HerMoney Podcast Episode 274: How To Get Hired Now 

Jean Chatzky: (01:26)
We also know now that many more people have the ability to work from home, not just because the pandemic necessitated it, but because corporate America is offering it. Postings for work from home jobs have gone up significantly over the past year. From March of 2020 to March of 2021, the number of jobs posted with those flexible work from home options went up by 200% at CareerBuilder. And anecdotally, I think we have all heard stories of people who have just decided to quit when their bosses called them back to the office and were inflexible about working from home. I have to say that lately, we have been hearing a lot about how companies are having a hard time hiring and how top talent is being incentivized with some pretty amazing perks along with higher salaries. So what’s really going on out there? And what are employers looking for now. To dive into all of this with us today is Irina Novoselsky, the CEO of CareerBuilder, which is a global HR tech company that helps employers hire talent and helps job seekers build new skills and find their dream jobs. Irina welcome.

Irina Novoselsky: (02:53)
Hi, how are you? Excited to be here with you today, Jean.

Jean Chatzky: (02:57)
I’m really excited to have you and excited to hear a little bit about your personal story. I’ve read enough to know that your family came to America when you were very young. And today you’re the first female CEO in the history of CareerBuilder, but I don’t have much about the in-between. Can you tell us a little bit?

Irina Novoselsky: (03:17)
Definitely. First, but not last, the in between one of the things I say often is once you’re an immigrant, that immigrant mentality stays with you, it stays in how you approach financials and how you approach career and really every aspect. And for me, really so much of it from the beginning was having to work and understanding really the benefit and really the ability of what having a job can open up for you. And one of the things I talk about with my team a lot is the story. When we came here with almost nothing, a few hundred dollars in our pocket, my parents are actually a lot older and they really have to start during a recession in the eighties, figuring out how do they take their STEM-related jobs? My dad was an engineer, my mom’s a chemist. Translate that very unique skillset into English, and then figure out how do you convert that into finding a job?

Irina Novoselsky: (04:12)
And one of the things that I saw as the volume of applications, my dad at the time I was helping him on a typewriter, he would type them up. I would mail the envelopes and we would send them out hundreds and hundreds of time. And I just remember when he got that first job for a little over $20,000 a year, and things were getting pretty tough until he got that job and that job changed our life. And one of the things that I was just so proud to come and lead at CareerBuilder was just understanding the value of how getting the right job and having the opportunity to equal employment and what an equalizer employment can be and specifically how it changed my life, but how it can influence so many other lives, that it was really exciting to be part of a company like that. And one of the things that I’ve historically really spent time on is how do I capitalize on my strengths match that with things that I’m passionate about. And I have found that concoction of strengths plus passion really leads to some amazing results and showing up to CareerBuilder and just seeing what our mission is of empowering employment is just really rare to find a company that has that kind of purpose.

Jean Chatzky: (05:24)
I’m so glad you put it that way, because I’ve heard, um, the advice time and time again, follow your passion. And I don’t think it always works unless you marry it with your skillset.

Irina Novoselsky: (05:37)
And I think that’s an interesting difference because I also think your passion changes over your career and what you can be passionate about also evolves. And so early on in my career, financial independence was one of the biggest priorities. I was putting myself through school. I was working a hundred percent of the time while trying to be a full-time student. And my goals were a little different there. What I was valuing, what I was passionate about was financial independence and getting a job where I can learn skillsets that would set me up in a career, but again, really leveraging my strengths. And at the time my strengths were, I happened to be good at math. I happened to be having a strong financial skillset. I went to an undergrad business school, and so I was able to, again, marry those things. But as I evolved, my passions changed, but also my, my skill set evolved as well.

