Salary Talk

You’re probably in a fantasy football league. If your league is really competitive, you’ve probably spent a lot of time researching the best players for your team by buying magazines, studying depth charts, analyzing position rankings, or soliciting advice from experts on Twitter. If all this is true, you’ve probably heard of Dave Richard. As the Senior Fantasy Football Writer for CBSSports.com, Dave has a job most sports fans and stat-obsessed fantasy football geeks envy---he gets paid to watch professional football and then discuss it. In this week’s special Dream Jobs edition of "Salary Talk," Aaron teams up with Salary.com Product Manager Patrick Siska to interview Dave and find out how someone ends up writing about fantasy football for a living. Find out how he got the job and hear tips on how you can do the same.

The number of women in the workforce is increasing, more women than men are earning college degrees and the number of female executives continues to rise. Yet women are still only earning an average of 77 cents on the dollar compared to men. Evelyn Murphy is a former Massachusetts Lt. Governor who is now president of the WAGE (Women Are Getting Even) Project in Boston. She joins Aaron and Wendy on this week's edition of "Salary Talk," and discusses the all-important topic of gender discrimination as it relates to the wage gap in America. If you're a woman---or especially if you're a man who supervises female employees---this podcast is an enlightening look at how we intentionally and subconsciously allow the wage gap to persist, and also what steps we can take to fix it.

Think back to your biggest accomplishment. The one you're most proud of. Whether you lost 100 lbs or successfully ran a marathon, there's a high probability you achieved your goal because it was something you chose to do that you had a personal attachment to. Mark Murphy, author of "Hard Goals: The Secret to Getting From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be," said too many people fail to achieve their goals because of apathy and a broken system. If your friends and family are the ones telling you you need to lose weight, that's their goal. And if your boss sets some arbitrary benchmark for you without consulting you first, that number is looked at with scorn and derision. But using Murphy's HARD (Heartfelt, Animated, Required, Difficult) goals system, people develop an intense emotional connection to the goals and are more likely to succeed. Mark talks to Wendy and Aaron in this week's podcast and gives some tips on how to better structure both your personal and professional goals so you'll push yourself out of your comfort zone and actually care about the results, instead of quitting in frustration or apathy a month from now.

Where do you get your salary data? Why isn't the Salary Wizard dispensing "accurate" numbers? Should pilots who keep secrets about flying their client's mistresses around get bigger raises? These are just some of the questions you asked us. And we brought in the big guns to get you all the answers.

So you work for an idiot. Now what? Dr. John Hoover literally wrote the book on working for idiot bosses, and this week he has tips for identifying idiot bosses, addressing the real issues and forming a working ...

This week, Aaron and Wendy interview Vicky Oliver, who wrote the book "Bad Bosses, Crazy Coworkers and Other Office Idiots: 201 Smart Ways to Handle the Toughest People Issues." And in doing so, she provided employees everywhere with a reference guide for the various categories of horrible bosses, exasperating coworkers and just about every office problem in existence. She identifies issues, gives solutions and helps you figure out how to save yourself some anxiety in the workplace.

Continuing with our Dream Jobs series, Aaron and Wendy talk to Ed Glebus, who works as an executive Chef on the west coast. Glebus is the general manager and executive chef for CulinArt, a corporate dining company in San Diego. Glebus oversees all food service for the telecommunications company Qualcomm, cooking and serving more than 2,000 meals a day for 12,000 employees in seven locations. Listen to Glebus' journey from his first days as a cook at D'Angelo sub shop to his years spent earning valuable on-the-job experience working at restaurants across the United States. Find out what it takes to be an executive chef, listen to some kitchen horror stories and get some free advice from a professional.

In this podcast, Karsan talks to Aaron and Wendy (the hosts of Salary Talk) about the significant implications engagement has on employees and businesses. With smartphones and the Internet, the days of punching a time clock and leaving your work at the door when you go home are over, Karsan says. Instead of a Career-Life Balance, most people are headed towards a Career-Life Blend, in which your work and home lives are forever intertwined. That's why employers need to know that a bad work situation can spill over at home and create marital angst, poor parenting and other problems. The employee then takes those personal problems to the office, at which point productivity suffers, the bottom line decreases and eventually you have to pay the turnover costs associated with hiring a new person for the job.

Are you uncomfortable in group settings? Do you abhor public speaking? Do you have better ideas than the loudmouths in your office, yet you watch helplessly as they get promoted while you're barely noticed working silently in your cubicle?

Mike Rowe, host of the Discovery Channel's emmy-nominated show "Dirty Jobs.," talks to Wendy and Aaron about something vital to this country's sustainability. Motivated by his grandfather's work ethic, Mike has set out to address the nation's aversion to hard work, the steady decline in the trades and the skilled labor shortage that is crippling this country...

Everyone knows men make more money than women. But perhaps, at least in part, it's because they ask for it and women don't. Linda Babcock, co-author of "Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation and Positive Strategies for Change," joins Aaron and Wendy on this week's Salary Talk and talks openly and honestly about why women don't negotiate, why negotiating their own self-worth makes them anxious and what they can do to fix it. If you're a woman who falls into this category, or just as important if you're a manager with female employees, Linda offers some incredibly important tips and strategies to better ensure equality between the sexes. This podcast may be about women, but it's got something to offer everyone and Linda is a nationally renowned expert on gender studies.

While people might not recognize Jennifer Hale’s name or picture, as soon as she starts talking it usually clicks. Most animation and video game aficionados who hear Hale’s voice quickly realize she has been involved in (what seems like) every meaningful video game in the last 15 years, as well as countless cartoons, movies, TV series and commercials. Hale's IMDB resume is more than a dozen pages long, but she is known best for her role as the voice of the female Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect trilogy. She also plays two major roles in the much-anticipated video game Star Wars: The Old Republic, and voices a character in the recently released game Gears of War 3.

Money is power. Like it or not, if you want to succeed at work you have to be able to run with the big dogs and rub elbows with the super wealthy. If you want to be a millionaire, you have to look and act like a millionaire. Without a millionaire's bankroll. Enter Vicky Oliver, author of the newly released book The Millionaire's Handbook: How to Look and Act Like a Millionaire Even If You're Not, who has devoted an entire book to taking on a millionaire's persona on a shoestring budget...

Have you ever felt ambushed during a business meeting? Or have you either clammed up or lashed out at a boss when unexpected criticisms come your way during a performance review? If so, chances are you were in a "Crucial Conversation." And you blew it. Kerry Patterson, a New York Times bestselling writer and co-author of "Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High," says crucial conversations happen on a near daily basis both at work and at home. The trick, as Patterson tells Aaron and Wendy on this week's episode of Salary Talk, is to recognize them when they happen and act accordingly.

Times are tough, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be paid what you're worth. Robin Pinkley, an expert in corporate negotiations and author of the book "Get Paid What You're Worth: The Expert Negotiators' Guide to Salary and Compensation," has done the research and crunched the numbers. The result: failure to negotiate your starting salary could translate into $1 to $2 million in lost revenue over the course of one's career. Aaron and Wendy talk to Robin about when and how to negotiate salary, tackling cultural differences during negotiations and how to deal with employers who request salary expectations up front.