PAY EQUITY Getting, Grinding, and Growing at Work is a compilation of best practices in securing pay equity at work. While much attention is focused on employers' responsibilities in ensuring pay equity within their workplaces, often absent from the conversation is educational choice, career goals, mobility, and personal responsibility. This is a comprehensive career development guide with proven strategies toward pay equity at every juncture. The guide also provides a general overview of applicant and employee rights in these areas, current pay equity legislation, state-level activity, and Federal government enforcement efforts.

Jude Sotherlund brings a unique perspective to employment issues facing employers, employees, and applicants today. By capitalizing upon her experiences in both the public and private sectors, Sotherlund is able to capture the attention of the reader with a mix of humor and hard-hitting data, leaving them inspired and more confident. PAY EQUITY Getting, Grinding, and Growing at Work provides strategic guidance on self-assessing strengths and skills; networking; applying for jobs; interviewing; negotiating; self-assessing performance; identifying opportunities for career growth; and job retention. Each chapter includes an interactive exercise. In the development of this guide, Sotherlund capitalized on her decades of consulting to employers small and large, coupled with her 14 years as serving as a formal mentor to young adults tackling these same issues.

After graduating from Georgetown University with a degree in economics, Sotherlund began work at the White House as a Staff Assistant in the Office of Public Affairs. Her subsequent federal government experience included serving in the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Policy, and Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, and culminated in serving as the deputy assistant secretary of employment standards -- the umbrella organization for the Wage and Hour Division; Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs; Office of Federal Workers' Compensation Programs; and Office of Labor Management Standards.

It was Sotherlund's experience in the U.S. Department of Labor serving as a principal contributor to The Glass Ceiling Initiative and Pipelines of Progress that gave her keen insights into the vast differences in employment policies, practices and strategies across America's workplaces. While she gives credit to the employment acumen she gained through auditing companies, performing policy analysis, and participating in corporate, civil rights, and women's focus groups while at the Labor Department, it was her subsequent consulting experience in a variety of industries including banking, insurance, health care, colleges/universities, manufacturing, and defense that led her to becoming a compensation compliance expert. Sotherlund is adept at guiding the reader through employment scenarios such as hiring, promotion, demotion and termination while illuminating the pay equity implications along the way. Even complex compensation professional terminology is explained for the reader. This book is a must-have for those just starting their careers, trying to grow their career, change careers, re-enter the workforce or right the ship. For those who have no one to guide them in these areas -- this one's for you.