Another friction is the stickiness of nominal wages. People seem very unwilling to accept a nominal pay cut, taking this as an attack on their status.
Salary negotiation is a complicated signalling process, indeed. I’m currently an unemployed bioengineer and have been far longer than I would have liked, and consequently I would be willing and eager to offer my services to an employer at a cut rate so that I could prove my worth to them, and then later request substantial raises. But this is impossible, because salary negotiations only occur after the company has decided that I am their favorite candidate out of however many hundreds apply.
Worse, if I take the first move and openly (e.g. on my resume or cover letter) inform the company of my willingness to work on the cheap, they would assume that I am signalling being a very low-quality engineer, which is very far from the case.
Unemployment does very much seem to be an information trap.
Worse, if I take the first move and openly (e.g. on my resume or cover letter) inform the company of my willingness to work on the cheap, they would assume that I am signalling being a very low-quality engineer, which is very far from the case.
Are you very confident that this is the inevitable signal? I’d imagine that if you gave a well worded explanation of your circumstances this would not be so likely. Consider that your resume is not the sole means of communication available to you, this is not necessarily a one shot exchange of information. You could, for example, ask within your resume for them to use the interview to verify your claims of competency despite your willingness to accept a low salary. Or, you could try to speak to someone in person.
If I am naively other-optimizing, please let me know. Apologies if so. I hope that’s not the case, and that you find this potentially helpful.
The specific example you gave doesn’t sound promising, but you’re entirely correct in the broader sense that my original post was unimaginative regarding possible solutions.
EDIT: It was worth an empirical try, so I tried your recommendation on a subset of applications. Zero responses from that group of companies.
Sely is correct. Doing that is a guaranteed way for the application to end up in the circular file. You should also note that places that offer internships, which is this idea more formalized, universally exploit the interns for free labor and then don’t hire them. Literally, given identical qualifications having done an unpaid internship gives you zero help in getting actually hired. There are statistics on this!
The only way to force the world to give you a job is to create it. IE: Start your own buisness. Which may also lead to instead bankrupcy, but at least, not unemployed.
Salary negotiation is a complicated signalling process, indeed. I’m currently an unemployed bioengineer and have been far longer than I would have liked, and consequently I would be willing and eager to offer my services to an employer at a cut rate so that I could prove my worth to them, and then later request substantial raises. But this is impossible, because salary negotiations only occur after the company has decided that I am their favorite candidate out of however many hundreds apply.
Worse, if I take the first move and openly (e.g. on my resume or cover letter) inform the company of my willingness to work on the cheap, they would assume that I am signalling being a very low-quality engineer, which is very far from the case.
Unemployment does very much seem to be an information trap.
Are you very confident that this is the inevitable signal? I’d imagine that if you gave a well worded explanation of your circumstances this would not be so likely. Consider that your resume is not the sole means of communication available to you, this is not necessarily a one shot exchange of information. You could, for example, ask within your resume for them to use the interview to verify your claims of competency despite your willingness to accept a low salary. Or, you could try to speak to someone in person.
If I am naively other-optimizing, please let me know. Apologies if so. I hope that’s not the case, and that you find this potentially helpful.
The specific example you gave doesn’t sound promising, but you’re entirely correct in the broader sense that my original post was unimaginative regarding possible solutions.
EDIT: It was worth an empirical try, so I tried your recommendation on a subset of applications. Zero responses from that group of companies.
Sely is correct. Doing that is a guaranteed way for the application to end up in the circular file. You should also note that places that offer internships, which is this idea more formalized, universally exploit the interns for free labor and then don’t hire them. Literally, given identical qualifications having done an unpaid internship gives you zero help in getting actually hired. There are statistics on this!
The only way to force the world to give you a job is to create it. IE: Start your own buisness. Which may also lead to instead bankrupcy, but at least, not unemployed.