So, while applying for jobs, I’ve noticed many job listings ask for a salary history. Rude much?

What does my prior salary have to do with what I can do for an entirely different company? Also, what if I was drastically underpaid at my previous position?

This isn’t just a rant.

I recently wrote a cover letter for a position listed on a job board. The listing said it required salary history and salary expectations, which I artfully dodged in my letter by writing that “I’d be more than happy to discuss salary information in-person with the hiring manager.”

But no dice. I later received an email asking for my current salary.

What to tell them? I had a few ways to answer the question truthfully—my old salary, my new hourly contract rate (for my former full-time company), or my freelance rate (which is the lowest but factors in a minimum number of guaranteed hours and complete scheduling flexibility)?

I decided to answer with my current hourly rate as a contractor. It’s probably the most honest and straight-forward answer, and it also seems impressive if you multiply my hourly rate x 40 hours per week x 50 weeks per year. Of course, I’m not getting near 40 hours a month from that employer, let alone 40 hours per week, but it stands to reason I would be making that much if I received enough billable hours. I also mentioned that it includes health insurance, which is true—but only for the rest of January.

So how should I answer this question if I get an interview and it comes up in person? What if they ask for more details?

From the Guppie Life

Navigating the Salary History Question

Since losing my job and becoming a contractor for my former full-time employer, life has been less chaotic than I predicted.

The former full-time company barely assigned me any contracting work in December… I earned less than half of my rent from them last month. When I went to the office for a meeting (and to rescue my office plants), the boss seemed angry at me for not making myself “available.”

Um, I’m sorry, didn’t he just let me go? Did he expect the same level of hand-holding and checking-in and bending-over-backwards now that I’m a lowly contractor? No, sir.

Then after getting reamed out for being a bad, mysterious contractor who doesn’t sign on IM for days at a time (email is obsolete, I guess), I was told my health insurance will end in January. (Only a few weeks ago, I learned that my boss forgot to pay the health insurance bill, so I was without coverage for November.)

Super.

But other than that, things have been pretty blah. I’ve been freelancing for a startup website with an environmental slant, and the founders (a married couple) have been really impressed with my work. I’ve gone from billing on a per-project basis, to 10 hours per week, to now virtually full-time, 9am-5pm. They keep telling me how much they want to hire me as soon as they secure another round of investors… but I’m not holding my breath. We’ll see what happens, it’s a harsh climate for startups.

I also have been sending out a few cover letters. People are definitely posting more now that the holidays are over, but I wouldn’t say there are a lot of high quality jobs out there. Most job postings in web development around here are for government contractors… boo.

Last night I sent a cover letter at 2am and received an email with a follow-up response within 15 minutes. So that’s good… Other than that, I went on one interview before Christmas that ended up not going anywhere.

From the Guppie Life

Hello 2009, Goodbye Health Insurance

I’ll admit that I’ve been a terribly infrequent blogger, but it’s really hard to stay motivated when Google thinks you’re the devil and stops sending you traffic.

I’ve accepted that this blog isn’t going to make me internet famous, so now I just post when I feel like I have news to share with my dedicated internet and real-life acquaintances.

Anywho, onto the subject at hand:

The past few weeks have been trying times.

First, in early November, two of my coworkers were laid off without any advance notice. There were only 9 people in the company, so two people was a huge deal. On the day of the layoffs, I was the only other person in the office besides the two owners. It was spooky, but they took me out for sushi and promised everything was going to be fine. With the layoffs, they said, we’d be saving tens of thousands of dollars in salary and benefits and we’d be okay.

Flash forward to the Tuesday before Thanksgiving: The boss sent out an email to the remaining 5 underlings. He couldn’t afford to keep us all salaried. Effective December 1 we’d all become pay-by-the-hour contractors. Happy holidays, indeed.

Later the boss called a meeting. He explained how the new system would work. We could telecommute 100% of the time. We’d earn our salaries minus three 0’s as our new hourly rate, but we’d be responsible for our own taxes. We’d probably eventually have to shoulder a portion of our health insurance. No more 401(k) match.

