Employee value alignment

Imagine you’re looking for work, and you’re trying to find a job as a Project Manager. The company hiring you says that you need to have a Masters’s degree, ITIL v3, PMP, CCNP Security, and a minimum of 10 years’ experience to be capable of meeting the position requirements. What should you ask for as a pay rate?

Well, if you have to pay for the certification and the time required to get the certification, should you not be compensated? Here is a breakdown of the numbers as detailed by Global Knowledge (HTTP://www.globalknowledge.com/us-en/content/articles/top-paying-certifications/):

1. CCNP – $101,414.00
2. ITIL – $99,869.00
3. PMP – $116,094.00
4. Master’s degree – $122,000.00 (Salary gathered from HTTP://www.floridatechonline.com/blog/information-technology/information-technology-salary-information/)
5. Ten years of experience – depends on target goals and past performance

All totaled together with your worth $439, 377.00. So how the heck can a company offer a job of this caliber for $90,000.00 and keep a straight face? It boils down to two things:

1. The company has no idea what they want for a candidate requirement and uses the shotgun method of job requirements.
2. People take these silly priced jobs and then drive the market by accepting the positions.

What a ridiculous thought that a company needs to fill a critical position, one that drives profits and the image of the company, and pay such a low rate. There are a couple of sayings that apply “you get what you pay for” and “you can pay for quality upfront or a lot more down the road.”

An example would be an employee coming into a company that is one and a half months behind schedule, there is no set schedule, there have been no completed milestones, and within one month the employee completes a program, a complete site tracker, sets up the work break down structure to capture all efforts, completes a risk register and a communications plan and register, all within one month while removing existing circuits for a cost savings of $70,000.00 PER MONTH, again all within the first month of starting on a new project (this is a true story)

Would this employee not be worth $300,000.00+ a year to a company? This issue goes to the problem of lazy Management and the lack of measurable metrics to show value and return on investment of a resource. The company needs to properly plan for the actual requirements of the position and not a long list of elements that have no relevance to the exact position.

Let me know your thoughts on this, for or against my views.