Defining Pay for a Compensation Unicorn

At a recent client engagement, the HR department described a specific position they were having a hard time trying to fill.  The position was incredibly specific and required knowledge and a skill set that was nearly impossible to conceive. They told me that they had been trying to fill the position for almost two years. During that period, the department in need had created “better and more specific definitions.” As I probed deeper it became clear that this position was more than difficult to fill, it was impossible. They were trying to hire a unicorn.

This position, like the unicorn, could only be filled in someone’s imagination. A unicorn is a beautiful, magical and entirely mythical animal. No amount of compensation could solve this problem. No amount of corporate culture, communication, philosophy and compensation instruments would entice the right applicant. The problem with the position was that it was, by design or accident, impossible to fill in the real world.

During the two years the job had been open, the “better and more specific definitions” had become a catchall compendium of the things that other people in the department could not accomplish due to a lack of time or skills. They just kept adding “requirements” to a single description because that super-person would fill all the holes in the department. Had the original position been filled quickly (itself a near impossibility), the following needs would have been attached to an entirely new role, or spread amongst the rest of the staff.

Unicorn positions are incredibly frustrating. They can even be career limiting for HR and compensation professionals. Since it is impossible to find someone that meets every requirement of a unicorn, anyone you hire will fall short of expectations. We often get caught in this rut because the requirements change slowly over a long period of time.  What was initially a difficult, but realistic, becomes an impossible to fill dream position.

As compensation professionals, we tend to see most problems as something that can be fixed with pay. We often assume that if we just sweeten the pot, the right person will come running. We raise compensation levels and work harder with recruiters. We get special approval for pay packages that stretch or break our compensation philosophy or structure. All of this effort is made in an attempt to do the undoable.

Take a moment and consider some of the high paying, difficult to fill, positions at your company. Some are legitimate senior level roles. Others can probably be filled with two or three people with lesser talents, and maybe a great manager. Take an even closer look. How many of them would be easy to fill if it weren’t for a unique and pesky set of skills required for an important short-term task? How many of those unique skills could be better filled by a qualified consultant?

Most unicorns are created by our imagination. Initially, we need a horse to do a typical task.  We then realize that sometimes we need an animal with a horn to do something on occasion.  Instead of looking for a horse and a rhinoceros, we combine everything into one crazy unicorn. A rhino might be tough to find, but there are tons of horses (no matter what the specific task is) just waiting for you to put them to work. Even the best compensation program cannot turn a mythical position into a real job. Before you consider a compensation solution for a troublesome long-term opening, take the time to find out if you are really trying to hire a unicorn when other solutions may give you everything you need.

Dan Walter is the President and CEO of Performensation an independent compensation consultant focused on the needs of small and mid0-sized public and private companies. Dan’s unique perspective and expertise includes equity compensation, executive compensation, performance-based pay and talent management issues, Dan is on the board of the National Center for Employee Ownership, a partner in the ShareComp virtual conferences and the founder of Equity Compensation Experts a free networking group. Dan is frequently requested as a dynamic and humorous speaker covering compensation and motivation topics. Connect with him on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter @performensation.

Comments

[Mel]

This is an excellent post that I am forwarding to my recruiter friends. We often would have difficulty trying to both explain to clients that these are "unicorn" positions (we didn't use that excellent analogy though) and then, of course, to fill said position. Oftentimes, as you mentioned, the job description was 2+ positions requiring widely different skill sets (a senior level designer who does deep diving analysis as well as business development and can edit the content portion of a website). Unfortunately, many excellent candidates were discarded or overlooked before the hiring company/manager realized that the person they were looking for did not in fact exist.

[Dan Walter]

@Mel
Thanks for a great real world example. I think this has become a bigger issue as budgets have shrunk, but requirements have grown. A more realistic approach may get companies a candidate that can get 95% of the job done now, as opposed to 0% of the job done for another 18-24 months

[Laura Schroeder]

Timely, witty and spot on! There's no such thing as a flying pig so why not hire a pig that can't fly and a bird? A more realistic approach to hiring would help meet the needs of the organization AND be good for the overall economy.

[E. James (Jim) Brennan]

On target, showing how packing all the unfulfilled needs into one overflowing gunnysack for a "unicorn" to carry is unrealistic. Besides creating impossible search expectations, it lazily permits management to avoid fixing the problems. Instead of using more available tools, tapping into existing KSAs or re-engineering the functions, they can roll their eyes and sigh deeply, claiming that the highly unlikely (if not completely impossible) appearance of an unprecendented "unicorn" would solve everything.

[Dan Walter]

I am so happy this posting struck a chord in people. The Unicorn concept started for me years ago as the "Unified Theory of Someone Who Can Do Anything". In morphed in Unicorn since it came across as something more friendly and approachable!

While this has always been an issue, our current budget woes have made it much worse. With all of the unemployed talent out there, there should be ANY position at a company that goes unfilled.

[Jeff Haynes]

So - Compensation Department - please go out and benchmark this job and tell us what the market is for it!

Right, I could give you three examples of the universe before I could give you benchmark data on that mythical and elusive position.