessa Grant: 3:23

I am Vanessa Grant. I am on my way to Tahoe Dreaming, where I'm going to be speaking about diagramming with Janine Markhart, and I am a nine-time certified, been in the ecosystem for 13 years, love co-hosting here, even if I'm on the side of a cliff, and I've been helping people with their Salesforce careers for probably three years now.

Josh Matthews: 3:49

Yeah, you have been and you've done an incredible job. And, by the way, I know that road, I know that cliff. It's quite steep, so drive carefully.

Vanessa Grant: 3:58

It's just about a hero. Then I just got to find internet and I should be all right, but sorry for running a little late today.

Josh Matthews: 4:03

No, it's okay, Don't worry about it. It's okay we can edit this down like it never even happened, but we probably won't because we just don't have time. So let's kick off the show with a quick convo with our friend, jason Zikawitz. Jason's a regular contributor here on the podcast and on a live show, but we want to congratulate I kind of jumped the gun a little bit earlier, two weeks ago or maybe last week if you tuned into the podcast congratulating Jason on something, but no one knows, because I sort of caught myself and then shut up. But what I was actually wanting to congratulate him on was a new position. So, jason, give us the quick 20-second rundown. What are you doing? What's your new gig, buddy?

Jason Zeikowitz: 4:51

Thank you, Thank you, yeah, yeah and you know. Thank you, Josh, you knew the inside scoop because you really you were great in coaching me, helping me with that interview process. New gig is as a revenue cloud consultant, so really excited, going from the training side to the configuring side. I've just had a progressive journey, being an end user super user, trainer of users, and now I am the producer, the builder. So you know, working my way to that back end really excited.

Josh Matthews: 5:24

So happy for you, my friend, really really happy for you, and you know you've been training for a long time and you've you know you've put your time in. I know that you are you okay if I speak frankly about some of the things that we talked about? Because I think that this is an important learning opportunity for anyone who is interested in negotiating on their own behalf. And I don't mean negotiating for a better offer, because you know you just want more money. I mean because you're actually worth that money.

Josh Matthews: 5:56

Like we always said when we're negotiating our compensation, whether it's with the organization that we are in and we want to raise, or if we are interviewing with a new company and we're trying to express our value and be compensated accordingly for it can be a little bit difficult, and I would say that the majority of people struggle in this area. In other words, they may want a job so badly that they stop thinking about the income. I don't mean that they're not thinking about the income. I'm just saying that they make it less important.

Josh Matthews: 6:32

Getting a yes, getting the offer, being able to say yes and get out of whatever situation they're in right now takes priority, but we've got to cross that finish line with everything, including the right amount of compensation, and if we don't, six months later or a year later, we may feel undervalued and we may begin to build resentment, and that can affect our relationships at work and our performance at work. So it's not a great thing for your career to be paid or, to excuse me, to be underpaid or paid the wrong amount. So talk to us about what happened in the negotiations for you with this position and, by the way, this is a job that Jason found on his own, but we're friends, so I gave him a little bit of coaching on this. But go ahead and walk us through that.

Jason Zeikowitz: 7:17

Well, actually I found it through my network, which is the power of networking. So, yeah, I kind of found it through my own, through networking, and when I did get the offer it was a surprise because I've been in the Salesforce ecosystem as a consultant for 2021. So this initial offer was 25% less than what we're now and at first I was just like you know, it was a bit of a shock, but I was actually even thinking of willing to take it, just because of the opportunity to be a configurator and then just be able to work up from there, built from that experience. So, but then, after you know, talking to Josh and other people in my camp about just understanding the mathematics of it that you know for taking that type of cut, I could just simply take a course to be able to get that experience.

Josh Matthews: 8:12

Yeah, I'm just going to jump in here to kind of describe what you mean. So one of the things that I shared with you is, if you're going to take a $25,000 pay cut which is what was that's what the original ask was, and you know, this doesn't mean that the organization that you know hired you is trying to beat you up on money or anything. Maybe they just didn't know, right. So, no harm, no foul. But when we're trying to break into something and we have to understand, there's a cost, there's a cost for education, there's a cost for being relatively or moderately risky or high risk for the new company, and so that's why, you know, entry level positions pay less than senior level positions and senior leadership positions. Right, it's just how it works.