Irina Novoselsky: (06:32)
And one of the things that we see in we’ve actually invested a lot of money, and I’m really excited about our owners that allowed us to invest this in CareerBuilder, make this transformation is about two years ago. We completely changed our matching algorithm. And this is something that a lot of people don’t appreciate about CareerBuilder, what we actually did, but the analogy I’ll give before explaining what that means is imagine Netflix would do your matching of movies based on title alone very quickly. You’re going to not really enjoy what you’re being matched to because you have a variety of things you want to see, and it’s not always in the title. And yet the way that today’s current matching algorithms work to connect candidates with jobs is based on title and experience. And there’s so much in the middle of that. And I’ll give you a great example is let’s say someone knows how to code in Java.

Irina Novoselsky: (07:28)
You might not list every other language, you know how to code in. And so when a company is looking for somebody that knows how to code in Hadoop, you will never show up in their match because you do not have that language written on your resume. And so one of the things that we saw, because we’ve been around for 25 years, because we have this treasure chest of data, we were actually able to go back and say, hold on, we can innovate here. We can disrupt. We can do this in the way that, to be honest, almost every other segment of our consumer life has already adjusted to it’s time to bring this to HR and to job matching. And so we invested and pivoted and changed our matching algorithm to be skills first.

Jean Chatzky: (08:13)
I think it’s such an important point when I think back to we get a lot of questions and we’ll take some a little bit later in the show, but we get a lot of questions from our listeners who are looking to make a career change. And one of the pieces of advice that I’ve given over the years is to look at areas where hiring is happening. Look at healthcare, look at tech. And if you’re a lawyer, maybe you apply those legal skills or those accounting skills or those coding skills to a hospital or to another part of a growing industry. And I can see how that would not always show up. Well, there’s

Irina Novoselsky: (08:55)
Two interesting things. I’ll give you one example exactly. To what you said is when you think about what happened in the beginning of COVID, most flight attendants were laid off. There were no flights in the air. And so if you were doing a straight title or experience match, then you would have to go and say, I’m a flight attendant. Find me another flight attendant job. There weren’t many. However, if you do it based on your underlying skillset of communication, great under stress, good at problem solving at customer relations. And when you take all of their underlying skillset and you actually look for a job that way, there are 95% match to customer service positions, which by the way, we’re at an all time high during COVID. Yeah. If you’re looking a hundred percent unexperienced, you will never get access to this kind of talent or as a candidate, you won’t open your opportunity set to the possibilities of what you can do.

Jean Chatzky: (09:51)
Yeah. Smart shift. It sounds like something that we should take advantage of when we’re looking to make our next hire. As I mentioned at the top of the show, we have been hearing there’s this shift in the market that companies are having a hard time hiring what is actually going on. And can you flip the script and talk to how somebody who’s a job seeker could actually use that hard time to their advantage?

Irina Novoselsky: (10:22)
Yes. So from a macro perspective, a little bit, what are you talking about when you’re saying a tough market? So to lay it out, this is really an imbalance we haven’t seen for almost 50 years. And what I’m saying about that is supplies is at an all time high. So unemployment rate pre COVID was about 3.5%. We’re a little under six now. So we’re almost double the unemployment, which means the supply of candidates out there. However, when you look and pair that with, we are now have jobs, companies have job postings that are higher than we’ve had pre COVID. So we’ve now surpassed pre COVID job growth. So there are lots of jobs, lots of candidates. What’s the problem candidates aren’t applying. We’re at a 48 year low of candidates applying to jobs. And there’s several things that are happening, which is just, when you think about it, you have all these people, all these jobs, and then none of the matching is actually happening.

Irina Novoselsky: (11:23)
And that has lots of impacts on us as a consumer. So lines are long. Travel is more complicated. There’s just the workforce. Isn’t at work as much as it can be. And so what’s driving that. There’s a few things and it’s definitely not just one, a piece of it is that about 60 to 70% across schools in America are still hybrid in some form. And you started this conversation by saying that women are more likely to stay home, to be caretakers, to be taking care of the social responsibilities of their families. That impacts women significantly more as we’ve seen through the data, but they’re much more hesitant to reenter the workforce when the school system is still not a 100% back, we’re seeing that a whole generation has actually opted out of the workforce. So pre COVID, we had this really unique five generational workforce and the generation that was really close to retirement during COVID and you see it with the numbers, opted out and basically decided they’re going to retire early.

