Forum

Hi Etta!
Magnificent news! Before the next round of phone interviews, I'd spend time looking at their website and their LinkedIn profiles and thinking about the business pains that are keeping these managers up at night. Think about the dragon-slaying stories that show how you've dealt with the same business dragons before. As for the salary gap, here are some thoughts.

If you negotiate a sixty- or ninety-day performance bonus, and the spirit of the bonus is clear and you don't get the bonus on a technicality, you'd want to leave the job. You'd never stay in a place that agreed to give you a bonus if X and Y goals were hit and then reneged on that promise. If you keep that thought in mind ("Wouldn't it be stupid of these guys to agree to a 60- or 90-day bonus and then cheat me out of it?") your task (defining the bonus-plan objectives) becomes much easier. If you were worried about your manager's or the organization's integrity, I wouldn't want you to take the job anyway -- no matter how finely the bonus-plan criteria were defined!

Does that make sense? A sixty- or ninety-day performance bonus is not the most common program in the world. A lot of managers would demur on the bonus-plan idea and fill in the salary gap a different way (through a sign-on bonus or a plain ol' salary bump, for instance). Before we get to sixty- and ninety-day new-employee bonus plans, a great question to address would be the question of why these guys peg their salaries under the market. It would be good to understand that issue, because even if they give you an initial sixty- or ninety-day bonus opportunity, are they going to stay in the lowball posture during the length of your employment with them? If your six senses are telling you that you need to define any aspect of the employment deal in exhaustive detail in order to avoid getting screwed, I don't want you to take the job at all.

That being said, I hope the energy on the upcoming calls is fantastic and that you guys all feel great about the developing relationship and quickly put a wonderful offer together. It may be that even since your initial conversation, they've softened on the comp issue. Your phone call may have nudged them to reconsider the salary level for the job. (If you and they talked about salary, that is.)

In your upcoming interviews, talk about pain and dragons, and remind them of how well you understand what they're facing and how decisively you've handled similar dragons before. Don't worry about sixty- and ninety-day bonus plans right now. Your job on the remaining interviews (if you remain interested in the gig and the people as you learn more) is to elevate the conversation so that the offer you finally receive is absolutely perfect, not short of your target by a few thousand dollars. Keep us posted!

best

Liz