Then just put the offered salary up front in the job offer and don’t negotiate it. Save everyone even more time.
There is some conflict in these statements.
If a company is looking for the best and brightest they might want to tread carefully and no piss of candidates, on the other hand they could use the reverse and only consider candidates that were smart enough to not answer.
If a company wants to hire someone they can underpay so they can maximize their profits its to there benefit to ask, then they can opt not to hire people smart enough to not answer.
They don’t care about wasting applicants time, it’s not like they pay for it.
If 20 applicants include pay history it saves the company time, they get free job market research to learn how much they’ll need to pay then set the salary.
In Australia I’ve never been asked this, and I’d either refuse to answer or put what ever answers would indicate to them the salary I want (not my actual salary history). As an employer I don’t think it’s fair to ask this and expect an honest answer. I’d much rather just ask what their expected salary range is, I can tell from that if we are wasting each others time or not.
When a job applicant answers that question, how common is it for the prospective employer to check? Do they request paystubs, tax forms? Do former employers sometimes provide that information when contacted?
I can see why being the first to mention a specific number could be disadvantageous for the employee is that number is low. If it’s high, could it not be advantageous for the employee to frame the negotiation starting from a high number?
Ive heard sales stories about candidates being asked by their interviewer to bring a W-2 from their current job.
Not sure if its legal or not, at the same time, if you are only offering $50,000 a year, do you want to hire someone who is used to making $80-100,000 without good reason? Odds are, they are used to certain lifestyle, and if they are taking your lower paying job, that brings up question marks.
A résumé describes the job responsibilities you have held in the past… but often the narrative inflates the importance or extent of those responsibilities.
Being able to associate a salary with the job is a fairly good – although not perfect – indicator of the accuracy of the claims.
In other words, if you say you were responsible for a staff of 30 and had P&L responsibility for a budget of $4 million annually, but it then becomes apparent that you earned $32K, it is more likely that you were “responsible” in the sense that you compiled expense report numbers in a spreadsheet rather than holding true accountability.
So it makes some sense for prospective employers to ask.
But there are good reasons for prospective employees to decline to answer.
They also want to know what everyone else is paying out there. This information can used for deciding how much to pay their other employees too.
Home owners might do this… Ask how much other people are paying to have their lawns mowed. How much per hour other people are paying for yard work or housekeeping.
I’m in the middle of a job search and I’ve filled out tons of applications in the last month and a half. Most of the time it is a required question. My problems is I was a senior manager in oil and gas before it went in the toilet and I started my own business. My last job for someone else paid me $380k and now that I’m switching careers I’m looking at jobs paying 50-80. It has been almost impossible to get an interview and the only times I’ve moved forward were with companies who didn’t ask what I used to make.
Its certainly not uncommon to ask but it’s an additional hurdle that is unnecessary for me switching careers. I figure they don’t want to waste their time with someone who will turn them down over salary and just like a resume keyword search it’s easy to automate throwing out applicants this way.
Especially when it is in a job ad. Does a company getting hundreds of resumes, most of which won’t result in any action, need hundreds of detailed salary histories? And what salary counts besides the last one? Hell, if someone asked that of me I’d be hard pressed to figure out what Bell Labs was paying me 35 years ago, besides what is on my Social Security statement. (Which isn’t accurate since I’m above the cut off.)
Now, it is a common discussion about whether you should give salary information after the first successful interview. But before it? Screw that.
In any case the fact that someone is sending a resume shows that there is a good chance that salary is out of whack with capabilities. And why should company X think that company Y is a great resource for how much a person is worth?
I understand that some companies ask for Social Security numbers on applications also. Again, screw that.
They can trash your resume for being over-qualified as easily based on your job title as on your salary. That is if they are so stupid that they don’t see that you’d be a bargain.
In every single job I’ve held, the contract has specified that the salary is confidential. It has come up at interview and I say so and that I hope they respect that.
I don’t think so. It’s a negotiation. If they want a good employee, they have to give something in return. If the employer could just dictate terms, most people would be paid a few cents an hour and work 12 hour days.
Okay, but the employer should just ask me what I’m willing to work for instead.
You should be frank about it regardless. Just give a range upfront, or say nothing and ask the applicant for a range.
It’s generally illegal in the U.S. to have an employment contract that requires you to keep your salary confidential. Here’s an article explaining why.
This is exactly the right approach. Back when I was a manager, I was trying to hire for a junior level position. I knew from independently look at salary surveys and from the salary structure of the group I managed what someone should be making for a given level of experience. We had a candidate who specified to HR a salary range that neatly bracketed that valuation given his level of experience, and I elected to hire him because he seemed capable, willing, and would integrate into the group. The HR rep and her boss pressured me to offer him the bottom end of his salary request, believing that a) he wouldn’t have any other offers, b) it would keep salary costs down, and c) when we offered him a mid-year raise he’d be more appeciative. Knowing that we likely wouldn’t be offering mid-year or possibly any raises, I stood fast in offering him slighly above his valuation (and thus above the median value of his range) and making him aware that he wouldn’t get a mid-year bump. You would not believe the holy shitstorm of calls, e-mails up and down the chain, and so forth, before some director-level person asked why we were going through such rigamarole over a difference of a few thousand dollars. The engineer in question turned out to be a fantastic employee and was pleased to get above his mid-range value, so he didn’t feel at all slighted by not getting a mid-year bump.