Irina Novoselsky: (12:26)
And it just wasn’t worth continuing to stay in, in this uncertain time. And so we see this whole swath of the population remove themselves. We’re also seeing moving go up. When you look overall only 3% of the population has increased moving mobility. However, when you go under the onion a little bit, you start to see that in certain cities it’s 20+%. And so a few things happen when you one, if you’re moving from a higher tax rate to a lower tax rate, you need less income to still make the same amount of money. So you can work less hours or two, as you’re moving, you’re not really looking to switch jobs. And one of the things that’s really important that people don’t talk about is about 50% of the hiring that happens is due to switchers. And so if you have a whole part of the population that is not willing to engage in switching their job and even more so removing themselves out through early retirement, it really makes the dynamics complicated.

Jean Chatzky: (13:30)
Let me make sure I just understand those switchers, cause I’m not sure I actually get it. What you’re basically saying is if I pick up and I moved from my house in New York to Nevada, I might just keep my New York job. I’m not going to necessarily move to Nevada where it costs less to live and look for something new, right?

Irina Novoselsky: (13:51)
Yes and there are two main types of where companies can find candidates. Those that are unemployed, which is we watched the unemployment and then those that have a job that you entice to switch. And so one of those things that we’re constantly working towards is about 50% of the hires come from the switching group. People who have a job who want to switch jobs and they’re really being impacted through all these other things that I mentioned as well, whether it’s shared school, stay at home school, taking care of parents that are sick because of COVID. Moving. One of the things that’s really interesting is we’ve seen the highest quit rate. So people are going back into the workforce and pulling themselves out for various reasons with flexibility. One of being the highest one-sided.

Jean Chatzky: (14:42)
How much of the work from home flexibility that you hear companies saying they’ll continue do you think actually real? We know that when companies tell employees they have unlimited vacation, for example, very few people take more than a couple of weeks off each year. I’m just wondering if this is a blip,

Irina Novoselsky: (15:05)
The way I would answer this as I’m S it depends on the war for talent. And it depends who you’re looking to hire. So to bring this full circle to the skills conversation we were talking about. Previously, you were able to find someone, if you were hiring 10 new people, you would look for 10 people that had the exact title and experience match of what you’re looking for. That is no longer an option. Given the environment of this imbalance for every nurse today, there’s 50 job openings for one nurse. For every waitress there’s 23. For every software developer, it’s in the twenties. So it’s a different world. And so you are no longer looking for 10 people who have the exact skillset and exact title. Now you’re looking for, out of the 10 you’re looking to hire, 4 have a match on title and experience. The rest have 80% of the skillset. And that ties to flexibility as well. That if you are a company that you believe you need to have a hundred percent workforce at work, that’s great, but you will be limiting your candidate pool that you can draw from. And at some point that no longer will be feasible as a go-forward option.

Jean Chatzky: (16:14)
So when we look at the industries where women should be able to get jobs in the coming months and the coming years, are they those industries that you just rattled off? Are we talking about nursing? Are we talking about coding? What are the other areas for growth?

Irina Novoselsky: (16:32)
It’s honestly across the board, there’s imbalance in sales. There is an imbalance in accounting. When you look at categories right now, in, in some ways it talks about how hard it is to hire for companies. You asked about what does this mean for job seekers? This is a great time. If you’re a job seeker, that’s looking to skip into a different role to move horizontally into a different industry. If you’re coming out of college, this is a great time to go and find a job that you maybe would not have been able to get before. Because again, companies are eager right now and in a position that they’re looking for talent. And so to women to candidates that are diverse to students coming out of school, you actually really can pick based on your skillset. What makes sense? Because almost every single job category in industry is looking for talent right now, which is honestly a really good place to be.

