Farewell, Mobiquity

About a year and a half ago, a good friend & colleague in the talent acquisition field connected me with Susan Miele, one of the top human resources pros in the world (as a side-note, if you ever have the chance to work with Susan, jump at it). We hit it off, to say the least. After several hours over coffee, swapping stories, approaches, ideas and ideals, she asked me to come chat with the executive team at a company she had recently joined: Mobiquity.

What sold me (beyond the chance to be mentored by an A+ level boss) was the opportunity to fix a pretty broken talent acquisition department. Over our tenure together, Susan and I have built a team that is second-to-none in terms of quality, camaraderie, and results (also, this team – if you have the chance to work with, for, or hire any of them, don’t lose that opportunity). We get things done, and we do it with a sense of humor. To paraphrase Joel Spolsky, we looked for people who were “Smart, Can Tell a Good Joke, and Get Things Done”. We succeeded beyond our expectations, and the team was able to play a key role in scaling Mobiquity from around 100 employees to close to 450, a small handful of offices in the northeast of the US to 12 offices on 4 continents. Personally, I’ve had the unique opportunity to spend time overseas, working on M&A from an HR perspective, along with traveling domestically helping open offices in key cities across the US.

It’s been a blast. And, now, it’s coming to an end – for me, at least.

I’m not going to say much, yet, about where I’m going, beyond saying that an opportunity arose that became too interesting for me not to pursue. When I was discussing it with a trusted colleague, in a Hamletesque moment of indecision they said: “If you don’t pursue this, I’m going to tell Susan to fire you so you can. You have to do this.”

So… I did. I’m beyond excited for my next step, while, like Janus, looking back with a pretty ridiculous smile at what my team hath wrought.

Here are (a few) of the people I had the absolute pleasure of working with – the Talent Acquisition team: Jeff Newman, Alex Bowler, Michael Fabiano, Melissa Adamo, Becky Bajan. I thank each and every one of them, and I can’t wait to work with them again.

More to come, soon – I promise….

Seeking Extraordinary Talent Acquisition Professionals: Boston, Redwood City, and Beyond

In putting together a job description/ ad for the talent acquisition professionals I’m looking for, I wound up writing a manifesto. Not sure it’s what I’ll run with, but I like it. Kind of a lot – thought it deserved life somewhere, and since I have this handy little platform available to me, I’m going to take advantage. Please, feel free to pass along, dissect, disavow, dissemble, diagnose… just, don’t duplicate (unless you’re willing to pin the blame on me). Never was a fan of copycats.

In any event: I’m building a team. It’s going to be fun. There’s loads of potential, a great platform, some interesting challenges, and support from the executive team. Don’t expect me to breathe down your neck, but do expect me to help you when you need it. I know I need people in Waltham (near Boston), Redwood City (that’d be near San Francisco), and I’ll probably need somebody in Gainesville.

Senior Talent Acquisition Consultant                                                                                                                               

Ever want to be part of building something extraordinary? Now’s your chance.

Why Join Mobiquity? Why Now? Because it’s Your Best Move, and Now is When it’s Available

There’s a reason why thought-leaders like Andrew Hiser, the pioneer of human-centered software design, have joined Mobiquity. It’s because they see the future becoming the present: Mobile changing everything.

It’s the 5^th Wave. The world in your pocket. Applications that tell doctors how well your medication is working as it passes through your body, to ones that alert a restaurant that you’ve pulled into their lot and are ready for you to walk their take-out to them.

Apps that help drug addicts recover, and apps that will help you retire wealthy.

We’re not talking about flinging birds at pigs anymore (fun as that is). We’re talking about changing how people behave, how business gets done, and how we will shape the future.

Mobiquity is at the leading edge of the wave. Positioned to define the future of mobile, a name that will become as familiar to the world as the names of the biggest successes out of the Internet wave.

Talent Acquisition Makes it All Possible

Without solid talent, organizations stagnate and fade away. Without the greatest talent, organizations can’t surge, can’t become the key leaders in their space. Our job is to make sure that happens. We seek real recruiters. Budding talent acquisition thought leaders. We get the big It: that it’s always about the people. That A players hire A players, while B’s hire C’s, C’s hire D’s, and well… then you get to F. Failure.

