salary

A reader writes:

This week I accepted a job I am really excited about. During the interview process, I was asked what salary I was looking for, and I answered honestly with what I thought was an appropriate salary (I only have one year of experience so I wasn’t exactly sure, and I didn’t have any luck on sites like glassdoor.com). When the offer came in, it was 1k higher than what I had asked for, and I happily accepted. The next step was to head in to HR to sign some paperwork. As the HR rep explained the amazing benefits and perks of the job, I noticed a piece of paper in front of him that gave a clear rundown of my job: my name, my supervisor’s name, my salary, the reason the position was created, etc. Then I saw the salary range for the position—it was 15-25k more than what I had been offered. My heart sank.

I’ll admit, it’s not all bad. I got the salary I asked for and I am thrilled about the job (and actually have two years less experience than they had wanted). But I am worried about what this means for the rest of my career. What is my best bet for catching up to the salary range? Is it possible to renegotiate my salary in a year or two, or is a 20k jump just unheard of for that sort of thing? Or is it safer to wait a while longer and try to get promoted to a senior position and angle for the increase then? Or did I just really mess things up and have set myself up to always make 20k less than I could have?

You might have limited your salary at this company, but not for the rest of your career.

A $20,000 raise is pretty unusual — not unheard of, but rare and hard to get. (Actually, it’s more helpful to talk about raises in terms of percentages; a $20,000 raise could be perfectly feasible if you’re already making six figures, but with only one year of experience, I’m assuming that you’re not.)

However, at whatever point you leave this company, it should get easier to negotiate for more money. It’s always easier to negotiate before you’re working somewhere than after you are … since once you are, they already know what you’re willing to work for — a key element in negotiating.

After all, you’re under no obligation to share your salary history with prospective new employers. Some will insist on it, but plenty won’t. Moreover, even with companies that do insist on knowing your salary history, you can still sometimes argue that you’re worth significantly more. (Here’s an account of how I once did that myself.)

But it’s also worth noting that you might not have made a big mistake at all. After all, you were happy with the offer until you saw that piece of paper. Plus, since you have less experience than what they wanted, your salary may simply reflect that reality; the range you saw might have been for a candidate with the amount of experience they were originally looking for. (And I can pretty much guarantee that if you cited the range you saw in asking for more now, they’d cite your lack of experience right back, even if they were willing to pay you more earlier.)

Of course, this is a perfect illustration of why it’s frustrating for candidates that companies make them name a number first. Job seekers are rarely in as strong of a position as an employer is to have a solid idea of what a position should pay, and plenty of employers take advantage of that.

{ 46 comments }

A reader writes:

I have a question in regard to a piece of the recruiting process.

I have always asked candidates what their compensation requirements are, either before they come in to meet with me or after they have come in. Most candidates do not have any issues disclosing what they’re looking for, although some get a little uncomfortable.

Recently, I have a candidate who I spoke to over the phone, and I thought he was great. He came in to meet with us, and again, we thought he was great. I asked him to disclose his compensation requirements because we wanted to move forward with an offer and he didn’t want to disclose. Rather, he wanted us to come to him with an offer based on what title he fell under after meeting with him.

I’ve never had this happen and now here we are wanting to move forward, I have no clue what his expectations are and he refuses to budge on sharing. We discussed what we felt was reasonable and when I shared this with him, he came back saying he did a LOT of research and thinks he’s essentially worth $30k more than what we want to offer. Eeeeekkkk.

I’m curious, is it not normal for recruiters/hiring managers to be asking for this information off the bat? Am I missing something? I’ve always operated that way to make sure we’re all on the same page but this experience is making me feel otherwise.

I know compensation is a touchy subject for a lot of candidates, but it concerns me that he wasn’t straightforward with expectations from the get go. I’m not sure why, but I’m also comfortable sharing my compensation requirements with hiring managers when I’m interviewing — nothing to hide, in my opinion.

This is a situation where I wish I could say, “Had we discussed this early on, we all would have realized we’re not compatible” but I’ll bite my tongue. Just a disappointment because he likes us a lot but not sure if he likes us enough for $30k less. He said he’s willing to “entertain” a counter offer. I don’t know — I don’t like where this is going. What’s your opinion?

It’s absolutely reasonable to ask what kind of salary candidates are looking for, although you should also be willing to discuss what range you’re intending to pay (which it sounds like you are).

(Side note: I do think it’s ridiculous when employers insist on knowing a candidate’s salary history, but that’s not what you’re talking about here — you’re talking about what a candidate would like to get paid, which I agree is a reasonable topic for discussion, as long as there’s two-way disclosure.)

I suspect your candidate’s actions can be explained by this:  There is a lot of advice out there telling candidates to avoid naming a number first — because they might inadvertently lowball themselves. Plus, the employer generally has a range that they’re planning to place the salary within, so they might as well share what it is.  That’s reasonable advice — except that some people take it a step further and tell candidates to absolutely refuse to discuss money until they’ve been through your interview process and convinced you of their value. At that point, you’re apparently supposed to be so blown away by them that your original salary range will go out the window and you will write them a much larger check.

Unsurprisingly, this rarely works.

Not only do most employers insist on talking numbers on their own timetable, not the candidate’s, but candidates also often do themselves a disservice by this approach. If a candidate wants $X but won’t tell you that, and so you make an offer that’s $30,000 below $X, now you have a much bigger difference to bridge … and the chances of it happening are lower. Whereas if you knew ahead of time that the candidate wanted $X, you’d probably try to make your offer closer to that if at all possible (meaning the candidate has less negotiating to do to get to the salary he really wants) … and if it’s not possible, then you could say that early on and everyone would save some time.

Anyway, overall my principles are this: Salary history is no one’s business, but salary expectations should be discussed openly by both sides.