Irina Novoselsky: (17:27)
In the other side of that is women and minorities are being disproportionately impacted by COVID. And so it’s this balance where how do we make sure that our companies, when we come out of this, represent the markets we serve that are diverse in nature. And that responsibility really is both on us as employers to use the right tools and for candidates to go outside the box. It’s no longer, “have I done it?” It’s “can you do it?” And that mentality shift is really important for both sides of the marketplace, as a candidate to push yourself, can you do it? Do you have the skills as an employer to think a little bit outside the box?

Jean Chatzky: (18:06)
It’s definitely tricky for both sides. And, and I say this as an employer, but also my husband Elliott is a career coach. So every day he’s talking to people who are looking to make a switch and looking to get out of one industry and into another, or looking for greater flexibility or more pay. And I want to talk about wages and earning more money because it’s a goal for a big part of our audience, if not our entire audience. But before we do that, let me just remind everybody that HerMoney is proudly sponsored by Fidelity Investments. Whether you are just starting to save for retirement inching closer to it, or you’re already enjoying your post-career years, Fidelity can help guide you every step of the way. And when life throws you changes, as we know it will, Fidelity will be there to help you keep your financial plans in check.

Jean Chatzky: (19:01)
So you will feel better today and more prepared for tomorrow. Visit Fidelity.com/HerMoney to learn more. I’m talking with Irina Novoselsky CEO of CareerBuilder. We’re discussing the new and different, and sometimes strange post COVID working and hiring landscape. So we’ve all heard about companies most specifically, Facebook, but I know there are others that have said, if you’re going to live outside of the high priced area, where perhaps we first hired you or where perhaps we’re based, we may pay you less. Are you seeing that in your data? And do you think that’s the way of the future?

Irina Novoselsky: (19:47)
We are hearing it, but we are not seeing it yet in our data. One of the things that we actually are seeing is a little bit of wage inflation start. So we are starting to see both on the lower end wages. So on average, hourly used to be somewhere between $11 to $15. We’re now seeing that outside of unemployment benefits really push up to 15, 16, even 30 in certain cases. And some of our clients are offering free iPhones, free appetizers if you apply for some of these food chains, we’re starting to see some funding for tuition. It’s starting to get some really interesting offers to get people to apply. On the other side, we’re seeing companies actually offering more, even on the middle to higher wage side, more dollars to get the right talent in the door. And so while there’s definitely been companies that have been talking about, especially in certain fields, if you’re moving out of certain cities that are known for those industries, whether it’s finance or Silicon valley, that there’ll be adjustments at comp, we’re actually seeing wages continue to go up across the board right now, as this imbalance continues.

Jean Chatzky: (20:56)
It really feels like it’s about time. Doesn’t it?

Irina Novoselsky: (20:59)
Well, it’s interesting that one of the things that we are seeing, and this goes back also to skills and pushing people into the right out of their comfort zone to find the right job for them, both on both sides. One of the things, and you alluded to this earlier on as well, but there’s this interesting dynamic that happens with men and women when they apply for jobs, when they don’t have a hundred percent of that experience. And we’ve seen the data that men are more likely to apply to a job. If they have 60% of the skillset, they will apply. Women need to have that skillset and be around 90%. And so that only exacerbates a dynamic. If you don’t use the right technology, then you’re going to have potentially not very qualified people apply to certain roles. And so one of the things we’ve spent a lot of time on is actually, instead of putting that on, as on the candidate to have to apply, I curl the reaction, push it to the candidate. So we’ll say Jean, based on your skillset, we think these 10 jobs you are fit for and your likelihood of saying yes, apply me is much higher when I position them to you, instead of you having to go out and be proactive, especially with women and minorities, as we do research.

Jean Chatzky: (22:15)
Would you advise women to try to adopt that male mentality to as their surveying landscape? Not just on CareerBuilder, but everywhere to say. I know that a lot of the people and a lot of the men that are applying for this job do not check all the boxes and I’m not going to hold myself to that standard and just force ourselves to fake it till we make it.

