I know you’re not supposed to bring this up first, but I’m applying on-line and I’m worried that if I don’t mention anything they may see that as not being able to follow directions and not consider me.
I got this from a Dice agent I created. Here is a link to the job description.
What would be a good hourly wage to ask considering I have lots of training, but very little job experience?
Go to careers.com and punch in the relative information in their salary calculator. However, they tend to be on the high end, maybe by 10-30% or so. Also note that they report “average pay,” not the usual pay for someone starting out, which is usually 1/2 or 1/3 of the average pay for someone with 1-5 years of experience and 10 years on the job.
However, if this is an hourly position, they probably already have a pay scale. I don’t know why but nearly every company that has an hourly position always puts that box on application forms even though they are going to pay you based on your qualifications.
Negotiating pay is usually only for salaried employees.
I disagree strongly that hourly positions aren’t negotiated. I’ve worked in H/R and in other depts with hotels and I can tell you hourly positions CAN be negotiated and in fact most, in hotels are not uniform.
They don’t vary by much, usually a dollar or so up or down.
One thing I’ve noticed in my job hunt is in the last year, I’ve been told by pretty much all employers I’ve interviewed with, what the salary was on the first interview. I was told, the salary is $XXX.00 a year. Basically a take it or leave it, type thing.
It’s still a tough market with employers calling the shots.
So one of the ways to weed people out is salary. It’s especially effective for online applications.
You simply only pull up those who fit your salary budget or less.
Then you look for candidates that qualify. If none of those work out, then you simply go up one tier and look, tier by tier.
It’s incredibly easy to out price yourself these days.
It’s better to go low, get the job interview. If it’s far too low you can always come back with, "Based on the new information I got from the interview, I now see the job is more complicated than I thought. My new salary expectation would be (give range).
Worst that can happen is you’ll be eliminated and at least you got some interview experience.
I’m willing to go low, I was just worried I’d be overlooked if I went to low.
Well, since I can’t find anything on-line about it, hourly and salary charts and calculators don’t help, I guess I’ll give them $10.00/Hour and hope it isn’t too high.
I would say you aren’t putting in the right job title in the search engine, but if the job is so rare that it isn’t in a major salary calculator, the catch-all would be: negotiable.