Your guy didn’t do that, so he shouldn’t be shocked that you’re so far apart. Now, that said, you would have saved yourself some time earlier on by saying, “We plan to pay $X – $Y. Is that in line with what you’re looking for?” … but you didn’t do that either, so you probably shouldn’t be shocked by the distance yourself. The lesson: Discuss salary earlier. Be willing to throw out numbers yourself. Be suspicious if you name a range and the candidate still won’t talk about his or her own range.

And when it comes time to negotiate, know what the work is worth, make an offer you’re comfortable with, don’t get pressured into paying more than the position is worth to you, and be willing to walk away if you can’t come to terms you’re both happy with.

{ 137 comments }

For some reason, I’ve received a bunch of letters lately asking about how to use a job offer from somewhere else as leverage in getting a raise from a current employer. This is generally — not always, but generally — a bad idea, and over at U.S. News & World Report today, I write about why. You can read it here.

{ 45 comments }

When people ask for a raise, they often go about it entirely wrong — building their argument around things that have nothing to do with whether they deserve a raise:

“Joe makes $10,000 more than I do.”

“I just got my masters.”

“I meet all my job requirements.”

… and more.

Over at U.S. News & World Report today, I talk about things you shouldn’t say when you’re asking for a raise. You can read it here.

{ 27 comments }

A reader writes:

I was looking at a flyer for the upcoming job/internship fair hosted by my university. It included tips for job-seekers navigating the fair. One of them advised not to ask about salary or benefits. Is it just me, or does this seem really weird and even inappropriate? It’s a job. The whole point is to earn money. Do companies (at job fairs or otherwise) really expect job-seekers to pretend that the job-seekers are just prostrate with the desire to work for them to the point that compensation doesn’t matter?

This is one of the weirder fictions of job searching, but yeah, the general advice about this is not to ask about salary until you’re at the offer stage, or at least until you’ve had a serious expression of interest from the employer.

Is this dumb? Yes. Does it fly in the face of the reality of the situation, which is that most people work for money? Yes. But is it the convention that you probably want to play by? Yep.

In fact, most people will actually tell you never to raise money at all — to wait and see what kind of offer the employer makes you. I wouldn’t go that far; I think that if you have reason to fear that the salary won’t be in line with what the market’s paying (for instance, if you’re interviewing with a cash-strapped nonprofit or a notoriously stingy for-profit), it’s fine to ask about it once you’re invited in for an interview, saying something like, “Can you give me an idea of the salary range for this position so we can make sure we’re in the same ballpark?”  (Of course, if you do that, you need to be prepared for the typical you-first silliness that often accompanies salary talk — the awkward pauses and the coy “well, what are you looking for?”)

But not at a job fair. Because the reality is that if you’re asking about salary before an employer has expressed any serious interest in you, you’re fairly likely to make a negative impression. I can’t defend this. I can only tell you that that’s how this stuff works.

Now, that’s not to say that you should act like you’re “prostrate with the desire to work for them.” In fact, you definitely shouldn’t do that. You want to seem like someone with options and someone who’s evaluating whether or not the role and employer would be right for you, just as much as they’re evaluating whether you’d be right for them. And yes, obviously money is going to be a part of that — but not at this stage.

{ 10 comments }

A reader writes:

At my current employer, we’re being asked to sign a new legal agreement before they’ll process our bonus checks. One thing in the paperwork that caught my eye was this clause:

“1. Confidential Information. Both during and at all times after termination of my employment with the Company for any reason or no reason, I shall not use, disclose, publish or distribute to any person or entity any Confidential Information except as required for performance of my work for the Company or as authorized in advance and in writing by the Company. For purposes of this Agreement, ‘Confidential Information’ means … any information regarding my compensation or the details of my benefits package with the Company.”

First off, I’m wondering if this would apply to something anonymous like Glassdoor.com? Second (and I know this is asked a lot with usually the same answer)…is this legal? Articles like this one make me wonder if the NLRA applies in this case.

The National Labor Relations Act says that employers cannot prevent employees from discussing wages and working conditions among themselves. The idea is that employees need to be free to organize, and preventing them from discussing these topics would prevent them from organizing.

(There are some exceptions to this though. An employer can prohibit these discussions from taking place during times when people are supposed to working. And while employees can freely share information about their pay with other employees, they wouldn’t be protected by the law if they obtained information about other employees’ pay through files known to be off-limits to them or if they get others to break access restrictions and give them confidential information. In other words, Tom can tell you how much he makes, but getting the bookkeeper to tell you how much Tom is making wouldn’t be protected by the law.)

However, the law only applies to discussions within the organization. An employer can prohibit employees from discussing salary outside the organization. So yes, anonymous posts on GlassDoor would be a violation of the policy, if they were able to trace the post back to you.

There’s an upside to this policy though:  The next time you’re interviewing and an employer asks about your salary history, you can truthfully reply that your company prohibits you from sharing salary information externally.

{ 55 comments }

The average salary increase for 2011 was 2.8%. So if you earn $40,000 (the average income in the U.S.), that’s a raise of $1,120.

But you’re not average, of course, so what do you get? Top performers had a barely different median increase: 3.1%.

I mention this here largely because I think most people have no idea what kind of raise is reasonable to expect or ask for … and it’s useful to know the average raise is pretty low. That doesn’t mean that you can’t get significantly more if you’re hugely valuable to your employer; you often can. But it’s good to know these numbers for context.

{ 49 comments }

If you’re like most people, talking to your boss about your salary is intimidating. You might even avoid it altogether because you’re unsure how to bring it up or because you worry about how your manager will react. It’s time to get over that.

At the Intuit QuickBase blog today, I take on six common salary questions and (hopefully) demystify them. You can read it here — and please leave your comments over there as well!

{ 11 comments }