He’d understand if we needed to find new jobs, he said. But of course, it’s vital to the company’s success that we all stay on. And he promised he intends to hire each of us back, in order of seniority.

Tomorrow marks the end of the second week of life as a contractor. So far, the company has only given me 2 billable hours of work. Less than $100 before taxes. Much less than $100 after taxes. In two weeks.

And I went to CVS only to learn that my $15 prescription now costs $110. Turns out someone at the office forgot? didn’t pay the health insurance bill.

…

Luckily, a few weeks before, a friend had introduced me to the founder of a new environmental website start-up who needed a freelancer. I’ve been working with her doing some web design and consulting work. The extra money definitely helps, but it’s not enough to live on. She’d like to hire me as a full-time employee, but they don’t have funding yet. (They’ve been operating out of the founder’s McMansion to save money. It’s actually a lot of fun. )

So essentially it’s been two weeks without a real paycheck. How long do I wait, hoping that business turns around? I have an emergency fund (thank god)—but do I want to drain my emergency betting on someone else’s business? I don’t think I do. It’s not like I have equity in the company.

So I’ve decided: I’m looking for another full-time job. In the meantime I’ll keep on contracting and freelancing whenever possible.

But now what the hell do I want to do?

From the Guppie Life

The Economic Downturn Finally Hit Home

Toughstuff from Below the Belt shared today some insight on the process of evolving as a gay professional.

College was a time when I spent a great deal of effort on coming to terms with my sexuality and learning how to negotiate this new “self” with my old and new networks—friends, family, peers, etc. Graduating and finding a great first job was, for me, my way of proving to myself and to the world that even though I was a wishy-washy liberal and activist… I could do just as well as people who had not gone through what I did and probably majored in something more practical like business.

…

There are moments now, as I’m becoming comfortable in the workplace and confident in my ability to do work, when I realize I’ve become “a professional.” When someone calls for me on the phone I reflexively act happy and excited to hear from them, and grateful for the good work they’ve brought to the table. When I sit in a meeting, I always bring a notepad and pen and I try to anticipate questions about anything that might be brought up during the meeting. I offer to help with others’ projects I may not have anything to do with. I am outgoing at work, I always ask how people are doing, how their weekends were, what they’re doing for the holiday. My work identity has, in many ways, been institutionalized—and it’s crazy because those who knew me a few years ago knew me as a very shy, almost socially defunct kind of guy. In some ways I kind of like this new personality I can turn on. I feel that it has helped me to be more successful at work.

Though he writes through the lens of his own sexuality, I think most of us go through this struggle before getting to that Aha! I can do this! moment. Being gay adds another layer of ‘Other-ness‘ to the experience.

Read Toughstuff’s full post at Below the Belt

From the Guppie Life

toughstuff on Professionalization

As my readers from way-back-when will remember, I quit my first post-college job doing internet ad operations and found one in web development that makes me much happier. (I had meant to write about the new job, but I was afraid of jinxing it.)

Four months and one glowing performance review later, I can safely say the new job is going well.

But it didn’t look like smooth sailing four and a half months ago. I had received the offer from my current employer, and I had even negotiated a higher starting salary. The counter-offer was much better than the initial offer, but it still wasn’t quite what I was making whoring my soul doing online advertising. (OK, so actually if you factor in the 401k, better health insurance and saner hours, it probably did match my old job, but I love cold, hard cash.)

What’s a boy to do in such a sticky situation? I really wanted to take the job, but I didn’t want to take a pay cut. The boss really wanted to hire me, but was nervous about hiring a millennial employee for what he considered an experienced-hire position. And of course he didn’t want to waste cash on me if I couldn’t handle the rigors of the position.

The compromise
I agreed to be placed on job probation, for lack of a better word. The boss agreed to grant me an early performance review after four or five months. Assuming things went well, I would receive a raise and increased responsibility. If things weren’t going well… well, we never discussed that, but I doubt it would have led to sunshine and puppies.

The result
My performance review was scheduled for two weeks ago. Unfortunately, the boss had to fly out of town for a week to meet a client. The next week I didn’t want to mention my review because I hadn’t hit my target number of billable hours, and even though I wasn’t in trouble, it didn’t seem like the most auspicious time.