Josh Matthews: 9:00

Okay so, but when you're looking at a $25,000 delta and that might not mean as much when you're already making 225. Right, the 225 to 225 delta is not, you know, as big a deal, right, and let's just mute while we're not talking, please. But the reality is is when you are working and it's, you know, literally close to 25% of your income, now that's massive, really, really massive, and you can just keep the job you've got. It's been $25,000. That gets you halfway through your MBA or whatever program that you want to do. It's not nothing, it's a lot of money. Okay, keep going, buddy.

Jason Zeikowitz: 9:44

Yeah, exactly, and so I think that's the important part to consider, as you mentioned, the resentment that might come later with taking that and also understanding that it wasn't. The original offer wasn't given as a form of the seat or anything, it was just like a part of like oh, for this position, this is the, the pay rank. So there was just a misalignment of where I was and what the position was and just simply having a conversation, being frank, saying, okay, listen, I, you know there was a misunderstanding when I was interviewing. I didn't think the pay range would be there. This is where I'm currently at and that's my minimum request.

Jason Zeikowitz: 10:28

So, with that said, the hiring manager said that he was going to fight for me because he didn't want. You know, he thought that was understandable, he thought I was a good candidate, so he would. He wouldn't be able to, he would have to get that approval, but he was willing to step up to that for that. So I think that was really great and just, you know, you know stating my value and and you know it was a little nerve-wracking at first. So I'm happy that I was negotiating from a position of strength, that I wasn't desperate to take a position, thinking that, okay, if they can't, that this is simply their budget for this position and they can't go beyond it, okay then I should walk away. But if they have that flexibility and this could be, you know, even better situation, because it shows they have flexibility and this also shows that, that that now there's there's expectations, it's, it's there's expectations for me to do. Well, look, man, you stood up for yourself, as what happened, jason.

Josh Matthews: 11:30

Okay, and that means that you're going to stand up for the company on behalf of them when you're working with challenging clients that are making demands that are unreasonable. That's what it demonstrates, right? And and here's the thing, guys, I mean, at the end of the day, asking for something is just a question. It's just a question. It's not going to kill you, right, it's not going to hurt you. Now, keep in mind, there are companies that and I've heard stories about companies where, if you just don't accept the thing that they offer, if you try to negotiate, they're like well, we don't even you know, like you're out, we're not even going to deal with you. And to those people I say good, right, like, don't work for people who are like that you know. Like that's fricking insanity that people would be. Thank you, fred. Like that's fricking insanity. Like why would someone be be that way?

Josh Matthews: 12:20

Better to know early, but standing up for yourself and asking the question, jason, by the way, jason was close to just saying yes. The good thing is is he has a network. He reached out to me, reached out to a couple of other people, right, which, in those conversations, was able to figure out. Well, this is how I ask, and this is why I'm asking. And so now we can paint a story in about 30 seconds or a minute for the hiring manager, right? And what do you say? He said he's going to go fight for you. Now I mean, that's magical.

Josh Matthews: 12:54

But people leave money on the table, whether you're selling your business, whether you're selling your car, whether you're selling your house or whether you're selling yourself into a job. Most people aren't particularly good at asking for the thing that they want. They're not even good at asking for the thing that they want in relationships with people they love. So why would they be any better at it when they're actually, you know, talking to a stranger about a job? If anything, they're going to have even more fear than then, right? So this is just a big call to action for everybody who's currently in the negotiating process. Expecting to be in the job market, is actively in the job market.

Josh Matthews: 13:35

Look, the people who win negotiations are the people who are willing to walk away. It's not more complex than that. You guys still got to be nice, but it's not that much more complicated. I mean, there's a whole library of books on how to negotiate. But if you start there, right, if you start from a position of strength. That's a good thing. But even if he wasn't in a position of strength, he could have acted like he was in a position of strength and no one's the wiser. That doesn't mean con someone, it just means ask the question. That's just to psych yourself up, to give yourself the motivation, the energy and let's face it the courage to ask what you want, ask for what you want. Anthony, you had your hand up, pipe up buddy.

