What you say without even talking

My Master’s degree includes a variety of career events at the university. Company representatives visit and talk about interesting topics that are relevant in their companies and professional lives or the career perspectives students have in their companies. 

Sometimes, however, it is not what representatives say, but how they behave that is actually most interesting.

Just last week, we had three female representatives visiting. At the end of their presentations, a Q&A-session took place. I realized that I perceived one of these women as more competent than the others, even though I had only heard a short presentation by each of them and could by no means judge their professional performance. So what caused my perception?

Having a closer look at each of the women gave me a clue: the one woman that I assumed to be more competent was sitting on her chair in an upright position and looking attentively into people’s faces. Another woman was somehow crouching on her chair and often stared to the floor in a forward-bent position. The third woman was constantly playing with a strand of hair. In no way do I want to deny these women’s individual professional competence, but it was startling how much influence their posture had on me.

Paying attention to your body language 

This incident reminded me to pay more attention to my own posture when being in a professional environment! I also googled this topic and would like to share an interesting finding:

by now, we probably all know that we should have a firm, but not too strong hand shake, make eye contact and stop fidgeting (which could be playing with your hair, picking at your nails or displaying some other nervous action). But I had not heard about the following concept before:

The social gaze vs. the look of business

Women often tend to use the social gaze when they should actually use the look of business. The difference lies in where your eyes are focusing when you are talking to somebody. 

source

Focusing on the eyes-to-forehead triangle signals a no-nonsense approach, while shifting your eyes to the mouth of a person can be misinterpreted as flirty.  This does not mean that we should never use a social gaze in business environments, but rather that we should pay attention to the individual effect of where our eyes go.

Next time you go to an important event or meeting, just take a minute to think about your posture and adjust appropriately!

Carolin

The Six Golden Rules for Negotiating Your Salary

Last week you read “Gender Bias at Work”, the first part of my review on the Liesel Beckmann Symposium on Gender and Diversity. Another topic presented and discussed at this symposium was “The Gender Pay Gap: Is it Simply a Lack of Recognition towards Women’s Contributions?” by Dr. Clara Kulich from the University of Geneva. While I am a huge fan of data and research, I realize it is also important to deliver real-life suggestions for the times when you are in the situation of, say, negotiating a salary. And it just so happens that I am in that situation right now.

Scientific Research on the Gender Pay Gap

Nevertheless, let’s begin with some research on the Gender Pay Gap. At the symposium, Dr. Clara Kulich summarized that the overall gender pay gap is around 19% and rises to 26% in managerial positions. However, not only the base salary is relevant when comparing women’s vs. men’s salaries, but also flexible remuneration such as bonuses, stocks and options, pension contributions etc. These flexible parts of an income can complicate a comparison, especially because women prefer “safe” pay packages that are not performance-oriented.

The Negotiation

We want to close that Gender Pay Gap. Now. If things continue developing at the pace they are now, we’ll have equal pay by 2058. That won’t do us any good, because we’ll be retired. Women negotiate less when it comes to their own salary – and this in part contributes to the Gender Pay Gap. I would like to make you more comfortable with negotiating your salary. Be it for an internship or your first job out of university. It certainly is something I had to get comfortable with. So I searched career-help books (including Lean In for Graduates by Sheryl Sandberg) and the web, and picked the following six rules as the most important when it comes to negotiating your salary.

