Negotiating Advice from an Executive Recruiter

Salary and Resume Do’s and Don’ts

I’m talking about women and money this month, specifically how women can negotiate for more pay. I’ll be profiling diverse women who’ll share their different perspectives and unique advice. Hey, even men could use this. Share these stories with those who might find them helpful, and also let them know they can subscribe here (for free!) for weekly words of wisdom, business news and infotainment.

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Bev Wiesen discovered she was underpaid. When her boss told her that she couldn’t get a raise for a year, she quit. She then started her own company in a completely different industry, where she had no previous clients.

BALLS!

That company would eventually become known as Apex Executive Search, where Bev recruits C-suite executives for a variety of firms.

Bev grew up in Fontana, in Southern California’s Inland Empire. “I think Sammy Hagar and I are the only ones who got out,” she jokes. She started working for the school district while still in high school, a job that expanded after graduation into recruiting teachers and administrators. This was her first experience understanding salaries. “I’m sure I was underpaid at the school district, but I saw that as an apprenticeship.”

Yes, Bev was recruiting school administrators at the age of 18. The job paid for college. “I had to work full-time and I went to school full-time.” She majored in accounting: “I was really good at math, so everybody told me that if I wanted to go to college, I could only be an accountant.”

First Job, Low Salary

After earning her CPA, she took a big job for little money as a tax accountant. “I was paid $20,500 for my first job at Arthur Andersen in 1986,” she says. “That required me to pay to park in downtown L.A. ... and they did not pay for parking.”

Ouch. Even in 1986.

She eventually transferred to the Orange County office, where she got a rude awakening. “They promoted me early, and then I found out that they were paying me less than they were paying the people who were reporting to me, because those people had more experience than me.”

Sure, they’d been there longer, but they hadn’t been promoted, right?

— “Next Review Cycle”

At this point Bev was making around $23,000, and when she discovered the pay discrepancy, she went in and asked for a raise. “They told me that they would give it to me in the next review cycle.” That was a year out, and Bev told management that the delay was unacceptable. “I saw what we were billing our clients,” she recalls, “and I saw how little I was getting of that.”

So she quit. Her bosses thought she was bluffing. “They actually left me on the voicemail system and decided to just put me on leave for six months.”

She was 25 years old.

“My family obviously thought I was nuts, because I’d just gotten a degree and I was the first one in my family who’d ever gone to college.”

Before quitting, Bev had been receiving calls from recruiters. As a former recruiter herself for the school district, she wasn’t impressed with their level of service. “I got recruited by a lot of recruiters who didn’t care what happened to me as long as they got a fee off my head.”

She decided she could do better, so she opened up her own recruiting business with zero customers. “I went into executive search on a straight commission… no net.”

Did I mention… BALLS!

Granted, Bev didn’t have a mortgage or children yet. “Maybe it was the naïveté of youth that made me believe I could just go out and do it,” she says. But Bev also believed she could do “almost anything else” and make more money than she’d made at Andersen.

She started cold calling. Everyone. “My first big client was Toshiba.”

TOSHIBA??

“I just went in and asked them for their business, and I asked them to give me a chance.”

As they say, the rest is three decades of successful history.

So here’s Bev’s advice as an executive recruiter for those of you looking to find a better job with higher pay.

— If you’re 75% qualified, you’re qualified.

“If you give a man a job description, and he can do half of it, he’ll tell you he’s imminently qualified,” Bev says. “If you give a woman that same job description, and she’s missing one or two of those things, she’ll tell you she’s not qualified.”

Bev looks for clients who fit 75% of the job description, “so that people have something to learn.”

You don’t have to know everything to get the job.

— Don’t settle for a lateral pay move.

Bev says in her experience, men immediately ask what a job pays. Women tend to be more tentative, especially when asked what kind of salary they’re looking for. “Men will say, ‘I have to make this,’” she says, “and women will say, ‘Well, it would be nice if I could replicate my [current] salary.’”

On the day we spoke, Bev told me she’d just talked to a woman she’s placing into a vice president/corporate controller role. “When I asked her what she needed to make, her response was, ‘This is what I’m making.’”

Wrong answer. Say what you need to make, not what you’re making now.

— Do your own research.

Bev says you shouldn’t depend on a recruiter to tell you what you’re worth, or what salary you should ask for. Remember, the recruiter is paid by the company, not you. “While the company does pay me, I feel like it’s my responsibility to get somebody in that’s going to be very happy with what they’re paid, so that they don’t start looking again in six months.” But not all recruiters will look out for you in the same way.

So do your own research.

— Purge your resume of jobs you don’t want to do.

Go over your LinkedIn profile and resume. “Purge it of all the things that you’ve done that you never want to do again,“ Bev says, “so that you don’t get hired to do them.”

This also prevents a prospective employer from asking you about a past experience you’d rather not repeat, then listening to you reply without enthusiasm. “You end up not getting the job because people don’t think that you’re very enthusiastic about your own background.”

— “Counteroffers never work out.”

If you’re getting calls from recruiters but you like the job you have, Bev suggests you let your boss know in a non-threatening manner. “Go to your boss with data,” she says. Explain that “I’ve gotten these four calls, these jobs pay this, this is the same job I’m doing, and I would like to be paid fairly.”

However, “Threatening to leave with an offer in your hand is not a great strategy,” she says. “Counteroffers never work out.” Bev says that such threats tell a company you already have one foot out the door, and if you stay, you’ll be the first one cut when the company reduces headcount.

— “Be careful you’re leaving for the right reasons.”

If you do decide to quit, Bev has this advice: “Be careful you’re leaving for the right reasons — and money is never the right reason.”

That kinda surprises me, since we’ve been talking about, you know, money.

She says you need to make sure that you’re changing jobs to help enhance your career and learn something new.

By the way…

Thirty years later, Bev knows she made the right call in risking it all to form her own company. Her pivot was originally motivated by a desire for better compensation. She accomplished that, but she also found a career she loves. “I get to make a difference in people’s lives, and I get to make a difference in companies’ futures.”

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Share our own negotiating tips. Please leave a comment. More to come!

Cover image credit: Frank Herholdt/Getty Images

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