Anthony Rodriguez: 14:16

Hey, first off, just a big shout out to Jason. Congrats, man, on your new position. I started with Booz Allen about a month ago and I had my network worth its weight in gold. You got to take time to find these people, connect with these people and just learn from them. And you know my mentor, Janeen Marquardt. She's riding with Vanessa Grand right now. Shout out to the legend my favorite mermaid.

Anthony Rodriguez: 14:44

What's up Janeen. She helped me so much. And when I was getting started I ran into Josh Matthews. We had a conversation and he made me realize that there was a lot I wasn't seeing. You know, there's a lot of my expectations. How it should be and how it is was so different, you know, and once I started I had some of the best advice and he's like listen, there's going to be a lot, your brain's going to overheat, but you can't take that work home. You got to be with the family when you're home. You got to let the CPU unit on your shoulders cool back down. And then you go hard again tomorrow and eventually it starts to catch up and you feel, you know, like you're less like you're racing and more like you're jogging.

Josh Matthews: 15:27

There you go, buddy. Yeah, and then he gave me and Casey a lift last time we were at Florida Dreaming in the rain. So thanks, anthony, it was great to meet you then, and you've been on the show ever since. So appreciate you, buddy. So, vanessa, what about you? I'd like to hear from you, and I'd like to hear from Fred and Stephen too, about this experience of you know. Have you had an experience where you've had to negotiate your compensation for a new position? What happened?

Vanessa Grant: 16:00

I'll be honest, this is actually a huge weak point in my game. I'm actually listening intently and I was thinking about asking how you get better at it and you were mentioning you know reading about it, but it is partly like a confidence issue and also, just, you know the art of negotiation. I took a negotiation class when I was getting my MBA and I remember they had us do this exercise where we had to negotiate with somebody else and I thought I had a great deal at the end of it and I got the worst deal in the class and it's just something I generally not felt good at. So while I have had to negotiate, you know my way of negotiating so far is just don't accept the first offer in general, because I think it's usually expected that you don't. But that's kind of as far as I've gotten.

Josh Matthews: 16:49

Yeah, and look, I mean, it's a normal experience and let's face it, nice people tend to be like that. They tend to be nice. They feel like, if they ask for more, that they're somehow going to be putting someone off offending them, or maybe that person might characterize them as not a nice person because they're asking for something right. But nice people ask for things all the time. You get to be both you know.

Josh Matthews: 17:14

So, just so you know, Vanessa, my 18th birthday from my father, my 18th birthday present that is from my father was a two day Keras negotiating seminar. That's the family I'm from, guys, Right. So, and I went to that and, unlike you and I'm going to brag for just a moment because I was just a kid, I was 18 years old, right, I showed up to this conference in a Guatemalan shirt, my long hippie hair, Birkenstocks, baggy, army colored pants and there are about 45, 50 of us in the two day seminar and on day two we had probably some sort of similar negotiating exercise and I won out of everybody. Everybody else was in a suit, there were buyers from major corporations and then me, you know, with my long curly hair and, you know, toes sticking out. So that was kind of funny, but yeah, a little bit of a different experience.

Fred Cadena: 18:18

One of the key to your success, though, and you know a little contrarian viewpoint here, but and not in a flippant way, but there is something to like not be I was going to say not caring if you would or not, but like being willing to walk away. Right, all the button up people in the suits were probably taking it a little bit more serious than you were. You were able to be a little bit freer, approaching it the way that you did, and I'm not saying that people shouldn't take employment negotiations seriously, but that would be my number one tip is if you're desperate to get the job, you're not negotiating from a position of strength. So you know, know what you're worth and be willing to walk away if it's not the number that you need.

