Welcome to the latest edition of What Would CUSS Readers Do? Today, the royal we here at CUSS seek feedback on salary histories. The issue came up yesterday when I decided to apply for a job that required a salary history in order to consider the application complete.
My feeling (and Husband's) is that salary histories are bogus. An organization that seeks to hire someone has an idea of what the job is worth. If they find a candidate that they like, they should offer them that salary. What the person earned prior to that job is irrelevant, as they did not perform that job at that company. Further, it is no one's fucking business what I earned at other jobs. Until the search committee is prepared to tell me what they earn, I am not sure why it helps to know what I earned.
Yesterday, a friend argued with me, saying that she used the information to determine whether or not a person would even consider the job. Again, I think that is a strange way to determine one's interest in a job. Perhaps for a variety of reasons, a candidate would accept a different salary for doing a different job. How would a recruiter know that unless the candidate was asked directly? If a company does not want to waste their time with a candidate who would not be interested in the position based on salary, and they do not want to reveal in advance what that salary is, then why not just contact the person and ask, "Hey, what salary do you require?" instead of playing guessing games?
What do you think? Do salary histories help employer's find appropriate employees, or are they merely ways to (potentially under)pay people based on past jobs that may have no bearing on the job that is to be performed? (Yeah, loaded question, I know.)
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I don't even like when they ask for salary expectations. I've never been asked for a salary history. Good grief.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was looking for my second job after university and I was asked for my salary expectations my internal answer was always, "Please pay me enough money so that I can keep a roof over my head, pay my student loans and eat because only being able to do two out of three sucks balls."
I have never ever had to deal with such nonsense. Is this a salaried job or an hourly job? I would have to really, really, really want a job before I would give up that information!
ReplyDeleteI know this isn't a reasoned and substantive response but I doubt that anyone I know who is a professional would put up with that.
I hate the salary history question, because I have often worked for less than I'm worth. These days, I ask why they need the information, and explain that as a lot of my recent work has been project based or freelance, some corporate and some non profit, my salary history is not reflective of my salary expectations.
ReplyDeleteI also have an answer for the salary expectation question, which is "I feel that it's premature to discuss that until we've discussed the particulars of this role and its responsibilities".
I don't apply for jobs that ask for a salary history. All I've ever done is admin work & it pays crap anyway, so why do they need to know what I made when I last had a full-time job over three years ago?
ReplyDeleteI think it is just a method of "playing" with the potential employee's mind.
ReplyDeleteThank you, thank you everyone for weighing in on this. I am glad that I am not overreacting.
ReplyDeleteHmmm well as a lawyer this comes up well, everytime I apply for a job. While I think folks know the value of the job they are offering I think some places (and here I mean small firms) ask for it as a way to gauge whether they are comparable. Since I am presently on a backward trajectory having taken a $50,000 (yes you are seeing that correctly) pay cut, I am damn glad somebody offered me a job even if it did pay far less.
ReplyDeleteI understand what you mean when you say that application is not complete until you fill in that answer. On many electronic forms this also means that you may not write "TBD" or, well anything except numbers. I was unlucky enough to be in a position that was eliminated. I have been unemployed for 8 months and you can bet that I do not want to be overlooked because I used to make 84K---I would like a JOB! You can also rest assured that I include a very PC version of the above sentiment in my cover letter. Cover letters are really the only way to say what you mean when applying, unless you can get a phone number to speak one to one.
ReplyDeleteOverall, yes, I agree. I wish they just wouldn't ask how much I made.