Our role is to find the A’s, engage with them, excite them, and help them through the hiring process. We’re matchmakers to the Nth degree, but we’re also business people. We use marketing, social media, talent pools, innovative sourcing & research, and a degree of sales skills to attract the very best. We never cut corners, we don’t lie, harass, or avoid hard truths: we are the A-players of recruitment.

We Are Looking for You

Join us, if you see recruitment as much of a calling as a profession – if it’s your passion, as much as your paycheck. We’re going to blow some things up. You should find that exciting. You should feel process is a tool best used lightly. You should be funny. Funny matters, in this role and in life.

If you’re sitting there, thinking “holy crap – I’ve been looking for this!”, you have the next step in your journey to greatness: Find our Talent Acquisition leader, Martin Burns (you can use your mad Boolean to do that right now, or just scroll down a bit). He’s looking for people want you to share some new skills, try new approaches and make some mistakes along the way, and to grow into leaders in our game-changing, rapidly evolving profession. His goal is to make sure you get the opportunity to do all of that.

Make the Best Move – Join Mobiquity

You can find Martin all sorts of places: mburns@mobiquity.com. 617.851.7277. twitter. linkedin. facebook. etc, etc…. You’re in the game. You get it.

Related articles

• Dr. Changelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying, and Went to Mobiquity (recruiter.wordpress.com)

Salary Negotiations – Getting Untethered

Had an interesting experience a few weeks ago, around compensation and salary.

One of my clients, who I do a placement or two a year with (so, not my bread & butter, but consistent, and I like them), liked one of my candidates. One thing they look for is information on salary history. I’m ambivalent about this, personally. There are way too many variables (start-ups pay very little, hedge funds overpay, women and minorities are often discriminated against, the candidate may/ probably will lie, etc etc). Still, they’re the client, and I go along up to a point.

All that said, this candidate refused to play. When I pressed him for some comp info, he said flat-out “what they pay for the role they have, should be based on the work that _needs_ to be done, not the work I have _already_ done. As long as the quality of my prior work is sound, they should make me a fair offer based on that, and go from there.” Even when I went for a “Fine, I get that – at what point should they walk away from making an offer? When to I tell them they’d be insulting you? What’s your bottom, bottom line?”, he refused to budge. Wanted to see what they had to say.

So: bravo. I love it. He must be underpaid, and he’s trying to change that. This is a negotiation technique, that if you’re feeling confident that you can get an offer, is a decent approach. It takes some stones, and the ability to miss an opportunity if they don’t blink, but it can keep you from getting “tethered” if you’re underpaid at your current employer.

By tethered, I mean you get tied to a salary and can’t get much more than that. IE, you’re making $85k, and you know that’s low. You tell your prospective employer this. You don’t know it, but they can go as high as $110k for this role. But, by telling them $85k, they’re going to come in as close to this number as they can when they make the offer. They’ll factor in a bump, generally, and some might say “I want him/ her to come in excited, so we’ll make it a nice bump”, but don’t expect – at best – more than 10%, or $94k. They may even come in much lower, around $90k, with the expectation they’ll have to go up to $94k. You’re tethered to that $85k.

By not giving a number, if they want you, they have to assume the worst: that you were making close to their cap of $110k, and they have to come in around there to get you. They may still come in low, but you’re room to negotiate isn’t tied to your current salary. It’s tied to their imagination, and that’s what you want.

So. The faux pas. After all this, the client came back and said $105k”. They thought it was fair, based on the work they needed done, it was a par with the rest of the team who were doing similar work, and they’d bought some salary surveys and they were slightly above the regional average as it was.

His response? “But… that’s less than I’m making now”. I’ll admit, I almost screamed at him right then.

The take-away, for me, is know what your work is worth. If you’re making more than most, don’t hide that all the way through. You may want to soft-peddle it a bit, or wait til later in the process, because it can scare some people off, but don’t hide it completely – you’ll shoot yourself in the foot. On the reverse, if you’re woefully underpaid, know you can get more, and go for it, you might try asking to get paid what they think you’re worth, not what somebody else thought about you.

Related articles

• Why HR’s Question “What Are Your Salary Requirements?” is Counter Productive To Finding The Best Candidates. (gregljohnson.wordpress.com)