Josh Matthews: 19:06

Yeah, I think there's a real valid point there, fred, I've given it some thought. I thought, well, like nobody wants to beat up some 18 year old kid in negotiations and make them lose, right, it's like playing chess. It's like playing chess with a six year old. Like you want them to play the game again I mean, unless you're you know, the Queens gambit girl, gambit girl, like you know with the tough janitor trainer. Like maybe, maybe, fine, right, but I can tell you this, like if I played chess with my kids a lot when I was, when they were little, and a lot of backgammon, and if I didn't let them, you know, get some easy moves, like they'd never want to come back and play right, so, like I, I have given thought to that. But if I really reflect on on why I won and this isn't the why Josh won a competition 32 years ago, show, right, it's not right. But. But I've, I've thought about it because it was clearly, and you know I have this memory I can remember sitting there with this guy and wondering why he was screwing up so badly, like it was over, like the cost of trucking or whatever the thing was the little game, and I just remember thinking this guy's bonking so hard, like so hard. Why is he bonking so hard? He's got a tie on Like that, didn't?

Josh Matthews: 20:20

I didn't understand only people that I'd ever been around that had ties with my dad and the people who worked for him. And you know, I was walking around with my dad and watching him negotiate like everything my whole life, right, and so to me it was second nature. But the truth is, all I did is took the notes that they they said if someone says this, do this, and if they do this, then you say that All I did is what they taught me. Like literally, it's not like I was gifted, I just was like wanting to learn. So I took some notes and when you know, he said you know X?

Josh Matthews: 20:55

I said, well, how can I do that? And then he caved Like it wasn't a big deal, you know, it's just so when you go to these seminars Like for all of those folks who might be listening right now on their way to Tahoe Dreaming, like, take some freaking notes and believe the person on stage, like you should probably start there, start from a position of trust and believe, believe the expert that this is how it works. If you start second guessing it or thinking, nah, I'm not going to do that. Well then, you just missed the point, pal. So shame on you.

Fred Cadena: 21:27

You, you if you want any of my other thoughts, you tell me to not to share them, but the the other thing I was going to say is like I am surprised that it got down to the offer and there was so much misalignment. You know, I would suggest and Josh, you're the expert here but there should not be a surprise when the offer comes down right, like they should know what your expectations are, where you need to be and if, if that's not where they are, then there's probably no reason for you guys to waste each other's time. And to your point.

Josh Matthews: 22:01

yeah, I think it was a verbal offer. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, no, keep going, fred. But yeah, you're right, like that's. That's a little late in the conversation. If we're getting to the point of verbal offer and it hasn't been discussed yet, then something's off. Someone missed. Someone missed a step on their tick like little checklist, right.

Fred Cadena: 22:21

Or maybe I mean, I've had people come, you know, to me in the past, you know, in in roles that I've been going for, and saying, look, I know you said you need to be here, this is really where we're at, you know what can you do? And that's a different conversation, right? But to just, you know, say here's the offer and this is what it is, and it's still outside of the salary expectation, that just feels really off to me.

Josh Matthews: 22:45

It does, but I don't think that it was coming straight from the hiring manager. I think it was coming from an internal. Was it an internal recruiter, jason?

Jason Zeikowitz: 22:53

Yeah, exactly, internal recruiter. And the weird part is that. So I was already working with the internal recruiter for a different position where they gave me an offer above what I requested. So there was another position that at the first interview we were talking salary, and so that position I did get a verbal offer for. They went up freezing that position so I didn't move forward with that position, but it was actually that position was higher than I even asked for and it was so. Later that same internal recruiter got back to me with another position and that's where I was just so surprised, because the first position was higher than I asked for and this one was so much lower and there was no talk at the beginning.

Josh Matthews: 23:43

There's a reason for that. Let me tell you why. Okay, I'm just going to cut to the chase here real quick and it's super straightforward. The reality is is that external recruiters that's what I am, that's what Steven Greger is right, that's what Jesse is on our team we are external or third party headhunters and recruiters, so internal recruiters have a different function than us. Their job is to help grease the wheels of bringing new employees onto the team. Sometimes they need to go out and find them themselves. Sometimes they're just there to manage some of the process.

Josh Matthews: 24:18

I've got friends that have worked at Tesla, google, amazon, disney and Apple. Okay, and you don't need to do a lot of recruiting in those companies. They have top professionals from top schools, people with deep experience. Some people will spend 10 years building up their career just so they get a shot to go work at one of these companies. So there's a standing line of good quality candidates. What you're really doing is sorting and sifting and then doing some screening, versus really hunting and searching.

