Many job candidates try to avoid answering questions about their salary history, and for good reason. A recruiter’s simple query about current salary can sound, to a candidate, like a loaded question. If her answer is too high, will she price herself out of contention? And if it’s too low, will she be viewed as an overeager dilettante?
Still, it behooves the recruiter to inquire about the candidate’s salary history.
“Salary history shows the financial progression of a candidate’s career or employment history,” says Gina Hortance, the president of Technical Brokerage Corp., in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, which provides IT human resource consulting and staffing services.
“The resume provides us with the first screening tool, and an accompanying salary history can help you put together a more complete picture of the candidate’s career story. You’re looking for progressive advancement, and also for holes or anomalies that might indicate a troubling gap or exaggeration. A salary history will reflect the reality, so you don’t end up giving someone a $5,000 or $10,000 ‘raise’ they may not merit.”
How to Ask for a Salary History
Hortance acknowledges that coming straight out and asking what an interviewee is currently earning can be sticky. “My approach is to empathize with applicants when I sense they are uncomfortable disclosing this information. I’m usually successful because I listen to them, learn their needs and then talk about opportunities. Then I can get the answers I’m looking for in a very nonchalant way.”
Hortance likes to ask candidates a lot of open-ended questions during the initial interview, and listen for opportunities to subtly drop in the salary question.
“As they bring up past situations and their functions, this allows an interviewer to ask clarification questions, and make comments like ‘I hope that was worth what they were paying you,’ or, ‘Did they reward you well there?’ Once there is a level of comfort, it is easier for a candidate to speak freely about money issues. Most recruiters and HR people are so intent on presenting our case, and checking off the list of questions, that we forsake the listening part.”
If candidates refuse to talk numbers, says Hortance, “Be understanding. Their response is likely the result of a bad experience. Ask about that experience, but point out that you can’t help them win an opportunity unless you can act as their agent and make the case for them or you can help them negotiate an appropriate offer so there won’t be so much haggling with the hiring manager.”
By Martha Frase-Blunt
To be continued