It has recently become a very popular point of contention for job seekers to refuse to offer salary history to prospective employers and the recruiters they use to source talent. While in some instances this may make very good sense, particularly if someone was significantly underemployed or underpaid, in most cases it is creating an unnecessary hurdle that may cause a candidate to be excluded from consideration for a job they really want.
Let’s look at this as a pure sales situation. Who is selling and who is buying in the employer-employee relationship? I would propose the employee/candidate is selling and the employer/recruiter is buying. So when a buyer asks, “What is the price?” the seller should be able to provide a price and some foundation for the price requested. Have you ever gone to a car dealer and when you ask the price of a car, the dealer says, “What is your budget?” That move is considered unethical in the consumer world and is usually a sign that they are prepared to take advantage of you. The employer will likely view it the same way when candidates are less than forthcoming with salary expectations and a foundation for a specific salary request.
Employers ask for salary history most often as an easy screening device to help sort applicants. Those candidates with a salary requirement (price) that is too low or too high are removed from contention. Salary history also provides employers with a window into the frequency and size of raises and promotions. This helps them understand the value of the candidate as measured by former employers. It is used to qualify the right collection of candidates for further consideration. Failing to comply with what is often seen as a basic requirement can exclude you from consideration.
Why you should provide salary history when requested:
- It saves the employer, recruiter and you wasted time. If you are expecting far more than the job will ever pay, it is good to clear that up early in the process.
- It positions you as a mainstream candidate. Do you think that employers want to start with future employees on an adversarial foundation? Saying no to a piece of information the employer expects creates a relationship that is starting with a problem.
- It reduces suspicion. Failure to provide data may create unneeded suspicion around salary requirements. It may also create a perception that money is the only motivation for the consideration of the job.
- It proves your value. Unless you were significantly underpaid or underemployed, a good progressive salary history will prove your value to a future employer.
- It is low risk. If you have a strong salary history that is your launching point for what it will take to move you into a new position, why make an issue out of something that is in your favor?
- It keeps you in contention. Failing to provide this information may exclude you as a candidate for the job. If you are OK with that then withholding salary history is an option.
Salary History Caveats:
If you have a unique circumstance that needs explanation, perhaps it is appropriate to withhold salary history until you can be assured your situation is being heard and considered. Here are some examples that might require such consideration:
- If you live in a low-cost market and are moving to a high-cost market you may want to see if a discussion could be held in conjunction with the submittal of salary history.
- If you live in a high-cost market and are moving to a lower-cost market and are willing to consider a reduction in salary based on the new location.
- If you have attained a new degree, certification, skill that will impact your expectations it may be appropriate to withhold salary history.
- If you were underpaid or underemployed for some specific reason…care of a child, parent, or dependent, attending school or training, a health issue (this information may be protected by law), perhaps you were a trailing spouse or partner, or some other unusual circumstances shaped your salary. These could be high or low salary considerations.
- If your compensation package is very unique or perhaps highly leveraged based on commissions or bonuses that may or may not be within your control.
As an independent job seeker/candidate, you are entitled to do what you want. In a job search, just like in life, every action has implications. To assume withholding your salary history will have no impact on your candidacy, when employers clearly expect this data, is flawed thinking. There are times when you will need to take a stand. This is perhaps not the best time or place unless your candidacy is unique for one of the reasons stated above. Again, no one should deny your right to keep your salary history private, just as no one can yet deny an employer’s ability to ask for this information. This is clearly a way to kill your candidacy if applied without consideration of the bigger picture. I am suggesting that all sides of the situation be examined, including your best options for remaining a candidate, before declaring a blanket, “I will not share my salary history.”
Creative candidates with little to hide may share all salary history up to the last position held. That could be withheld and still show good progression and increases without tilting the negotiations table in favor of the new potential employer.
Can you share other ideas on how to handle these challenging situations where the two parties are not aligned on the issue of salary history?
This post is clearly intended to make the recruiter’s lives easier. Recruiters work for and are paid by employers. Most do not have any vested interest in helping candidates. Unless if their contract states that they only will be paid if the candidate stays with the company for a certain length of time, they do not care if the candidate stays at the company for 20 days or 20 years. The perceived help candidates get from recruiters (i.e. a job placement) comes usually accompanied by a fat paycheck to the recruiter/recruiting company. There is absolutely no need for the candidates to disclose past earnings or salary expectations. Every single piece of information candidates provide to recruiters will be passed forward to the prospect employer, but recruiters will omit a lot of information about prospect employers from candidates if they think this information can reduce their chances to place the candidate at the company, particularly for positions hard to fill.
Although most people work primarily for the money they earn, others also consider healthcare benefits, social interaction and trainig, experience and knowledge gain relevant factors (e.g. financially stable people just trying to get busy, people that have been out of the market (- e.g. extended maternity leave, unsucessful enterpreneurship venture, etc. – and trying to re-entering it, etc.). Also, people have WANTS and NEEDS. Nobody WANTS to have a salary cut, but their NEEDS will dictate otherwise. In this context, past earnings disclosure is irrelevant. A recruitment process should be more like a human courtship process. The candidate has to be good for the company as much as the company for the candidate. Unfortunately the recruiting and hiring process these days became a very disrespectful process, particularly to serious and high qualified candidates that are humiliated almost on daily basis.
Dear Fabio,
Sounds like you have had some less than positive experiences with recruiters. I can assure you that not all recruiters are disrespectful and negative. Before becoming involved with the NPAworldwide Recruitment Network I was placed in 3 great jobs with the support of recruiters that I respected. They were paid and worked for the employer and not for me. I do feel they were effective coaches and presenters of my background.
Hope one day you will develop a relationship with a good recruiter.