But my boss caught me off guard. Walking down the hallway, he saw me working late on a project (because we millennials have strange schedules) and he sprung the review on me!

Of course, I had been obsessing about the review for weeks. I had already come up with some answers to some pretty standard performance review questions:

• What do you think you’re doing best in this position?
• What do you need to work on?
• What’s your favorite thing about your position?
• What’s your least favorite aspect about your position?
• How do you think you can grow in the company?
• Can you think of anything the company needs to do to help you grow into your position?

Before I knew it, the performance review was over. It was way easier than I had imagined, and I was pleased with the feedback from my boss. But I was even more pleased with the salary bump!

Final Thoughts
Would I recommend this ‘probation’ strategy? It depends.

It worked for me. It worked out for my employer. But it might not work for you. I tried to assume the worst and hoped for the best. If the raise never materialized, I would have felt disappointed, but the starting salary wasn’t so low that I’d be destitute. I knew I could survive on the lower salary and I felt pretty confident that I could perform well enough to earn a salary bump.

I know this sounds a lot like paying your dues, an unpopular topic with millennials. Paying dues is about being the bottom of the totem pole simply because you’re the new guy—probation is also for unproven employees, but it’s based on merit, not on the amount of time you’ve been working.

I viewed the probation as a calculated risk. Besides, it was only for a few months and I had the performance review promised to me in writing. (Always get it in writing!)

Would I have put up with that for a whole year? Doubtful. I’m too impatient, and I don’t think it takes a whole year to demonstrate that you can do your job well. But I get the sense from talking to my cohorts that an unofficial six month probation isn’t uncommon for Gen Y-ers. It might not be called a ‘probation’ per se, but the same prove-your-mettle attitude applies.

What are your experiences with paying dues and proving your merit? Would you ever agree to job and/or salary probation?

From the Guppie Life

How I Survived My Job Probation and Performance Review

Now that I’m a full year out of college, I’ve had some time to think deeply about my college experience, and there are a lot of things I would have done differently.

I went to a small, private liberal arts university in the south. It’s well-ranked and was very expensive, but luckily I graduated with no debt thanks to my very supportive parents and a few small merit-based scholarships. (I also supported myself as much as possible by holding jobs on campus all four years.)

One of the reasons I chose my school was because they had a program which guaranteed me admittance to their law school if I maintained a certain GPA due to my standardized test scores. [The ACT was my best friend during the college admissions game. :) ]

Yes, for some strange reason, yours truly thought he wanted to go to law school. Ha. A year working for the law school admissions office cleared that right up. Who wants to be a headcase for three years and then enter a suicide- and depression-laden profession? Not this boy.

So, between my freshman and sophomore years I decided what would really make me happy would be becoming a veterinarian. So, I officially declared myself a biology major and eagerly signed up for 8:15am genetics. Luckily I had enough AP credits from high school so that I would be able to complete the biology major coursework even though I began as a sophomore.

Halfway through junior year (after having spent the summer as a veterinary assistant), I realized that although I do feel strongly about helping animals, it wasn’t something I was interested in as a career. [Factoid: Did you know veterinarians have a much higher-than-average suicide rate due to their high-stress levels and easy access to chemical euthanasia agents? More importantly, why was I attracted to high-stress, depressive professions in college?]

In May 2007 I graduated college without a firm plan for making it big with my B.S. in biology and my history minor.

Luckily, my experience as a website manager for one of my university’s schools’ websites was enough to get me a position in online ad operations (though that job didn’t last long).

These days I’m much happier in my current role as a semi-technical hire at a web development company. But it pains me that I could be much further along in my career had I done college differently. I certainly could be making more money, for instance, if I had a stronger technical background.