Josh Matthews: 24:54

Now, that's not all internal recruiters, but having worked with hundreds and hundreds of companies from all across the globe, I can tell you that there are some absolutely amazing internal recruiters out there. Some of them are my good friends and people that I really trust, and there are some that I work one of my best clients. Our relationship is with the internal talent team, right, not necessarily always directly with the hiring manager. That's a rarity for us because we're almost always exclusive to the hiring manager. But some of these people are absolutely on top of their game, but the majority aren't, and I don't mind saying that in this public forum because it's the truth. So there are a lot of people who become internal recruiters because maybe they had an interest in HR and then they got kind of shuffled to this function Again.

Josh Matthews: 25:43

Most people don't go to college to become recruiters, right, but they just kind of found themselves in that de facto position. Sometimes they're an office manager who all of a sudden starts recruiting more and recruiting more and more and more. So they don't necessarily always have the same kind of training that someone might get at an agency. A lot of internal recruiters tried it at an agency. Maybe they made it three months, six months or a year and it was too hot in the kitchen forum and they left and fair enough.

Josh Matthews: 26:10

It's not necessarily the easiest life. It's like my kids are like hey, I'm going to go get a job at a big box staffing firm. Like what do you think I'd be? Like? I don't know, man, go for it. I support them, but I let them know that there are a lot of other ways to have a career and make money, because it absolutely isn't for everybody.

Josh Matthews: 26:28

And the point I'm trying to make is that you get these people in here. They're often quite young in their 20s right, not always, but often and they think that the hiring managers have some sort of kingly status or queen status within the organization. They're not to push back, they're not to question them, they're just to execute what they've been told to do. They're low on the totem pole, they're the pawn on the chess board okay, not the chess player, and certainly not the king or the queen. So people just take what they're told to do and they do it by route.

Josh Matthews: 27:07

So things like this what happened with this offer and I'm just kind of speaking to Fred's point right, but what can happen to this offer can happen all the time, right? It's a common mistake when internal recruiters are just doing what they're told to do. So that's why you want to have a conversation with the actual hiring manager, I think that's what I recommended to you, jason, which was hey, I want to jump on the phone with you for 10 minutes, and you did, and it worked out. Is that accurate?

Jason Zeikowitz: 27:32

Yeah, exactly. No, no, that's the key point. To bring up about that negotiation was to say hey, so you got the offer from the internal recruiter. What you want to do for the negotiation, you want to talk to the hiring manager. Don't negotiate with the recruiter. Don't let them be the middle person, the messenger. Find a way to get in contact, to reconnect with a hiring manager. Let the recruiter know. So this way they're staying as that coordinator, they're sitting on the chessboard as their piece. Exactly. But you want to negotiate directly. Have that conversation.

Josh Matthews: 28:09

That's right now. I've got to put a caveat in here. That's when you're dealing with an internal recruiter and a hiring manager and you are working with a third party agency, like Salesforce, staffing Okay, or any of our other organizations that service what we service, the negotiation should always flow through the actual recruiter, because this is someone who's got more experience and they're there to help buffer the situation, help communicate the information in the right way. As long as they're there and understand they're looking out for the client, they're also looking out for their own paycheck. There's a lot of different factors that are in play here, but it's one thing when you're dealing with an internal recruiter. It's another thing when you're dealing with an external recruiter. Yeah, good, I've really enjoyed this anatomy of a question, anatomy of a salary negotiation. Who else has had some experience in this?

Jason Zeikowitz: 29:13

Also here real quick, just tie up that step of that direct conversation. I messaged that I had two emails ready to go. Message the internal recruiter saying, listen, thanks for the verbal offer, I'd like to have a conversation with the hiring manager. Then message the hiring manager saying, hey, I'd like to have a conversation. He's seeing the internal recruiter, so they knew as well. What was great is that the internal recruiter they became that ally for me because the hiring manager he didn't notice the email right away. The internal recruiter said yeah, no problem, let me know if you need support help coordinating an interview or a follow-up meeting. Sure enough, I was like, yeah, I didn't see any response to that email. Can you read the message?

Josh Matthews: 30:07

That's great.

Jason Zeikowitz: 30:09

I got an ally right there.