Irina Novoselsky: (22:43)
I don’t know. No, if it’s vacant to make it. I think when technology does something to say, gene, you have most of these skills and eight of the 10 skills necessary to apply. It gives you a little confidence to say, okay, I can do it. And the fake it till you make, it can be one of the things you tell yourself. But one of the things that we’ve seen, especially with women is if it’s put in front of them where you’re told you can do it, the likelihood they will do it is a lot higher. And we’ve seen that with mentorship and advocates at work for women, get promoted more. We’ve seen that with various types of data. And so this is just another point of how do you put yourself in a position so that you can at least be recommended those jobs and apply?

Irina Novoselsky: (23:26)
One of the things I talk about with my team a lot, there’s this really big power to just putting yourself out there. And the worst that can happen is no. And it sounds really scary before you do it, but it’s just two letters. It’s one word it’s quick. And then you move on and you try something else. And I think that’s that mentality, not just for candidates. I think for clients too, put yourself out there to get this kind of talent, because there are some really unique skill set matches that can happen, that you wouldn’t get exposure to normally. And the worst thing that can happen is if it’s not a match, great. One of the things that we do when it’s not a match, we’ll take that background and say, you know what? You might not have been a match for this job, but you are for this other job because we liked you on your personality. You’re a culture fit. You have the right attitude. So now you’ve found actually a candidate, but you’ve got to find the right seat on the bus for them

Jean Chatzky: (24:23)
A hundred percent. I was talking about this with my daughter just yesterday. A friend of hers applied for a job, went through seven rounds of interviews. Didn’t get it, but got a call from the company after the fact and said, we are going to have other things coming up and we’re going to try to make a match. We’re going to try to find a slot for you. It’s not that we didn’t like you, you just weren’t the best candidate for this particular job.

Irina Novoselsky: (24:53)
So we call that silver medalists and we have a whole product that focuses on that because if you think about very relevant with the Olympics, hopefully coming shortly. The difference between gold and silver in many cases is a millisecond. And so it can be very similar with a company. If they have one role in two candidates, it’s a coin flip sometimes. And so one of the things we work with our successful clients. So you’ve now spent, to your example, all this time, interviewing this candidate, it’s productivity hours from the company, the candidate now has a feel for you and your culture and your brand. And they’re excited. And normally what happens, this candidate just gets thrown back into the ocean and you take your chances on figuring out will they apply for the perfect job for them. Next time, versus what we do is infuse a little tech into this and say, well, hold on, we’ve already got most of the match. We just got to try a little bit more to find the right job. And so we take them, put them into essentially a community, a talent network, and we keep reengaging them similar to your daughter’s friend to say, you fit all of these other skills. Here’s another job. Try this job. And you keep working those silver medalists because you already have so many of the criteria fit.

Jean Chatzky: (26:05)
Uh, can we talk a little bit about black women, Hispanic, Latin X women. We know they were hit harder by the pandemic. Black women lost more jobs during the downturn than any other demographic. Are you seeing a recovery starting? The recovery

Irina Novoselsky: (26:21)
Started several months ago, but it definitely is coming back at a slower pace. And one example is we talked about how pre COVID unemployment is about 3.5%, and we’re under 6%. Now we started getting to about six and under several months ago, while black unemployment was actually at 9%. And so we’ve started coming down, but it is still much more than two times higher than what it was pre COVID for both black, Hispanic, and other minorities. So we are seeing the percent decline. It’s just not declining as much as it is for men or even for white women and men.

Jean Chatzky: (27:02)
If you’re a company and you want to hire a black woman, you know, you’re actively looking to make a bigger commitment to diversity, to equity, to inclusion. How do you go about it from that side?

Irina Novoselsky: (27:17)
I have to bring it back to skills. And it seems like, how could you be talking about skills again? But it goes back to this. If you hire exactly people that have had the title of experience, you’re keeping your pool really small, because we know that there are certain functions, jobs, industries that are predominantly male that are predominantly white, and you’re not expanding that pool by continuing to look for the same experience and same title. It’s only when you start looking, can this person do the job? Not only does it expand your candidate pool, it actually expands the diversity pool. And we’ve seen this with statistics and data across CareerBuilder and our clients that the minute they’re using skills-based matching as part of their job search, they’re increasing double digits, their diversity candidates. We’ve seen it at CareerBuilder. My leadership team is almost 50/50 male female. My company at CareerBuilder is almost 50/50 male female. Our diversity stats are great and growing and 30 plus percent. And a lot of it is we eat our own dog food, sip our own champagne, but whatever analogy you want to use, but it’s thinking a little bit outside of, have you done it before?

