How can I/we make the most of a hot job market?

1. Use recruiters. Several. Recruiters signal a company is motivated, and willing to pay more than they need to to fill a position. Tell the recruiters "I'm looking for $xxx,xxx and up." Most recruiters don't like wasting their time, so most will feel out the pricing power first.

2. Do as much interviewing in a short time as you can stomach.

3. Try to get offers from multiple companies. Tell each company that you love them best, but you've got a better offer, and you've got mouth(s) to feed, can they do any better?

4. Take the best offer you can get out of the company you think you'll like working for the most.

I am on the hiring side in this crazy market, please think long term and find something you like and that fits your long term development goals. I have had to go through plenty of mediocre candidates jumping every year or two to a new salary increase, they lack deep knowledge and basically copy paste stackoverflow answers. I would never give them a serious role. The moment we have another 2008 crisis all these people will struggle to find a decent job.

Great post. I'm curious what other self-employed people are doing.

My typical work week the last 5-7 years is 15-20 hours on 2-3 projects of typical 3-month duration.

I turn down A LOT of projects.

I an a hybrid consulting analyst/business analyst that does business process design and integration specification.

ALL of my clients want ALL of my time right now. I did 4-5 months of 50 hour weeks and then just said, "STOP".

I then told ALL of my clients that if they want priority access to my time and more than a day a week they need to commit to monthly retainers (large ones) that they can cancel at any time with one month penalty.

Most were like, "ok, we'll figure something else out" (because corporations would rather have record profits than sustainable businesses).

One I am still negotiating with. But since I put a premium on time instead of money it's not really a negation, it's more like "here are my terms."

If you are any good at what you do maybe you also need to decide what is important to you and then find a company that will meet you there.

But even though this is slightly off topic I am curious what other small consulting practices and freelancers are doing to maximize their income right now. In my mind this is like 1998-2001 where I made A LOT of money. If I am going to work hard right now I will not be doing so to make rich people more wealth but rather to increase my coffers so I have even more freedom to say NO.

Question to anyone who knows better: Can people in EU take advantage of this somehow? US compensation is _crazy_ relative to what I make in Berlin for example. 2-3x or more for Senior/Staff level positions. I'm not an EU citizen, so I'm not even sure how to apply for the best possible positions in US-based companies.

This is a good essay that is worth reading, if you haven’t done so already https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/

0. Get at least two offers. You might get a 20% raise with just one offer, but 20-100% from two.

A little extra money won’t make you happier. If you want money start a business. As an employee, there is a ceiling because you simply don’t scale.

That said, passed a threshold it is a matter of having “enough”.

If you get multiple offers, you can play them off of each other. Specifics on that: don't give your current salary to the companies making you an offer; if you really feel pinned into a corner to say a number, use levels.fyi or other market research that supports a very high number for you to give. Then once multiple companies have given you an offer, you can use those offers, or even particularly appealing parts of the offer, to ask for more. My most recent negotiation I had a higher cash comp (but lower total comp) at my 2nd choice company; I told my first choice that if they could beat the cash comp from other-offer, then I would sign on. I was expecting them to drop the equity a bit but they actually bumped that up, too. The line of "I will sign if..." is very powerful, but you should only use it if you mean it.

A piece that's addressed less is how to get multiple offers. I treated my job search like a funnel - I talked to as many potentially-interesting places as I could, either through my network or looking back through all my old LinkedIn cold outreach messages (and marking myself "open to offers" there).

Then I did maybe 6-7 pre-onsite "interviews" - sometimes this is a technical screen, sometimes this is coffee & in-depth conversation with the hiring manager, depending on company size and how the manager likes to hire. I tried to schedule these clustered together, to keep all my potential jobs at the same stage of the funnel.

Then I did 3 full-day onsites within a week and a half - I was working full-time so even that felt like a stretch. I only chose to onsite at places that I was really excited to work at, and where I felt very good at my chances in the onsite interviews. And luckily that resulted in 2 offers so I could negotiate.

I did actually try this funnel approach unsuccessfully a few months beforehand - I ended up with only 1 onsite I was excited enough about to take a vacation day for and then didn't pass it, so it's certainly not a fool-proof plan. But, it did work out for me in the end.

You can push on recruiters for slow companies if somewhere you're excited about is lagging behind your "funnel" - you can let them know that you've moved to onsite with 2 or more other companies but you're super excited about them so definitely want to get your phone screen scheduled asap; or you heard you're going to receive an offer and will probably need to decide within a week; is it possible to move up your onsite before that deadline? Having other interested companies is a strong signal, and recruiters will pretty much always want to rush you through if they think you're likely to be a "hire" decision from the team.