Josh Matthews: 30:10

Yeah, and you got a new gig. Congratulations, jason. Thanks for being on the stage today. We happen to have someone with a heck of a lot of hiring experience on the stage right now. That's Fred Cadena. I'd like to get Fred's perspective. By the way, fred, just between you, me and everybody else who's listening to this right now, I am enjoying a Arturo Fuente, don Carlos Bellacosa. I don't know if you've ever had them before, cameron Rapper, but they're quite nice.

Fred Cadena: 30:37

That sounds phenomenal.

Josh Matthews: 30:40

I actually just wanted to just say that no more claps.

Fred Cadena: 30:43

I actually just came back from a walk I had a rocket Patel San Andreas sitting outside enjoying the lovely summer weather here Fantastic.

Josh Matthews: 30:55

Fantastic. I think I had a Patel last night. Wonderful, All right. Well, so Fred's been a vice president. He's been in a number of senior roles. He launched the financial services division for Silverline. Fred, you've had to make a lot of hires and probably some easy decisions and probably some difficult decisions relating to salary and salary negotiations. Is there a do you have a memory of a time that someone just did a really exceptional job negotiating their initial compensation, working for you at any of the companies you've served?

Fred Cadena: 31:32

Yeah, absolutely. I think what it really came down to was somebody who and I won't say the company, they're still there and doing fantastically well, but it was somebody that I was excited to bring on board. Similar to me, they were not consultants before. They had worked on the industry side. They got connected with Salesforce. They saw that Salesforce was really a great way to build their career and wanted to make a transition to consulting. It was going to be their first time in consulting and, based on they were pretty senior, coming over from where they were coming over from, but based on the fact that consulting is a little bit of a different gig than working inside an industry space and being a product owner on that side, it was a little bit apprehensive.

Fred Cadena: 32:27

They put together just really a very dynamite presentation. One of the last things I asked them to do was basically to put together a presentation of what they were going to accomplish in the role. They did such a good job of showing me how they thought methodically about what the role was, what they could bring to the table, ideas that I hadn't really thought about. They really went above and beyond in that presentation. I was blown away. As a result, I moved that offer, probably a good 20% from what I was originally contemplating, that's not nothing.

Fred Cadena: 33:08

That's not nothing on the base and also added more to the upside. I changed the upside number. Now, it wasn't easy, it wasn't like a gimme, but based on what he thought he could bring to the table and where he saw the business going, we put a lot more in that upside column as well. Like I said, he knocked it out of the park. I've always been a big fan and I don't know curious your thoughts and others on the call whether it's for more of a technical role or in this case this was more of a sales type role, business development side of the house. I've always been a big fan of the practical exercise. I know there's mixed feelings on that, but I think, especially somebody moving from a role where they haven't necessarily done X before, at least not in that same way, that practical exercise has always done a lot to give me confidence in basically who's coming in the door. I don't know your thoughts on that, but that really moved the needle for that guy.

Josh Matthews: 34:15

Yeah, look, that's a great story, fred. I think it just goes to show look revenue, whether you're in sales or income, if you're, in fact, a candidate for a new job. The most money is made in moments. These are generally moments you've prepared for this individual, prepared a presentation. They probably practiced it. Even if they're really good, naturally good, doing some practice always makes it better. It just does. You could be the most natural gifted public speaker in the world, but if you haven't organized your thoughts and your content and practiced it multiple times before you get out there, it might be good, but it probably won't be great. Everybody make sure that you're paying attention to these moments and preparing for them as best you can.

Josh Matthews: 35:10

To answer your question, fred, a practical exercise as an aspect of hiring, I think, is absolutely awesome. It's something that I absolutely encourage too. I encourage my clients to do it. We do our best to do that here in our company as well. There are some challenges with it and it just depends on the market. Give me one second. I'll give you an example. We don't do it so much now, but we used to do something that I called the higher talent solution. This is a 12-month guarantee. It costs more than our typical hiring fees, but it comes with a 12-month guarantee. It includes psychometric testing, backdoor references, deep dive on social media platforms to get more of an assessment of the person that you're bringing on, and generally somewhere around a half day to maybe even a full day of doing some type of exercise or work. We see it in technology a lot, right, whether it's just like a little whiteboard test or, in the example you shared, doing a presentation. You're hiring a business development person. They're going to have to do presentations for clients, but let's see how those presentation skills are, because it doesn't matter how much you like someone, if they can't do the job, they can't do the job. The challenge with the practical experience is in a really tight candidate market not a tight job market when there are very few candidates, high demand for those candidates.