Jean Chatzky: (28:35)
So to flip this equation, if we’re thinking about the resume that we all start with, right? Should we have skills-based resumes rather than more traditional resumes? How do we package ourselves to appeal to employers and to say, this is my skillset. Look at me.

Irina Novoselsky: (28:59)
Yes. And it starts from even small things. So let’s say you have to come out of the workforce to take care of your parents. That’s a skillset, that’s patience, that’s coordination, that’s project management, depending what you were doing. And it’s thinking about what you were doing in that form of skillset. Let’s say you were a stay-at-home mom. We’re seeing some of that where stay-at-home moms are reentering the workforce. And it’s hard because they put a gap on their resume. Okay. But there’s a lot of things that you were coordinating as a mom. How do you include those skill sets on your resume? And it’s a lot of times, one of the things that, that we spend a lot on tech is helping candidates identify what their skill sets are. Because one of the things we saw is they, they do it because it’s so natural to them. They don’t realize that, wow, there’s communication involved in this. I’m actually selling, even though this isn’t a sales job, I’m actually storytelling, even though I’m not in marketing. And so we have tools that help pull that out of you. But Jean, I think you hit it nail on the head is how do you stop and evaluate what are the underlying skills of what I’m doing and everything you are doing, whether it’s volunteering school, a job or a non-paying job, you’re getting skills Irina.

Jean Chatzky: (30:11)
And this has just it’s great information for all of our listeners. I think no matter where they are in their career, whether they’re thinking of making a switch, whether they’re just getting started, it’s a different way of looking at it. And I appreciate you taking us through it. I wanted to impose on you for just a few minutes, because we have a Mailbag section. It comes next in our show. And the questions that we have for today really relate to everything you’ve been talking about. So are you okay to stick with me for just a couple of minutes? Okay, fantastic. Our first question comes to us from Sophia and she writes, “I am so glad to have found your podcast. I’m a 32 year old single woman who comes from an upper middle-class family, where I was always told that hard work alone is the most important thing to secure a financially abundant future.

Jean Chatzky: (31:04)
I’ve never been given guidance by my parents on saving for retirement or even just for saving money at all. In fact, quite the opposite. My dad, who was our sole provider, always encouraged me to spend money on anything and everything that made me happy or curious. It’s taken turning 30m a career change, and the pandemic for me to fully realize how unprepared I am with no financial strategy. I’m currently working a mid entry level office job that I took during the pandemic so I could pay my bills and have health insurance, but I am not engaged in this work. And truly don’t want to be here after I get the standard year end bonus. My passion is food. I worked in restaurants before the pandemic, and I intend to start my own business in the future, as well as do some traveling overseas if it’s allowed next year. This would mean I’d have little to no salary and certainly no benefits.

Jean Chatzky: (32:00)
I’ve always looked at my money as a tool to explore my interests and make my life richer. I’ve never considered how to use it to fund my retirement. I started putting some money into an acorns account a few years ago, and it actually recently hit $9,000, which kind of blows my mind. That’s twice the amount my car is worth at this point. I really don’t know what to do next. My finances are in a slump this summer, as I recently moved, and I have quite a few weddings to participate in and provide gifts for. So I’m feeling anxious about leaving this job and losing a regular salary and health insurance. I currently make $65,000 a year. I own my car. I have 37,000 in savings, which I was hoping to use to either lease a restaurant space or pay my bills while I build a portfolio of freelance work and or travel.

