Whenever your HR guy asks you a question, he expects an answer. As you might have guessed, I am a blunt person and there is one particular question that almost ALWAYS gets to be readdressed.
“What are your salary requirements?”
All kinds of interview guides tell you how to answer this question without actually answering it and I am here to tell you that those guides are wrong. End of story. You answer the question because I know you aren’t willing to work for minimum wage. There is some minimum level you will absolutely not work for. If I have posted a salary range for this position, then it shows your level of education about the position. If I have not posted a salary range, you should probably know the pay you would be looking at in the industry you are looking. If you don’t give a salary range and the interviewer doesn’t grill you, you probably lost the job and you should be prepared for that if you’re that stubborn of an ass.
People might raz me for giving advice that totally screws the applicant out of a bargaining position. That is pure nonsense. Salary negotiation has to start somewhere and that gives you a chance to set the starting point. If you are nervous about your negotiation prowess, why not add on 20%-25% to the bottom of your range? 20% isn’t going to kill your job chances, especially if the salary range is unknown. So instead of giving a range of 80-100k, you give a range of 100-125k. Be prepared for the recruiter to go below what your salary requirements are and be prepared to negotiate. What’s the worse that could happen in that scenario? They offer you a position in your original salary range? You get scoffed at by a cheap skate company? Please!
It just seems like a no brainer but almost everyone tries to get out of this question. This interviewer won’t let you so you better give me a number, especially after I have made it clear the responsibilities of the position.
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Hi HRGuy
That’s good perspective. Generally I agree, with two caveats.
One is that your advice works for managerial or staff level jobs with established pay packages, while if you get ot more senior positions with equity and incentive components it can’t be that way because it’s just a huge range of outcomes and variables.
Second, here’s what happens oh about 100% of the time, and please give me your input on this. Question is popped at first phone interview with recruiter – before the candidate even has a sense of what the job entails, before he talks to the company, before he understands what of his skillset is most valuable for this position. Again, probably ok if its for C++ programmer but not ok for a Vip job.
So my advice is if that’s the first thing asked of a more senior candidate, answer with what you’re making now… and say that you need to learn more etc.
Thoughts?
ilya
Ilya,
For VP or above, I would say you give a base pay component plus an expected bonus level (i.e. % of profit increase, profit sharing to a certain %). On a VP level or above, you are correct, there is quite a bit more latitude. There are companies that are 95% base, 5% bonus and 60% base, 40% bonus. I think it is clarifying to see what situation that company is at. Total compensation comes into play there which would basically require the person to list through the compensation package much more in depth. I am more willing to do this at a VP level because of the latitude involved.
I hate the salary question popping early in the game. When my employer requests it, I will often kick the idea back to them and say why. If they want a salary range for the type of people we are looking at, I can give it to them without asking them. If someone is above that, they either didn’t disclose how much experience they had or they priced themselves out of the market. If my employer is looking to get it on the cheap, I am going to have to change my advertising completely in order to get people who will work for less (and have less of the skills we need).
If the question is popped early, I would say that I am interested in looking at the position and the total compensation package before giving an estimate. Total compensation is enough to delay the recruiter.
Hi HR Guy
Good answer and post. As an aside, it’s always great to see the HR perspective. We seekers get so wrapped up in our own complaints and woes with the process that we forget the most important thing – that it’s not about YOU [the seeker]. It’s about giving the decision maker what THEY want, and how THEY want it. If more HR guys were as straight-forward as you, the world would be a better place.
Ilya
Interesting viewpoint, but from the job seeker’s side, I think it’s more self-preservation than gaming, especially when you haven’t given a salary range. (Aside: I see MPoJ has commented, too, and I don’t understand why they’d give a recruiter a hard time. Unlike an HR Guy, a recruiter is your agent, not your adversary.)
Anyway, particularly in the cubicle world, salary increases just plain stink. “HR” policies of departmental average caps, hard limits (even with a promotion), drastic limits on bonuses to the rank and file, little or no availability for flexibility (e.g., an extra week of vacation rather than more money), etc. combine to limit my potential for compensation.
If I don’t get every last penny I can on the way in, I’ll be underpaid sooner rather than later, and I’ll have to start the job search all over again. Besides being a pain in the ass to me, it also increases the company’s costs because they’ll have to recruit and train to replace me. Telling you my “requirements” before you tell me the range weakens my negotiating position: Tell me the range first, and I can save us both time and heartache by walking away if it can’t be adjusted to meet my needs.