Josh Matthews: 36:46

When they're getting called every single day by a variety of different recruiters or leadership folks hiring managers from different companies, their time is generally tapped. They're usually working, so they've got a full-time job. They usually have some sort of family or other outside interests too. Then they've got this part-time job of doing interviews right. They can throw in a press shirt and jump in front of a Zoom meeting and knock out a 45-minute video interview. But can they take three or four hours that evening to deliver a coding test or a coding example, right? Or some architecture examples? That takes time, it takes thought. If they're interviewing with five, six, seven, eight different companies and they all ask them to do that, they're probably going to say no to almost everybody or at least explain their time crunch situation and then people will forgive them for it, right? So if your interview process timeline is time-intensive and takes longer, you may lose the candidate because of these practical exercises. But if you can do something that maybe it takes an hour of prep and an hour of presentation or something like that, fair enough, like, that's fine.

Josh Matthews: 38:12

I used to. I worked with a company called Sharp Labs of America and I worked with them for many years and was in fact an external recruiter. But we were finding some really interesting candidates. This is before the Salesforcerecruitercom. These folks are so rare. I found them in Kyrgyzstan, I found them in Sweden, found them in China, like they were all over.

Josh Matthews: 38:38

These were very difficult, tricky, machine learning people. They're PhDs and they're usually still in their 20s, so fairly new, and they had to do a presentation because they'd be out there speaking at these conferences where they're basically. In these conferences they're basically determining all of the requirements for what MPEG compression is Like some tricky, complex stuff and they need to be able to speak in front of hundreds of other PhDs. So they wanted to test them and some of these folks are brilliant and super smart, but they couldn't present. That means that some of the most important aspects of the job they couldn't fulfill and they were able to vet them out because of this process. So it's an important process, unless you need help tomorrow and everybody wants that candidate, in which case you might have to just take the slightly riskier standpoint and forego it and try to uncover whether or not they're a valid candidate in other ways. Does that make sense? Hopefully, yeah, you can unmute, fred. Okay.

Fred Cadena: 39:39

I wasn't sure. No, I think that makes perfect sense. Yeah, go for it. Sorry, no, I think that's 100% spot on and I think that you know to your point whatever is being asked of you, that open line of communication back to what you could actually deliver. I've certainly had candidates that have pushed back and said look, I've got, you know, these client deliverables, I've got this travel schedule, I've got the family life and everything else. This is not tenable, like everything's negotiable right, including in the interview process. So I've definitely adjusted my affidavits of candidates and I've definitely pushed back myself when I've been in an interview process as well.

Josh Matthews: 40:20

Yeah, I'll tell you the best thing that anybody can do when they're interviewing someone. Right, we talk a lot on this show about what to do as an interviewee, but as an interviewer, it's a little bit different, and one of the best things that you can do is challenge your own initial assumptions. Right, most people here know what confirmation bias is, if not, go to YouTube and type it up and learn a little bit about it. Okay, but the short story on it is that we go in sort of primed believing that we're going to discover something and that's the only thing that we discover, and our mind blocks out other information so that we can confirm our initial beliefs. And it happens all the time, guys, it's like you go into a movie and you think it's going to be crappy and you're just looking for all the things that are wrong with it, versus like knowing nothing about that film and maybe being pleasantly surprised. So that's a stupid example, but the reality is is this when you're interviewing a candidate and candidates this is a good thing to pay attention to. When you're interviewing a candidate, you need to think okay, all of a sudden, you've got these feelings like oh my God, I really like her, she's great. She seems smart, she can talk, she could do this job. I like her background. The resume is polished. There weren't any spelling mistakes, right, yeah, they're great. And oh, by the way, I have a week to fill this position or else this senior vice president is going to pull the requisition and give it to another district. Like, I need to fill this right now. So I've got all this pressure to make this higher and so all of a sudden you stop looking for anything bad and you're only looking for the good, and you're mostly going from your gut and you're mostly basing things on the rapport that you have.