Jean Chatzky: (32:50)
Obviously I’m still deciding what I want my next five to 10 years to look like I pay off my credit card bill every month in full and always have, and recently got a points reward card for the first time. Where do you suggest I start? So I Irina, listening to this and there’s a lot there and we love how our listeners tell us everything. It’s fantastic. Listening to this listener. My first thought is, please don’t quit your day job until you know where you want to go. But I wonder if that’s the advice that the CEO of CareerBuilder would give.

Irina Novoselsky: (33:29)
So strategically in listening, I would say great that she has a goal and that is the best way to start. And now let’s work backwards. So if the goal is to open up your own restaurant, how do you figure out what are the skills that you need to do that? It sounds like being able to run a business, lead a team, hire a team, be able to plan a menu, organize marketing for it, all these things that you need to open and successfully run a business and then map out what are the skills that she thinks she has today in her current job. Then there will be a gap and it’s that gap that she has to figure out. Is there a middle step that can happen? So if she has a one skill set gap, then she can probably push it and figure out how to do it.

Irina Novoselsky: (34:12)
Without most likely, she probably has a little bit of a bigger gap. And so the, the middle stuff is really critical and it’s a very strategic step to figure out to say, okay, I’m really good at these five skills, but I don’t really know what it takes to do this opening up your own restaurant. Should I become a manager at a restaurant? Should I work for a restaurant chain and figure out how to run the marketing for it, or the management for it, or whichever of the skill sets she believes she still needs to gain and then pivot to find a job that allows her to do that. We see it often, especially starting a business, you’re taking your financials, your savings, and you’re putting in that is high risk. How do you mitigate that a little bit and really expand your skill so that when you show up and say, okay, I’m ready. I have eight of the 10 skills I need, or seven of the 10 skills. You feel good about that? And it’s doing a little bit of a self checklist to see where you are at the dance and what else do you need to fill that?

Jean Chatzky: (35:11)
Yeah, I totally agree. And I would also say you have to get a grip on what the cost of opening a restaurant is going to look like. And if you are, self-funding how much of a runway that savings that you’ve built up, which is considerable will actually give you because it may not go as far as you think, and you need it to last you long enough to make sure that you have time to do the necessary marketing, get the customers, starting to come getting them starting to come back and hiring the staff that you need. Okay. One more Irina, and good luck to you, Sophia. Next question is from an anonymous listener, she writes, “Thanks for continuing to provide such informative and empowering podcasts. I especially appreciate the discussions and guidance on salaries and raises, which leads me to my question. In January, I had my annual review with my boss

Jean Chatzky: (36:14)
who’s the CEO, and it was all very positive. He acknowledged all the extra new responsibilities I took on in 2020 related to the pandemic and launching a charitable foundation for our company, which includes chairing a board, fundraising grant writing and communications. He said that I was among a couple others on the management team who deserved more than the annual 3% salary increase. However, he cited the PPP loan. As the reason he could not honor a larger salary increase as he was afraid of how it would look in an audit. Our company received approximately 3 million in PPP funding, but deferred it to 2021. Our CFO says it may take up to six months for this loan to be forgiven. Our company is now facing increased expenses. And I wonder if the timing will ever be right to revisit the salary increased discussion even though I continue to manage a higher workload. Given the additional responsibility of managing the company’s new charitable foundation on top of my regular responsibilities, I feel I have a very strong case for a salary increase. My question is whether it’s fair to make the case for the salary increase and ask for it to be retroactive to January when I had my review. Is a potential PPP audit a valid reason not to increase my salary. I feel like I have FOMO syndrome over the salary I should have been earning. Thank you so much for your guidance.” Really interesting, especially at these times, what do you think Irina?