I understand a lot of why the HR policies exist: rating inflation, “fairness” (which too often really means “protect the average and below so we don’t get sued”), economies of scale, and the ridiculous approach that assumes recruiting, hiring, and training someone else is cheaper than retaining the expert already on staff. That doesn’t make the policies right, though, and I think it has a lot to do with the global change from “people” to “human resources.”
I’m happy, reasonably fulfilled, and adequately paid where I am at the moment. I am a high performer, respected by my peers and superiors, and I work on a team with other folks generally just as good at what they do as I am at my job and continuously improving at about the same rate.
That means that I have to compete with them for the departmental average from on high, typically around 2%. It would be in my best financial interest to be on a team otherwise composed of deadbeats. Or to somehow sabotage the folks I work with. Neither deadbeats nor sabotage are particularly appealing.
A 2% annual increase may not even cover my increased health insurance premium, much less everything else inflation hits. I’ve been here for 6 years–a fossil in IT–but I doubt I can afford to to stay for 10.
Salary requirements? Mine are fair, reasonable, and uncoincidentally about what the market says they should be for my experience, expertise, location, etc. If you want an actual number, give me yours first. Or at least give me some sort of assurance that I have a real chance at substantial merit increases without going into management and giving up the kind of work I love.
If I’m a stubborn ass that loses the job in that situation, chances are I’d've been miserable and jobhunting too soon again anyway. Their loss.
Fritz: If you are a high performer and respected in your field, I don’t understand why the fear of not getting your due reward at work. It seems if you work in an environment where high performers don’t get subtantial rewards, it is time to look for some place that does.
I think you’re making a lot of assumptions of how companies in general work. Hiring someone new is a risk (of varying degrees) and should be priced accordingly. While you may be going for the clinching every cent on thhe way in, have you ever considered that the types of employers that go for that are also the type that don’t do big salary increases? If the HR department knows your salary will only go up 2%, they can offer you more.
P.S. As far as who tells who first, if you refuse to answer my question, you don’t get the job. And if you think that is silly, then you’re losing out on the opportunity. If I don’t think highly enough of your experience to show you my cards first, then I am willing to lose you based on that. And that’s why it is such a silly game because it doesn’t help anyone.
I know I’m making assumptions about how or why things are done, but *what* happens is based on personal observation and generally confirmed by online buzz. Big companies have big bureaucracies and lots of processes—many even formalized—that make it possible to manage hundreds of thousands of employees. The trade-off is that a manager six levels down from the CEO is effectively powerless in such things.
My boss gets a certain amount of what her boss got from what her boss got from his boss… My maximum theoretically possible increase—certainly under 5%—is determined long before my performance is even considered. And I just don’t believe that’s atypical, at least among big companies. If I walked on water, I might get 3% when the budgeted average is 2%, but even then my “extra” would be taken from the guy in the cube next to me who could “only” turn water to wine.
Now, I knew that was the situation coming into the cubicle world, so I’m observing more than complaining. I traded stability and security for unsustainable increases—intentionally landed here just before the bubble popped—but even before then, a company change might mean 20% while a glowing annual review might mean 4%. And I like it here. I’ve been continually challenged and allowed to grow. It’s a shame I’m going to have to leave in a year or two over money.
We can discuss the pitfalls and perils of HR doing the IT experience vetting another time.
Thanks Fritz for your comments.
I’ve never given a salary range before. I’ve said, “my current salary is x base plus y bonus” and then let them infer that I would like more.
Likewise, when I was hiring, I would tell the applicant, “this job pays between x and y” (with the top level usually being the true midpoint as I never had enough power to offer above midpoint.)
Am I a bad HR person?
Do you want to hire someone who will weaken their bargaining position upfront? You should be hiring people smart enough to try to avoid playing your game.
If you don’t want games simply tell us how much the position pays. We can take it or leave it from there.
Where did I say I want to have a weak negotiator? Being a “good” negotiator isn’t about stupid things like holding the handshake until the other person releases or making eye contact till the other person looks away. In fact, playing these sorts of games only leads me to believe that they are terrible and not very smart.
A smart negotiator will not want to underprice or overprice themselves. Your advice seems to be good advice. The HR person, when they give zero information about the salary range, are getting what they should expect. So your post title said HR people hate games. But you (collectively) have created a system where any reasonable person with no insight into an opaque system with no feedback will respond in ways you don’t like.
Actually, if I (the HR people collectively) don’t price the job, then I want an honest answer to how much this person wants to be paid. I don’t think that is much of a game. If a person is getting paid what they want, I don’t see what the problem is honestly. And if they accept a price below what they want, how would that change if a range was set or not?
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