Learn-a-Latte' - The Excel Cafe' Newsletter 2023 December

This month we'll see what's happening, learn how to negotiate your incoming salary, and get a primer on RC notation in excel. So get your favorite beverage and read on!

What’s Happening?

Conditional Formatting!

This month we did a webinar at the Toronto Excel meetup group on conditional formatting. The session was an hour long followed up by some Q&A at the end.

Attendance was great and most people stayed until the end!

Reach out if you would like to schedule this with your group.

Negotiating your Salary going in…

So you’ve had the interviews (all 6 rounds), you have a good understanding of the job and the people you will be working with. Everything seem perfectly aligned.

Then you get the offer.

It’s not bad, but also not what you were expecting or hoping for. As you are processing the initial offer you start to get bummed out. Depressed even. How could they have offered what they did? Especially when we discussed salary up front?

I am here to tell you not to worry. This is normal and can work to your advantage if you know how to handle it.

In my last 3 jobs I negotiated a 8%, 9% and 11% raise in my offer by understanding the following two things.

1.      They want you

2.      Nobody, NOBODY comes to the table with their best offer first.

The first one took me a minute to understand but many years to believe. As you look at the job search from your side, you think about how long it took. How you don’t have any comparable opportunities at present. How you think you would really love the people and the work. You talk yourself into the fact that you really want the job and lower pay is okay for a better environment (*** the company is COUNTING on this).

What you haven’t thought about is how the process goes for the employer.

By the time they have a job rec posted, the team has needed to fill this role for at least a month. The job has to stay posted for a few days. Next HR has to screen the 100s of resume’s/ CVs that came in for the role. After that, the interviews start. We all know that these days there are usually multiple interviews so that will take time as well. By the time you get your offer, in may have been 2-3 months, maybe more.

And now, they choose YOU. In some cases they will keep a #2 in the wings until you accept if they like them, but in most cases, you were chosen and now the team and hiring manager are excited about you joining and becoming part of the team.

The last thing they want to do, is start the process all over again by reposting the job rec and going through all the steps again. That process alone could potentially cost the company thousands (maybe even tens of thousands of dollars) by having that job open another 2-4 months.

So while you are worried about the company saying no to a counter or rescinding, they are worried you won’t accept, and they will lose you.  

Don’t accept right away, always say you need to talk it over with your family. Go back to the amount you were hoping for. You should know by now what the industry standard for that job pays, BUT if you don’t then pick a number and counter. I would say 10-20% ask is completely reasonable and 20% won’t turn off a quality company. They may counter you back, but it’s not insulting.

This leads me to the second thing you should know:

Nobody comes to the table with their best offer first.

Once the interviews are done and the offer is out there, you are primarily dealing with HR. They have a range for the role they can offer. The HR reps’ job is to get you in the door and do it as cheaply as possible. * This is NOT a slam on recruiters, they are being judged on metrics like everyone else.

They will talk about what a great offer it is, what the benefits are, growth opportunities. In short, they are playing on your FOMO, your Fear Of Missing Out, and it works in many cases. The early part of my career, I just took whatever offer was out there. 

Figure out what your number should be (multiples of 10k are good). As you prepare to submit your counter, also review the job and how you are really going to help them succeed. Emphasize your interest and enthusiasm but be firm in declaring that from your understanding of the role, X is a fair amount for the position, and you are the right person.

Using these two truths together will absolutely get you a higher initial offer. That will also be good for the company. By them coming up to meet your counter or meet you halfway, they have demonstrated how much they value and respect you.

In the INCREDIBLY rare case of the company getting offended, saying no or worse, rescinding the offer, congratulations, you dodged a bullet.

RC Notation

I don’t have evidence to back this up, but I would guess that well over 90% of Excel users do not know about RC notation.

RC has been around since excel was created over 30 years ago and while it is not a necessity, learning it will give you more insights into how excel works the formula magic that it does.

RC notation is an alternative way to express a cell, or range’s address.

In traditional notation, we are used to Numbers for Rows and letters for columns.

Examples:

Most of us understand that. Now lets look at those formulas in RC notation.

In Excel, go to files, options, Formulas and select R1C1 notation.

Now look at the formulas:

And

Excel is expressing the formula in relations to the cell it is entered in.

So RC is simply the current row and column you are on.

*** To reference another row you simply include the number of cells away from the current cell in brackets.

R[-1]C  would be the address for the cell one row above the active cell and in the same column

R[2]C[5] would be the cell 2 down and 5 to the right of the current cell.

This notation makes it incredibly efficient in copying and pasting formulas.

Another reason to know this notation is that if you record a VBA macro and input a formula, Visual Basic will put it in RC notation no matter how you are looking at the formulas on the worksheet

.This notation is really beneficial to understanding how Excel works it’s magic. Even if we do stay in A1 notation, it’s good to know.

Until next time,

Stay Frosty Friends!