Irina Novoselsky: (37:57)
It’s hard to comment on the PPP because without knowing the financials of the company or the situation they were in, but one of the things I would say is retroactive or not is a little different. What do they believe is the right salary that they should be getting? And that’s a combination of doing some research going out there and seeing what are jobs getting paid for the role that she’s doing. And there’s two parts. One is arming her boss or CEO with this information say, look, I’ve done some diligence. Here’s what the market rate for me is. And here’s what I would like to make. And in that they can include retroactive part without going retroactive. So for example, if the ask is $12 for the whole year and he would like it to start Jan 1, then ask for 16 and have it appropriate start whenever it makes sense May or whatnot. But it’s really important to inform not only your boss, but also yourself. So you understand what it is you’re working with. And so really doing some market research to say is what you’re asking for market rate, or is it just what you think you should be getting paid? And that’s okay either way, but you can make a much more informed argument when you have data at your fingertips.

Jean Chatzky: (39:12)
A hundred percent. I also think you should be looking for a job. I think this is one of those situations where it sounds to me just reading between the lines like you’re being taken advantage of. And I would be out there looking, maybe you love this job. Maybe you don’t want to leave, but would you be willing to leave for a position that paid you more and made you feel more, more valued? My guess is that if you come to your now boss with an offer in doing essentially two jobs, by launching this foundation, you have made yourself so valuable that they will match it. But at that point you may feel like you’re more valued elsewhere. And that can be fine too.

Irina Novoselsky: (40:02)
I agree. And the other thing is also understanding what is it that you value in the priority matrix? Where does the salary fall? Maybe you have really flexible hours now. Maybe you have a flexible work environment. Maybe there are good benefits. How do you look at the entire package and really rate that and prioritize that so that you’re not getting higher salary, but you’re sacrificing all these other things that are important. And how do you make sure to optimize for everything

Jean Chatzky: (40:29)
Irina you are fantastic. Thank you so much for helping us, for helping our listeners for being with us today. I hope you’ll come back again.

Irina Novoselsky: (40:39)
I would love to! This is a great conversation and it’s actionable advice that people can take and do things to manage their career. It’s exciting to be a part of thank you, Jean, for having me.

Jean Chatzky: (40:49)
Absolutely. And we’ll be right back with your Thrive segment.

Jean Chatzky: (40:59)
In today’s Thrive, saving money while working from home. Being thrown into remote work during the pandemic definitely brought some challenges, but it also had upsides and a big one was saving money. 38% of us adults who worked from home at some point during the pandemic say the work arrangement had a positive effect on their finances, a new Bankrate survey found. Why? Remote work freed up some workers to relocate to less expensive areas as Irina was just talking about. And that can offer substantial savings. With that said, younger generations were more likely than older ones to report financial benefits to working from home. The survey found that 60% of millennials aged 25 to 40 and adult Gen Z-ers, age 18 to 24 reported that remote work was good for their finances. Only 50% of Gen X-ers those age, 41 to 56 and 47% of boomers, age 57 to 75 said the same. We know that remote work can help you save on commuting costs, lunches out even impulse purchases that you might make when walking past stores.

Jean Chatzky: (42:13)
But it’s also possible to spend more. Online shopping could easily become an all too frequent hobby when you’re between zoom meetings and you may have additional expenses for technology, utility bills, even internet, no matter what your working situation is today, getting on a budget can help you keep everything in line. And one of my favorite pieces of advice to pay yourself first can be helpful when you’re doing your planning set aside your savings for retirement and other big life goals first, before you think about how much you can afford for daily or weekly expenses. And, whether you’re still working from home or you’re heading into the office every day, never, never underestimate the power of meal prep. It is so easy to just drop 20 bucks on lunch from a restaurant and over the course of the month, that really adds up. And we also know that when we cook at home, we consume fewer calories.

Jean Chatzky: (43:11)
So it’s a win-win for your health and your wallet. Thank you so much for joining me today on HerMoney. Thanks to Irina Novoselsky, CEO of CareerBuilder, for walking us through the new realities of seeking a job and getting hired in a post COVID world. If you are looking for a job, I just want to say all of us at HerMoney are rooting for you. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to our show at Apple Podcasts. Leave us a review, we love hearing what you think. We’d also like to thank our sponsor Fidelity. We record this podcast out of CDM Sound Studios. Our music is provided by Videohelper and our show comes to you through Megaphone. Thank you so much for joining us and we’ll talk soon.