Josh Matthews: 42:07

Now, if you're in my industry and you're talking with recruiters, most recruiters are nice people. They like to talk to other people and they're curious about others. So it's generally pretty easy to develop rapport with a guy like me or Stephen, right, so that's not hard. But if that's all you're doing, you're not going to uncover where things can go wrong. So if you really like someone, the best thing you can do is try to dig deep and find out what find something about this person that's going to go negative, and so you really need to press them on. Talk to me about how you handle stress right. Give them situational and behavioral questions that can probe a little bit further and go into their past and ask them. You know nobody likes these, but tell me about a time when, blank, right Now, and if it's over prepared, ask another one that's a little bit similar. Give me another example. See, if it's just a prepared answer so you can push back.

Josh Matthews: 43:02

But you need to find a reason not to like someone and it's critical. And I'll tell you a quick story. I had a gal come in and, by the way I was just referring to like this person comes in and you've got rapport and it seems like they can do the job and everything's great. So that was me. I was hiring for a recruiter. This is back when I was working at Robert Haff technology and the creative group and I was hiring a recruiter and she came in and she's we couldn't find anybody. I mean, we'd been looking for weeks and weeks and weeks and finally used to be a line out the door, but in those days nobody wanted to join. So we'd been looking forever and finally got a good candidate. She comes in.

Josh Matthews: 43:40

What presents? Well, very friendly, nice, you know, ask good questions, gave good background and I was just sort of like great start Monday. I mean, I just like ate it, I just like bonked so hard. I didn't take any of my own advice and I'll tell you, when she showed up a couple of weeks later, it wasn't Monday, but it was a Monday a couple of weeks later and she showed up. I'm telling you, by noon everybody and I don't know if you remember this particular hire, stephen, but by noon me and everybody else on the team, and probably her, knew it wasn't going to work out and it didn't. It was over within a month.

Josh Matthews: 44:22

If I could have made it over that day, I would have, but HR wouldn't allow it. You know it was going to reflect too poorly on us. We had to give her a chance. But it didn't work out. And I knew right away. And I knew whose fault it was. And it was mine, 100% my fault. I wanted so badly to fill this position I stopped paying attention, I stopped caring enough to find out all the reasons why she might actually damage the team. Well, she did temporarily until she left. Shame on me. Lesson learned Clearly I've learned my lesson, but that sort of thing happens. So you've got to be real careful, and I was not the one in power, I was not at the time, prepared to walk away from it, speaking to our earlier points about negotiation. So, vanessa, are you still with us? Maybe not. So we're having some it's not technical difficulties. No, I'm still here.

Vanessa Grant: 45:20

I'm still here, I just couldn't find the dang button. Yeah, I've been wandering around. I finally made it to Tahoe Dream Inn and I've been asking people if they know anything about negotiation and I would say, pretty much surprisingly, across the board, everybody's fairly bad at it. I'm glad that we're talking about that.

Josh Matthews: 45:39

Well, a lot of people who are good at negotiation don't get into technology unless it's in sales. It's just one of those things People who aren't great at technology tend not to become technical architects. It's just kind of how it goes. But I think that, because we do like to take these little talk shows that we do here on Twitter, spaces can run a little bit long. I think what we'll do is just kind of switch the format.

Josh Matthews: 46:03

This has been a great episode so far for the podcast and we'll go ahead and produce this and we'll release it so that everybody can listen to it. Probably next Wednesday, next Thursday, probably next Wednesday, we'll release it so you can check it out on your favorite platform. But let's go ahead and start anew for the second half, which will be released in two weeks, so that everybody's got some content coming from the Salesforce career show every single week. All we're going to do is wrap it up here with you guys. Fred Cadena, great to have you. Jason, thank you for the interesting and personal story and the win, and congratulations again on the job. Anthony, thank you for the feedback, the background and all of the applause in there too. No one go away, because we're going to come right back and we're going to be talking about answering some of these questions that we've received from our listeners over the last week or so. Here we go, and thanks again, everybody, for joining us on this podcast.