on slipping under the radar

French fly

Careful what you wish for, etc.  You convince the Boss to let you regularly dodge work to post thoughts in a near-hermetic e-cell somewhere on the web, and the next thing you know, your blogging commitment is an albatross - or, as the new Junior OED puts it, excising the word 'Queen' to make room, an alblogtross.  A disappointing abundance of real work strangles your intentions to sit around posting your reflections on emoticons and peanut Kitkats.  Bereft of time, your spangly insights slop about in your head unformed, and become a sort of mush that you dread having to filter.

Although everyone in the office is working at the moment, it so happens that they are also intermittently discussing our consultant Danny's claim that Burger King put something on their chips that is also used on the wings of stealth bombers.  And so I feel reasonably guiltless about abandoning admin for ten minutes to write down my tip of the day.  It's a follow-on from this post about not limiting your options if you're looking for a new job.  Coincidentally, it's also about slipping under the radar.

Warning: the following tip is only relevant to the few people who are posting CVs on internet job boards with salary expectations wildly lower than their current/last salary, in the hope of appearing bargainesque.  It can also be read by people who fear they might, in the near future, be trapped in a lift with such a person.

We're getting a worrying amount of CVs through from people who have been made redundant and, in order to secure a new position quickly, are saying that they'll work for a third of their previous salary.  Some of these people are putting their CVs on internet job boards, so I thought I'd post the following quick tip, which has some broader application, maybe:

If you're very flexible on the salary you'll accept, don't say so upfront on internet job boards. 

Why?  Because if a recruiter is scanning through the cover details of candidates on a job site, looking for (say) a project manager in the automotive industry, and the salary for the role is (say) £35,0000, chances are they'll unthinkingly screen out candidates asking for (say) 50k+, and they'll also screen out candidates asking for (say) 20k.  The former, they'll assume, are probably too senior, and the latter are probably too junior.  Salary expectations are a rough guide to one's level of experience, and although your CV will tell us how senior you are, we might not even download your CV if your cover suggest that you are too inexperienced for our role.

Your job title on the cover information doesn't necessarily make things clear, either.  An employer or recruiter who, scanning zillions of names on a job board, sees this -

PROJECT MANAGER

Clare Hair

Target job: IT manager

Desired salary: 20k

- will not necessarily think what you want them to think, viz, 'Ah - a bargain!'  In all likelihood they'll assume that you're a junior candidate, working for a small company, with a boss who has patronised you by calling you a Manager when in fact you only clean the fluff off the mice.

Sod's Law determines that the only people who will assume that you are, in fact, a senior candidate, are people actually looking for 20k candidates.  They'll think that you've committed a typo.

If you're really flexible regarding salary, leave your expectations blank on the covering information on job sites, and instead indicate your flexibility in your CV's opening blurb.

Broader application: when posting details about yourself on the internet, try to make all the information congruent.

Back to work / jokes about stealth chips.

Tomorrow: something about Christmas.