Then there was all the horsehit about getting him some compensation for relocation despite the fact that he didn’t have enough stuff to fill a 14’ U-Haul van. Jesus holy fuckage of much ado about nothing; isn’t it really worth a couple thousand to treat someone you’ve hired as if you think they’ll actually make an effort?
Well, I guess it depends who you are, but as the candidate, you should approach negotiations in exactly this way. You have a set of skills and experience, and a company should be willing to pay a competitive salary for it. What you’ve earned in the past is not really germane, and if the company has a limit to what they can afford for a position they should make this clear up front, not try to filter candidates based on who will take the lowest possible salary. I’ve had to tell great candidates that based upon their experience or their provided salary history that I probably wouldn’t be able to match their previous salary and let them decide whether to continue or not accordingly.
There are standard and well-vetted salary surveys for this. An employeer-conducted informal survey is going to be inaccurate, biased, and likely fraudulent as candidates exaggerate or reduce their history in accordance with their level of desire for the job.
As for salary history being confidential, while it may be written into some contracts it is utterly unenforceable. You of course have to report your salary and other compensations on your tax returns, and you may have to provide your tax returns for any number of purposes such as getting a loan, demonstrating an ability to provide for dependants or pay child support, to satisfy the requirements of a pre-nuptial agreement or alimony settlement, run for public office, et cetera. Any contractual requirement to keep the information generally confidential is null and void. Frankly, most of the requirements written in employment contracts are often suspect if not completely horseshit, and many employers try to impose employment contracts or non-compete agreements without negotiation or due consideration for an employee. If your employer or potential employer hands you an employment contract or non-compete agreement, your default response should be, “I’ll have my lawyer review it and respond.”.
Stranger
Interesting. I’m in the UK.
I’m not sure why this is so weird. I work for a Fortune 500 company and both interview and hire numerous people at all different levels. I don’t ask for a salary history, but I do ask the candidate at the end of the interview what they are expecting in salary, and I am totally fine with them giving a range, but would prefer a solid number.
My reasoning is not some nefarious trick, but rather I want to evaluate the candidates against each other. If one candidate is a 7 out of 10, and one is a 9 out of 10, but the 7 guy is half the price of the 9 guy, I’ll likely want him. Or if they are the same price, I’ll definitely take the 9 guy. The point is, I want the best candidate for the money. And yes, salary matters independent of what the end customer will pay. Why? Because the customer (typically the US Government) wants a bargain on their cost-plus-fixed-fee contract too and is more likely to use us again if we get them good, but cheap, contractor personnel. Also, the cheaper guys are easier to sell, so they will never have to be laid off due to lack of work, whereas a more senior guy might. Sometimes even the perception of more mid-level personnel gets you more work in the long run. That is, I might have a guy who makes $100,000 and can do the programming of two people, but if I offer the customer two guys who each make $70,000, he may hire them both even though it costs 40% more for the same work because “two is better than one”. And that’s not to say I don’t hire lots of senior level people too, but I have had numerous instances where I have interviewed someone and they are excited about the job, I like them, and then they announce they want double what the position pays at the highest range, which unravels the whole process.
In rare instances where I really wanted the guy, he played coy on salary, and then I went through all the internal approvals to make the officer, it’s been a disaster when the guy had expectations of a higher salary than what we offered. He refuses our “low-ball” offer and tells us we wasted his time, and my superiors are pissed that we let a candidate waste our time because they “didn’t want the job and may have just wanted an offer to take to their current employer to try to get more money”. When this has happened, I have always explained to the candidate that if they had only given me a ballpark of what they were looking for, this would never have happened. I can’t necessarily give them the same ballpark figure because what I can pay is relative to their experience level and what the customer will pay, which is often a sliding scale that could hypothetically range from $50,000 - $100,000. If I told every candidate that the position could pay up to $100,000, then every candidate would immediately ask for that.
And you are forgetting that some people have really unbelievable expectations and don’t realize the traps of some jobs. I’ve had junior level folks quit on me because Company X is offering double the salary as us. Then when they get there, they find out that the hours are unbearable slave labor and it’s a short term project, which gets them laid off in six months. Then I see their resume again asking for their old job back.
One application for a job I didn’t want asked for a complete (emphasized) salary history, so I gave them one, going back to a penny a paper delivering a weekly shopper in 1966, but I think what scared them off was what I was making in the late 2000s.
I got a call from an HR person after applying for a my current position and while we had a pleasant chat, she was firing off a lot of questions and I was smoothly answering them, and she snuck the current salary one in on me. Had it been her first question or in an email, I might have politely put her off. After I told her my current salary, I did add that I was looking to make more, especially if I was moving to another state to take a position…after all, I didn’t want to go through a bunch of hassle for the same money.
When I finally got the offer, it was only about 10% more than the number I gave them. Negotiated a bit and got to a number that was closer to a 30% increase. I was happy enough with where I ended up, but I also think that giving them that number led them to try to lowball me a bit. But, then again, it did kind of give them a fair starting point – without it, they may well have offered me less than I made previously.