1. Never “sell yourself” under value. Know exactly what you are worth. Take into account your professional experience (from previous internships, jobs, projects at university including student organizations etc.) and your education. Don’t sell yourself under value, because your pay also is an indicator of how respected and valuable you are to a company.
2. Do the research. Gather information about not only yourself, but also about your potential employer. There are various sources you can utilize to access information on the average salary you can expect in a certain field (see links below). Take into account the company’s size, number of employees, and office location. Then, consider yourself. What would you like to make and what minimum amount do you need to support yourself (and perhaps take a vacation)? 
3. Wait until you receive an offer. Don’t state compensation requirements right away in the interview. If the recruiter asks you to call out a number, try to delay the topic so you can fully demonstrate your qualifications first. Postpone the negotiation by inquiring further about the position and responsibility within the company. You can also ask for a salary range for comparable positions in the company. If your interviewer does not let loose, utilize the research you have done and aim for a range slightly above this average (e.g. if the range is 30.000€-35.000€, state 36.000€-40.000€). Also, never accept the first offer!
4. Negotiate communally. You might be thinking that I have some sort of disorder telling you to act in a communal way (= female stereotype) when I just wrote an entire article about Gender Bias at work. When negotiating, even Sheryl Sandberg advises women to “think personally, act communally”. In more concrete terms, this means you should stress communal goals that you want to achieve in the job (e.g. improving the team’s success) when discussing compensation. Acting in a communal way will lead to better negotiation results for women. 
5. Define your walking-away number. What is your BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement)? This is the lowest amount you are willing to accept – your walk-away number. If the employee’s final offer lies below your BATNA, then you will walk away. Remember that your BATNA is subject to change over the course of your career as you gain experience and expertise. Don’t remain in a position where you are undervalued.
6. Practice. It can be daunting to have an upcoming compensation negotiation. So prepare. Write a script with your negotiation outline and role-play with a family member or friend. Get used to arguing your position in a negotiation.  

Have fun and good luck negotiating!

Here are some sites you may find helpful to gather information on compensation:

Germany

http://www.gehalt.de/

http://www.stepstone.de/Karriere-Bewerbungstipps/gehalt.cfm

http://www.squeaker.net/de/Insider-Berichte/Erfahrungsbericht/t/Gehalt

https://www.staufenbiel.de/ratgeber-service/gehalt.html

http://www.absolventa.de/karriereguide/arbeitsentgelt/einstiegsgehalt

USA

http://salary.com/

https://getraised.com/

http://www.payscale.com/mypayscale.aspx

Asia

www.gemini.com.hk/assets/doc/survey_china.pdf

www.michaelpage.com.cn/salary-centre.html

http://www.hays.cn/en/salary-guide/index.htm

Annamarie

Same Behavior, Different Consequences: Gender Bias at Work

During the Liesel Beckmann Symposium, three leading researchers presented their findings on gender and diversity in organizations. Here is part one – stay tuned for the next two parts!

Descriptive Gender Stereotypes

Prof. Madeline E. Heilman of New York University has done groundbreaking research on gender bias in a business context. Through her research, she was able to identify descriptive gender stereotypes as consistent across society and many countries around the world. Descriptive stereotypes convey beliefs about persons’ attributes. They prevail over many years and consequently are very difficult to alter. That said, these stereotypes are in the minds of men and women. At this point you might wonder why these descriptive gender stereotypes actually are a problem. One issue is that they are inconsistent. This means that the attributes of women and those of managers do not match – we perceive women to have a lack of fit for managerial positions. Therefore, we (and again, I mean men and women) expect women to be unsuccessful in managerial, “think manager – think male” jobs. This influences the performance evaluation of women negatively.

Prescriptive Gender Stereotypes

Apart form descriptive gender stereotypes, there are also prescriptive gender stereotypes. These are stereotypes that describe what we think women and men actually should be like. The difficulty with prescriptive gender stereotypes is that if a woman behaves in a male-stereotyped way, for example by behaving in an agentic and managerial manner, she is penalized for this behavior. And if she behaves in a communal and nurturing manner, she is rewarded. Of course the same principle applies to men vice versa. To me, men’s prescriptive gender stereotypes are critical. Picture a new father in a senior executive role who wants to take time off after his child is born, or maybe even reduce his job to part-time. This man is sure to be subject to gender bias and therefore receive some nasty comments down the alley of “wimpy”, “unmanly” or even “lazy”. And ladies let’s be honest, we all know that there is hardly anything more manly than a guy with a baby stroller!

How to Fix the Problem

Gender bias can result from descriptive and prescriptive stereotypes. I want to stress that women and men behave in the same way towards gender bias. This means that all of us need to keep consciously reminding ourselves of the gender stereotypes we have in our head to avoid behaving in a gender-biased way.

Annamarie