By the way, I know there are bad recruiters too. Sounds like you have found those and are basing your point of view on the ones that treated you wrong. I am sorry you had that kind of experience. It is really not necessary for candidates to be treated the way you apparently were.
Thanks for sharing a differing point of view. I think candidates should be aware of all options.
Interesting article Dave. I like your analogy of the “buyer/seller” relationship. Here is my issue. If I am the “seller” and my price tag reads my current salary (a salary that is not very respectable) am I then selling my talents to a buyer at to low a cost? For perspective, I will tell you that I am a Navy veteran with a Masters degree and 8 years experience in my field making $42,000 a year…and I don’t think I’m alone. For the vast majority of Americans that ARE underemployed, I don’t think providing a Sale price is very ethical. As a buyer, you will always want a good deal right?
Hi Bob,
I think I addressed that in bullet point number 4. You have every right to do what you like. By not providing salary history you start off as perhaps a challenging and unique situation before you have even been considered.
I hear your concern, I would be saying…”I can share salary history but my expectations are based on current market conditions for someone with my experience. I have been underpaid and underemployed will not being entertaining offers below $——.”
You get to determine what offer you will accept. I would make sure you make it to the point of getting an offer and not kill the opportunity before you have even been selected.
If I go to a car dealer and say how much is this car and they say, I’m not telling you, how much are you ready to pay for it? I will walk away…don’t let an employer walk away from you! You deserve to be considered.
While the candidate is usually the “seller “during the first part of the interview process that changes once the company sees the value in adding the candidate to staff. In the second part of the process the company becomes the “seller” in an effort to convince the candidate to accept their position. The candidates’ mission is to get the offer. A candidate can turn down any offer [they can’t force you to work for them] but up until the time that you have an offer the company is in control.
Hello,
Frankly it is evident that the authors opinion or research is not based on a career in HR deeply rooted in People welfare and incredibly bias towards the stone aged employers recruitment processes and each point only shoes how such recruiters.employers have a high dependency on other domain leaders and judgment.
I hugely disagree with every single point in this article and would like to quickly sum it as follows:
1- A candidates salary history is nobody’s business.
2- Employers should evaluate the role, do their market research and place a bracket of pay.
3- They can also benefit from all the other poor candidate who fell in the trap and declared their salaries on web portals for a benchmark.
Honesty has absolutely nothing to do with this at all and it ultimately annoys me to see that people still actually believe in this.
A candidate have the right to mention how much he is expecting to receive after reading through the role and company profile and if he does not or refused to fit in the agreement, the employer should move on.
It is so unethical to be asked to disclose your pay history as this is a private matter between you and your previous employer and disclosing it is a matter of trust.
To all recruiters, you DO not have the right to ask this question and Candidates you need to walk away immediately as you dont want to start of with an employer who wants you for cheap or does not trust you in the beginning of the road.
Finally, Dave Nerz does people ask their plumber how much their last client paid them? Give me a break!!!
Thank you
Disclaimer, this argument and post is completely intended to debate the article and not the author in person – Respect.
I know there are many that agree with your point of view Elias. That is why I tried to explain other perspectives on the same situation. Maybe you stopped short of reading the balanced options?
You are welcome to maintain your belief on how it should be done in a perfect world. I just want you to know two things…we do not live in a perfect world and your actions have consequences.
In fact people do ask how much a plumber costs before they hire a plumber. In fact there are websites dedicated to evaluating home service providers ranking them and evaluating for cost vs value. I think you have helped reinforce my perspective which offers many times when it would make sense to limit your salary data or carefully expose it based on the employer’s assurances.
Be careful every action causes a reaction. Do not lose a job opportunity because of black and white, right and wrong paradigms.
The author may be right that in some cases not disclosing your salary history could hurt your chances of being considered for a position. However this doesn’t mean the candidate should change their behavior, rather recruiters and emoloyers need to be encouraged to be more thoughtful about their recruiting process and not force salary negotiations before the candidate as even been interviewed. This behavior is pure mental laziness on the employer and recruiter’s parts, and the best candidates will turn away from these jobs because the best candidates, unlike the worst employers and recruiters, understand the basic rule of negotiation which is: the first person to state a hard number is, all else being equal, at the disadvantage for the entire negotiation process.
If your employer or recruiter is one of those that decides they don’t want to consider a candidate because they interpret the refusal as the candidate being dishonest, then I strongly suggest the recruiter or employer would be terrible to work with in the first place since they don’t understand the first principle of sales negotiation. Or they do understand but they don’t acknowledge that a candidate is just as well informed and is not going to give in to bullying.
As for the author’s statement that the employer had the RIGHT to ask you this question and force a disadvantage, this is simply not true. Massachusetts has passed a law making it illegal for employers to ask this very question and is promoting it as a model for other states (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/business/dealbook/wage-gap-massachusetts-law-salary-history.html). The state’s government has recognized that these tactics by employers and recruiters do nothing for the candidate and mostly just enforce discrimination by hiring personnel who aren’t sophisticated enough to realize their unconscious bias or critically analyze the fairness of their recruiting process.
Great point of view Chrissy. I agree with most of your comments and see your position as thoughtful and sensible.
Employers do in fact have the right to ask the question if government has not restricted this option. That is the case in most places around the world…it may change but until then many employers will ask…not all but many.
Candidates just need to be prepared for that reality and, as you have done, think it through and have a position and reason for the action you take.
Seems that you will not share your salary history and that is your right…no one can force you to do so.
Amazing article !! i specially like the research about the company because that exactly gives you the valid range when you answer “what are your salary expectation?” so thanks a lot for helping us by giving us such a informative post and i am sure i am going to bookmark this.Thank You.