If I was granted a magical college do-over while retaining all the important Life Lessons I’ve learned, here’s what I think I would do:

• I would have picked a major that aligns with my interests and has the possibility of paying well. I did love the biology major (molecular bio and organic chemistry excepted), but entry-level jobs for a biology B.S. degree are competitive and pay poorly. The good jobs in biology all require an M.S. at the very least, and even most of those aren’t well compensated. I would have been better off with some combination of business and web technology, and probably just as happy since I am also interested in those subjects.
• I would have gone to a more prestigious school. Don’t get me wrong, my university was ranked well and has an excellent academic reputation. But I received an application from Princeton out of the blue during college application season, and I think a part of me will always wonder, What if…?
• Failing that, maybe I would have gone to a less prestigious school. With my AP credits I’d probably have been able to finish in 3 years at a less challenging school, saving my parents lots of money. Also I’d probably have a lot more free time to work on building my professional skill-set rather than poring over useless Calculus 2 problems.
• I would have gone to school in a large, liberal city, like D.C., San Francisco, or maybe Miami. Being gay in a small, southern city isn’t much fun. Partly, it’s a numbers game, because there are more gay people to meet in a large city than a small one. But it’s also about being in a place where people hate you less for being different—and let’s not forget that gay friendly cities tend to have better economies (pdf).
• I would have tried to find a corporate internship for the summer before senior year. When I graduated college, my resume only included a few campus jobs plus my summer with the veterinary hospital. Some first-hand corporate experience would have been good preparation for the business world because unfortunately, few entrepreneurs recognize the inherent character-building that comes with drawing blood from a Basset hound.
• I would have started applying for post-college jobs long before February of senior year. Even the few months’ head-start I gave myself was not enough time. I didn’t accept a job offer until August after graduation, which meant three insufferable months of living at home with my parents. I simply had no idea the job search process would take as long as it did. (To give you an idea how slow some of these companies move: An HR representative from Target.com called me in December to talk about a position I applied for in July. Wow.)
• If in my do-over I failed to get a job immediately after graduating, I would have moved to my desired city and started temping right away. Instead, I stupidly waited for months until I found a “good fit” which turned out not to be such a good fit after all. And though D.C. slash NoVA isn’t terrible, I let the city pick me rather than the other way around.
• I would have had more sex. Because… well, why not? Apparently it’s more important than making a lot of money.

One thing I won’t do is beat myself up for my respectable-but-not-4.0 GPA. Who wants to hire a kid with a perfect GPA anyway?

What about college do you wish you could redo?

From the Guppie Life

How I Would Redo College Differently

For a few months during my senior year of college, I was a model.

Lately I’ve been receiving calls and emails from my agent. She wants me back in the fold.

And I’m saying no.

But before you start thinking that I’m a deluded egoist, allow me to explain. I was a model in the same way that chihuahuas are dogs— which is to say, barely. Welcome to the world of promotional modeling.

Promotional models are just professional flirts and greeters. They don’t even have to be particularly attractive (though it helps).

Promotional models (or “brand ambassadors”) go to an event or to a store to hawk a product about which they typically have little knowledge. Their goal is to engage passersby and potential customers to then hand off to a salesperson. Usually there is very little training involved, and the pay is decent for what amounts to unskilled, contractual labor. All in all, it’s an ideal part-time job for college students with unpredictable schedules.

I only worked a few events. My specialties were cell phone plans and fiber optic phone/cable/data service. Sexy, I know, but the events paid about $16 per hour after my agent’s commission, which was twice as much money as the highest-paying on-campus jobs. Flirting with moms beats shelving musty library books any way you slice it.

Other than the humiliating time I had to wear a computer game strapped to my chest, I enjoyed the work.

But things are different now. I’m not a student any longer. I have an honest-to-goodness 9 to 5, M-F. My weekends are more valuable to me than when I was in college. And $16 per hour doesn’t sound as tantalizing as it once did.

Am I crazy? I mean, every dollar counts right? The work is certainly brainless. But on the other hand, I have so many other projects I’d rather work on. I’ve got writing and coding for this blog, and I’d like to start another blog, too. And I’m thinking about starting to do some freelance web design work.

I think this is another case of me struggling to value my free time. Maybe I’d think differently if I wasn’t debt-free. (Thanks again Mom and Dad for the gift that keeps on giving— no student loans.)

From the Guppie Life

Turning Down Easy Money: a Model’s Story

Well gentle readers, I was going to write a review of the new website NotchUp for a kickass blog post, but they totally and harshly rejected me. Except, you know, in a really polite way:

Hi A.J.,

Thank you for your application to NotchUp, the premier recruiting website.

