I really want this teaching post, but taking it means settling for a hefty pay cut
I am a teacher and have been offered a job at a small private school. So many things about it look great and I am looking forward to working there. But I was unaware, until after accepting the offer (although I haven’t signed anything), that they don’t offer the upper threshold payments I have reached in my career, which means the most they will pay is equal to a £5,500 drop in salary.
I know I have two choices: take the job or don’t take the job – but I would like to work there, for reasons other than the money. I am struggling with resentment at what I see as an unacceptable loss of earnings over the coming years. It is such a lot of money and will impact on my pension and what I can do in my life each month, and longer term. I would also have to find additional employment to make up the loss.
I will work my socks off and they will get an excellent deal out of me; I just don’t want to have to feel obliged to throw them a load of extras when they are already getting me for a steal.
Jeremy says
You’re already struggling with resentment, and resentment always needs a focus. If you take this job, however much you enjoy it, the knowledge that you’re working hard for £5,500 a year less won’t go away. When you hit a difficult patch your sense of resentment will increase, and will inevitably be focused on the school.
Looked at dispassionately, of course, this would be illogical. You would have known exactly what you were signing up for, nobody had misled you, the school was paying the going rate and would no doubt have been confident that it could have found other equally well-qualified candidates had you turned its offer down. Yet logic doesn’t always win over emotion.
I feel bound to warn you of the risk you run if you decide to take this job. There’s a very real chance that, from day one, you’d be feeling an underlying sense of dissatisfaction. It would even be unfair on the school.
You say that you would have to find additional employment to make up the difference in your income. If you’re absolutely sure of your ability to find such employment, that could certainly help. But again, you need to think through the implications. Doing two jobs well, not just for a week or two, but all the time, can be extremely stressful. You could well discover that despite the additional income, your sense of resentment would be intensified still further.
The more I think about it, the more certain I become that you should resist the attractions of this school. You say you have just the two choices but I think you have a third. If you’ve found one private school that is keen to take you on, there must be others. So before committing yourself, do search very carefully for other equally attractive schools that might be willing to pay you at the level your status would seem to merit.
Readers say
• How on earth have you accepted a job without knowing the salary on offer? Basically, you can go back and try to negotiate a better salary than the one on the table. They’ve offered you the job, after all, so you must have been the best candidate. But if they are unwilling to budge on the salary then I personally wouldn’t take the job. TomBridges
• You don’t try to negotiate a salary at interview – it is arrogant and grasping. If you are offered the job, however, you negotiate. Since they have committed themselves to you they are likely to offer extra points. But you can’t take the job if you cannot afford to. There’s no shortage of jobs for teachers and another one will come up soon. JohnChanin
• Don’t take the job. You will always be bearing a grudge. You have already used the word “unacceptable” about the salary, so you have subconsciously already made the decision. Chalk it off to experience and seek a similar position with an acceptable salary. starterforten
I have an MBA. How can I improve the response rate to my job applications?
I am a 55-year-old MBA-educated professional who was made redundant in February. Many of the jobs I apply for are via search firms, either directly or through websites.
Only a minority – perhaps as few as 30% – notify me of the (presumably unsuccessful) outcome of an application; some don’t even respond to a follow-up email addressed to a named individual. I find this very frustrating, partly because I consider it to be rather rude, but more importantly because feedback would be extremely helpful in determining whether such applications are close-run things or wide of the mark.
It also strikes me as short-sighted for the company. Maybe I am applying for jobs that I am unsuited for, but they still have to consider me and, given that these are senior roles, wouldn’t it make sense to develop high-level relationships with candidates? How can I improve the response rate?
Jeremy says
I suspect you already know the answer to your question. As an experienced professional with a business degree, you really should be represented by a nominated person in a respected recruitment firm – someone you’ve met and with whom you’ve been able to form a proper working relationship.
There are certainly vacancies out there for people such as you, but they won’t be as abundant as, say, for marketing managers in their mid-20s.
It is of critical importance that your personal profile, and your personality, are known to whoever is representing you in considerable detail. It’s not just your standard CV that matters. It could very well be, for example, that your time spent in another country, the type of client you’ve worked with, a particular leisure interest of yours, while of absolutely no relevance in most circumstances,– in just the one case could be precisely the fact that makes your application stand out from all the others.
The more senior the post, the more important such sensitivity and fine-tuning becomes. As you’ve painfully discovered, standardised procedures conducted with little or no feel for the individual are unlikely to serve you well. So don’t rest until you have someone on your side who really knows you – and not just as “a 55-year-old MBA-educated professional”.
Readers say
• All job ads have a list of skills/experience required – the “key words”. You must include those words in your application to get past the computer screening technique, all done by robot I’m afraid. No one is reading all of your application, there’s some statistic which I can’t remember that each first application gets considered for about 13 seconds. Carole Campbell
• You wont get feedback unless you are interviewed. People are simply too busy to examine your application in detail and review why you were rejected. I would examine why you were deemed unsuitable to interview: age, probably; MBAs are 10 a penny; and not having a job is bad news. I would concentrate on personal contacts, perhaps LinkedIn etc, and don’t waste your time firing off pointless applications. This will end up as demoralising and upsetting. Finding a job is still somewhat a matter of luck and could just as easily come from nowhere; a phone call from an ex-colleague. Speakman
Do you need advice on a work issue? For Jeremy’s and readers’ help, send a brief email to dear.jeremy@theguardian.com. Please note that he is unable to answer questions of a legal nature or to reply personally.
