See, I just want to know what they’re willing to pay me, not play stupid games over who “loses” :rolleyes:
Not true. If your salary expectations are close to what they are willing to offer, only real stupid companies won’t compromise a bit. For example, if I said my salary needs are $80000, and they were willing to pay no more than $78,000 they’d just say so. Now, if I said $250K, then they’d be right to say they couldn’t match my salary request. In fact, I did say $80k in one interview, and they said they couldn’t pay more than $50K, so it wasn’t going to work out; and in the other, they counter-offered with $78K, which was acceptable.
This isn’t a game at all most of the time, if you need much more than they can pay- then you shouldn’t be working for them. Now sure, if you lowball yourself at (using my example) of the lowest you could accept of say $75K, then they’d likely say “OK!” and you’d be out $3K- which wouldn’t be such a huge deal anyway.
Wow, some of these strategies seem like they might be even more effective than my initial idea, which I thought sounds hard to beat:
Lunge across the table and stab him.
Sailboat
One response is to ask, “Ah. This is a test.”, then snatch the envelope from the interviewer, read it, hand it back, then write down that amount.
If they want to play games, play them games.
I have a friend that was offered a starting job at a Hollywood talent agency (the proverbial “mail room” job, I guess) a couple of years ago. The salary was $15,000 per year. He called them, thanked them for the offer and accepted the job, and then asked if there was any negotiation room in the salary number.
The woman he was speaking with immediately withdrew the offer (or, technically, fired him, I guess, since he’d accepted the job already). So, he had the job for about 7 seconds.
The place where companies really abuse this is in their requests for resumes and salary expectations. They use it as a screening tool - too high a number and your resume is in the garbage. No salary addressed, and your resume is in the garbage. Reply with something like “Salary will be negotiated at a later date” and you still run a risk of having your resume tossed because you’re uppity. I can’t speak for the rest of Canada, of course, but there are definitely employers playing this game in Calgary - looking at job ads, and very few have salaries noted. It’s all that “Salary to be based on experience.” bullshit. :rolleyes: They haven’t got the memo yet that it’s an employees market here.
Umm, in general it’s “your resume is in the garbage”, no matter what you ask for or don’t. I don’t know anyone who has got a decent job by sending in a resume, without Networking or Recruiting 1st. And, why is that abuse anyway? If your salary need is 100K, and they are willing to pay only $50K, why bother you with a reply?
Probably because it is the type of job where there 10,000 people who would kill just for a chance to be in your friends place. Kind of like someone who is an assistant trader getting pissed off because they have to run for coffee.
Some jobs you just take because they are a foot in the door.
A lot of people in this thread seem pretty self-important. It’s not the companies job to pay you as much as they possibly can. When you negotiate for a salary, there’s a couple things you need to consider:
-What are people actually getting paid for this kind of work?
-How much leverage do I have? Are they hiring ME or do they just need to fill a slot? Am I bringing something to the table or am I just happy for a chance to work here?
-How much leverage does the company have? Do they get 10,000 resumes a day for this job or are they having trouble filling a position? Is this the kind of job where they hire 50 qualified candidates, 25% who will be gone in a year?
“Kindly Dig Your Grave” is set in Paris in the 1890s. There’s a nasty woman art dealer who rips off her artists by writing down a figure on a sheet of paper; the artists can ask whatever they want, but it has to be less than what she is offering. The artists, desperate for the sale, end up asking for much too little, and she then sells it at a big profit.
[spoiler]One of the artists fall in love with an Algerian waitress, who, when she becomes pregnant with him, sees a way out. She has the artist paint a scandalous nude painting of the art dealer – the waitress’s body with the art dealer’s head (anticipating celebrity nudes on the Internet). She then goes to the art dealer and plays the same game: pay the price in my envelope, and you can have the painting and burn it; offer too little and I give it to the art dealer across the street to put in his front window. The art dealer, afraid of this humiliation, and taking the hint from the Algerian that they’re looking for enough money to set up housekeeping in Algiers – house, food for their new baby, etc. – offers a very high price – hundreds of francs…
After the deal is complete, the art dealer looks at the envelope. The price written there is one franc.[/spoiler]
I agree. Hell, I’ve called out my bosses on occasion for similar bullshit tactics that they pull only as a show of their power. As my mother has always said… I have no problem cutting off my nose to spite my face.
Someone tries that envelope stuff with me… they won’t have to worry about withdrawing a job offer, I’ll tell him where he can stuff the envelope and then walk out the door.
OK, that’s exactly what I thought. It’s different from the OP because in the OP there’s no cost in underbidding… you could bid a trivial amount and win the maximum possible reward every time.
Thanks for resolving the uncertainty though. Either the OP story lost something in the retelling, or it’s a legitimately stupid interviewer.
Although I didn’t say they should be shot with bullets* from guns, and in any event, I meant it just as an expression, to be taken with a grain of salt. I’m concerned that I may get spoken to about “wishing death on someone.” Something that isn’t even allowed in THE PIT.
TBJ
- Anesthetic darts maybe? Then hang them by the scrotes, or boobs as the case may be. (After all, I have a strong pacifist streak.
) But as, I forgot to add last time, that’s just me.
It sounds like we are talking about two different worlds. In my world, people respond to job ads with resumes. You also present a resume to headhunters and recruiters, or just give unsolicited resumes to everyone you consider a likely employer to tap into the hidden job market. I don’t know how people get jobs in your world.
Maybe “abuse” isn’t the right word. If the company knows that they will pay 25k for a job, and you send in a salary expectation of 26k, they may use that to screen you out, when in reality you would easily negotiate down to 25k if you knew that is what they had in mind, and you’ll never know why you weren’t called for an interview.
If it was simply about hiring people for a certain salary, employers would advertise that they have X job for Y dollars. They don’t, though, because they want to retain all the power; they know what they will pay, and they want to know what you expect, too, so they can make an informed decision, but they don’t want potential employees able to make an informed decision. It’s a very adversarial relationship, rather than the symbiotic relationship that employer and employee should have.
Actually, ALL salary decisions are made that way, which is maddening as hell.
At some point they all demand you state your “requirements” and if too high, they assume you won’t be happy long and they don’t want to start with you.
Too low, of course, and you are suddenly no longer qualified for the job.
At times I’ve tried to finesse by defering to their knowlege of the local market, declare I just want a fair salary, to fit in where nobody will get excited either way, or that they can simply pay me what the prior officeholder had, if his background was at all similar.
It never works. If you don’t state a salary requirement that is almost exactly what they have in mind, you won’t get the job.