Our network of HR professionals has reviewed your application. While we found your credentials impressive, we unfortunately are unable to offer you membership in NotchUp at this time.

Please feel free to apply again in the future when you have more gained more experience and/or additional skills.

Best regards,
The NotchUp Team

For those of you who aren’t obsessively glued to career-development RSS feeds like me, here’s the rundown.

NotchUp is a site that seeks to replace headhunters and corporate recruiters. Rather than pay a headhunter’s fee, NotchUp allows companies to pay NotchUp members $200-$1000+ for an interview. The NotchUp member is under no obligation to take the job, only to treat the interview seriously. Applicants to NotchUp must either submit an electronic resume or a link to their LinkedIn account.

In a way, I think it’s probably a good thing that NotchUp rejected my application. After all, I’m not even a full year out of college yet. I’m not (yet) the kind of employee companies would go to headhunters to find.

But give me time.

From the Guppie Life

I Was Totally Rejected by NotchUp

Yesterday, Newly Corporate blogger Jennifer posted about the HRC CEI because of a comment I left earlier in the week in which I said that the HRC’s list is more important to me than Forbes’ 2008 list of most admired companies.

What is the HRC CEI?

The CEI, or Corporate Equality Index, is a yearly report issued by the Human Rights Campaign, a group dedicated to advancing equality for LGBT people. The report rates over 500 U.S. corporations based on how well they handle GLBT issues, such as domestic partner benefits and sexual orientation/identity non-discrimination policies.

Why should you care?

If you’re searching for a new job in the corporate world, the CEI can be a great resource. If you’re having trouble deciding between two or more employers, their CEI scores might be a deciding factor. Or if you’ve just begun your search, you should check out the HRC’s list of best places to work for help narrowing down your options to GLBT-friendly employers. The list is conveniently broken down by industry.

I’m not suggesting that as a gay person the CEI score should be the deciding factor between taking this job or that job. It’s merely something to take into consideration.

For example, I’m single and pretty young. I’m not getting gay-married anytime soon, so I don’t really care on a personal level about health insurance for domestic partners. But all other things being equal, I’d rather go with the employer that does offer domestic partner benefits.

If you’re already employed, I suggest checking to see if your company is on the list. If your company scored a perfect 100%, then congratulations! You’re very lucky. (I was impressed to see my former part-time employer Abercrombie & Fitch had a 100% rating, but then again, their business really depends on the gays.)

But if your current employer doesn’t score 100%, you need to let them know (nicely) that they need to do better next time. First, I’d write a polite letter to human resources letting them know about the CEI (though it’s likely they’ll know already) and how your company could better serve its GLBT employees. If you feel comfortable, you could even have a discussion about the CEI with your coworkers and boss.

One employee’s actions aren’t likely to change the policies of a multimillion dollar corporation, but every voice counts. Equality doesn’t just sprout up like a dandelion in a sunny field. You have to demand it, then you have to work for it.

Don’t give your money to losers

You can use information from the CEI to support GLBT-friendly companies with your hard-earned gay dollars. The nice folks at the HRC have assembled a handy buyer’s guide for GLBT equality based on corporate CEI scores. The guide is really easy to use. It’s broken down by different types of goods and services, and companies are color coded by their CEI score.

For instance, I just learned that Exxon Mobil earned an equality score of 0. Wow. Only two other companies out of more than 500 on the list scored 0. I’m definitely not filling up at Exxon Mobil stations any more.

From the Guppie Life

The HRC Corporate Equality Index: a Career Resource for Gay Professionals

As my loyal readers might remember, I recently quit my first post college job.

There were many reasons I felt the need to move on so soon. The most important was that in that short time frame, I achieved a better grasp of my own passions. Before, I was floundering, desperate for anyone to hire me. And indeed, I quickly accepted the first well-paying position that came along, even though it was only tangentially related to my career interests.

Altogether, I spent six months in the position, but you know what? I am so appreciative for the opportunity. Each day was a learning experience, because even if I didn’t learn any new tech skill that day, I learned something about myself.

