Blog Post: Do Not Become a Commodity!

Russ Haines is the President of ECI Career Management and has recently appeared on ABC Action News, he blogs on Jobing.com and offers advice and information on finding a job.  www.mycareerstartshere.com.  

Are you salary shopping instead of job searching?  Do you gauge your value to a company by the salary you require?  Are your job search goals based solely on salary? 

These are questions that require self-reflection to answer because an effective job search that ends in a rewarding job, that is paying for you for what you bring to the company is really what it is all about. 

Do you know your intrinsic value and do you know market value?

Determining your intrinsic value (everything that makes you, you, tangible and intangible), believing in yourself and understanding how the market determines pay and compensation is critical to running an effective job search. 

Knowing your intrinsic value and realizing what value you can bring to an employer will open your mind to new ideas and expand your search into to areas you would not think possible.

Why is it important to understand the difference between intrinsic value and market value?  These two very different concepts, when confused will set the job seeker up for disappointment and frustration, lowering self-esteem and overall creating a very depressing time of your life.  Tying your self-worth, self-esteem, skills and abilities to the current market value can be counter-productive; you are assessing your worth on something that is set by market conditions.  Market conditions are out of your control.  

If you can’t control it don’t worry about it.  This is the reason I recommend job seekers to stop reading the gloom and doom of the jobless numbers.  If you are out of work, the unemployment rate is 100%!

Remember people hire people to solve problems at a reasonable cost.  If you shop salary, you are thinking as a commodity, this will limit your job potential.    

Present yourself, as a valuable asset who can solve problems and the salary will take care of itself, you are now selling your intrinsic value and will have a better chance at earning a salary that you deserve.

Some signs that you are price shopping:

Signing up on job boards that only post “high paying jobs”- you limit yourself from seeing other opportunities, this and most specialty job boards deal in commodities.

Turning down a low paying job on a first telephone interview - is turning down an opportunity to meet the hiring manager who has the problem and hiring need, the phone interview is usually an HR rep going through a checklist, commodity!

Taking personal offence to a low salary offer - put your poker face or voice on here, it could be a test to see your reaction, it doesn’t matter what they think, they don’t even know you, its more important that you know you.

Don’t’ become a commodity by selling yourself on market value, present yourself as a problem solver and meet people who will appreciate what you can do for them.

Please visit www.mycareerstartshere.com for more assistance in your search.