Bonuses!

Math. That's it. It's just math.

Welp, sorry folks. There’ll never be one of these titled ‘Salaries!’ or ‘Negotiations!’ You just, can’t. I won’t touch it. Any advice you get is really, unusable. The reality is there’s no one-size-fits-all tactic for negotiating a total comp(ensation) package because, simply put, every one of us has different money motivators at any given time - not just in our careers, but in our lives. Remember those? You have one! Remind workaholics in your office to read a book or play with their kids every once and a while….

…. Aw man, ok-ok I’ll rein it in. Don’t go full Rick Mercer - stick to the point. Dear reader, as I was saying zzzzzzz.

OH-KAY I’m back. So, math. Zzzzzzz. *Slap* MATH! We’re gathered here today to talk about comp bonuses. Or as I like to call them, ‘math’.

The real reason I want to zero in on bonuses/math for this post, is that it’s a biggie. The number of job seekers, who don’t take a beat and do basic calculations before, a) countering an offer on the spot, b) not taking it back to contemplate and going so far as to outright complain about the number to a Recruiter, or c) …. ah I forget what c) was supposed to be - anyway you catch my drift here, yeah?

There are some fundamental things you need to grasp about the way bonuses work, and it doesn’t take Russel Crowe’s beautiful mind to get a good handle on it. By now, you’ve probably noticed Résum•eh’s logo, bat-signaling to Substackers that there’s a heavy corporate Canada lean here. So full disclosure to any non-Canadians reading this: we’re about to go full ‘Bob & Doug relevant’ today.

By this, I mean I’m going to throw out some generalities about the federal income tax in our True North Strong and Free. Hang with me please, this may sound like another divergent tangent for sure but it’s kind of the whole point to all this.

Base salary = conservatively, ballpark taking ~75% of that home

Bonus = conservatively, ballpark taking ~60% of that home

Need I write more? Candidates no do some math so good.

I cannot tell you the number of times I’d just offered someone a take-home total comp package that exceeds their current setup, and they genuinely think they’re being duped.

Example: A $75k salary with a 10% performance bonus (remember, you may not even see that full $7,500 gross potential in a given year), is nearly at par with a base-salary-only offer that comes in at say, ~$80k.

Basically, another tagline for this week’s edition could easily be, “Think net. Not gross.” This may feel like a cathartic rag on all the applicants who’ve done themselves wrong, but it’s really not. It’s also about, all the AGENCIES that have tried to pull a fast one on employers. Let’s not forget, they’re out to lunch too. I go easy on candidates that don’t get this stuff, but agencies, man those McDucks got another thing comin’ - who would even want to work for *checks own CV* one of these wonderful companies who are just trying to make their candidates some extra dough…. Sorry outsourcing world, I forgot my own origin story there for half a sec.

So when you get that call you’ve been waiting for act reserved, tell them you’re excited but just need a bit of time to think it over and discuss with your pet tarantula. By the time the Recruiter realizes you just referenced having a giant spider for a pet, you’ve already hung up and hit the calculator app on your phone. Voila! Informed comp decision-making at its finest.

-Matt