I know that sounds hokey, but it’s true. I learned about what I want in an employer, about how I work best with others (because the coworker dynamic is not the same as the bio lab partner dynamic), and even about how I handle stress (i.e. poor nutritional decisions).

However, I’d have to say that I learned the most during those last few weeks on the job. Some aspects of the transition I handled with grace and professionalism, but others were a disaster. In a way though, I’m glad I made mistakes in my first job. Hopefully I was just getting them out of the way so I can make new, bigger, completely different mistakes in my next job.

Below are five things I learned from the experience of quitting my first job, in no particular order.

1. Indecision is the enemy, but it gets better
I was beyond torn-up in the weeks before I dropped the bombshell and gave notice. After all, conventional wisdom says young employees should stay in their first job for a year or two, if only to prove that they’re not flaky. But on the other hand, is conventional wisdom worth constant unhappiness? And to top it all off, career guru Penelope Trunk writes that job hopping is a good thing. All those conflicting thoughts made my head spin and stomach lurch.

Naturally, I expected things to be worse after I formally and irreversibly announced my decision to the big boss. But a funny thing happened once I gave my notice. Work crises began to seem trivial. I felt a new sense of freedom. I stopped putting in overtime and working through lunches (for the most part), yet everything still got done on time, as if by magic. Those last few weeks my job barely fazed me, but only a few weeks before giving notice I think I might have been having panic attacks.

Making the decision to leave put everything into perspective and quieted my noisy head.

2. Look out for numero uno
I decided to give my notice right before semi-annual performance bonus time. I naively and blithely assumed that since the bonus was based on past performance I would still be eligible. Additionally, I gave above-and-beyond the standard two weeks’ notice… try two months. (And the bosses were trying to push for three months’ notice minimum.)

Also, one of the other dangling carrots was that if I just stayed until March I’d be eligible for a profit-sharing bonus. I figured if they were talking about a bonus in March, I’d definitely get the December end-of-year bonus.

No such luck. The end-of-year performance bonus was distributed to my coworkers, but no mention of it was made to me. I was afraid of possibly burning bridges by bringing it up, but now I wish I had said something.

It was hard not to beat myself up over the whole situation. Lesson: Don’t give notice until you’ve cashed the bonus check.

3. Be prepared for guilt-trips
Even though I have years of experience deflecting my mother’s world class guilt-trips, I was totally unprepared when they came from my boss:

“Do you know how much time and money we spent trying to find someone to fill your position? Not to mention the time spent training you? And paying your salary on top of that?”

Whoa. Red alert. Shields up.

Then came the sweet talk:

“We probably won’t be able to find someone as intelligent as you. It’ll take months to find a suitable replacement.”

Of course, I had invested in this job, too. I uprooted my life to move to the city D.C. suburbs. I also wanted to mention the unpaid mandatory overtime and weekend hours, but I cranked up the professionalism and kept my mouth shut.

4. Money is important, but not that important
As unprepared as I was for the guilt-trips, I was even less prepared for my boss’s attempts at negotiation. More money? No problem. Different work hours? He said they’d try to work something out. Better projects related to my career interests? Sure.

As an entry level employee, I didn’t expect the mad rush of counteroffers and arguments why I should stay. I didn’t exactly think the boss would be indifferent, but I didn’t expect to be fought over.

Without a doubt, the counteroffers were flattering. But they also made me wonder, “If these things offers were truly not a problem for the company, then why weren’t they brought up before? Was I not earning what I should?”

Even with the promise of more money, I turned down the counteroffer. I know it sounds crazy (especially from someone so young), but it just wasn’t a factor. Learning different skills and better opportunities for mentorships were what mattered in the end.

5. The job isn’t over after you leave
Though I left my old job a few weeks ago, I agreed to answer technical questions via email. I’ve also received two requests for referrals for open positions at the old company, and two of my former coworkers have kept in touch via email and IM.

In fact, thanks to email, IM, LinkedIn and Facebook, I will always be digitally connected to my old company… but I guess that’s just the price of admission these days.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. What did I do right? What did I screw up? Be harsh. Am I just another entitled millennial?

From the Guppie Life

Lessons from Quitting My First Job