Employee learns that employer is hiring at $18k more than what they're earning for the same job, prompting a defensive response from their manager: 'Someone walking in off the street with zero knowledge of our systems is worth 15k more than me?'

There's nothing like feeling undervalued in a job where you've put in a lot of hard work, done the hard yards, and put in hard work to learn the systems and be as proficient as you can possibly be. Sure, you're underpaid for the work you're doing, but you have this prevailing sense that it is leading you somewhere, toward growth and improvement and that next phase of your career.

Then, whether it's presented to you by a friend or coworker, or you just come across it through your own curious searching, you find a job listing from your employer. This job, it looks an awful lot like your job. In fact, it is your job, right down to every letter of the job description. There is one marked difference thought: the compensation. 

The compensation doesn't resemble at all what you're being paid; in fact, you're earning considerably less.

Whereas you had, until now, felt confidant and competent in the work, you're faced with a sudden reality where you actually feel like a bit of a joke, as if someone has been laughing at you behind your back the entire time. 

The next time you return to work, it feels like an unpleasant awakening from a warm, saturated dream into a muted, cold reality. Suddenly, nothing is how it was. You're still doing the same tasks, but everything feels somehow… heavier?

And this is all too common; modern organizations will almost always hire for better rates than they are paying their current staff. 

It isn't fair to veteran staff who know and have often even created and optimised the processes through which the business successfully operates. And, for this reason, it really doesn't make much sense. Why hire someone externally with less skill and organizational knowledge?

It's a bit like when your phone or cable company tells you they're putting up the price of your phone or cable package, but it's a higher rate than the rate that they're currently offering to new joining members. It has long been the best course of action to simply threaten to leave your provider so they give you the true market rate that is the new-joining rate, or to swap to another provider if all else fails.

Like that phone and cable company is counting on its captive userbase not realizing they're being overcharged or bothering to look into changing providers, employers, too, are counting on their captive workforce not realizing they're being underpaid or being otherwise unwilling to look for other work and navigate the treacherous stress and uncertainty of the hiring process.

On an organizational and leadership level, there must be great care taken to ensure recruitment is orchestrated in a way that will not cause greater widespread issues that might lead to higher turnover and even higher costs, possibly even leading to the loss of top performers who are worth far more than their pay grade would otherwise suggest.