Everyone loves a bargain, but when hiring talented professionals it can sometimes come back to bite you as you continue to grow your staff. We recently worked with a client that has experienced just such a problem and the fix is hard to swallow. The client has (with our help) found some very talented professional as they moved from a three to a ten person team. Originally they weren’t able to offer top dollar salaries, but because of the strong growth and current technology they’re jobs were competitive in the market. Unfortunately as growth has waned and project work has slowed they’ve found that some of the candidates they are interested in now are above their typical range. Since they’re having trouble finding what they want in part because of the internal equity they established over the last few years they now find themselves with some hard decisions to make. The most significant are:

* Company spends the necessary money on new hires, but runs the risk that current employees now feel underpaid and look to leave.

* Company hires lesser qualified candidates simply to maintain internal equity, but then has to spend time, energy and money to ramp those new hires to the level needed.

*Company spends the money to hire the new talent and also increases the salaries of the current staff making their compensation more representative of the current market.

None of these solutions are easy or necessarily right or wrong, but somewhere along the line one of them or something similar will have to be done to rectify the situation.