How to Answer Salary Requests in Job Ads
How do you answer salary requests in job ads? Too high a figure gets you rejected as too expensive. Too low a figure makes the employer think that you don’t value yourself. Here are three strategies for handling salary requests in job ads.
Most people looking for jobs feel uncomfortable when they have to specify the salary they would want.
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Employers often use salary requests to weed out the unsuitable job hunters from the candidate pool. If you put in too high a request, the employer naturally thinks you are too expensive for them. On the other hand, if your salary expectation is too low, the prospective employer might think that you don’t value yourself and thus many not be a valuable employee for them.
There are three kinds of advice employment and recruitment experts give on how to tackle the issue of mentioning salary expectations. These advices may seem contradictory, but each advice has sound logic. Read them carefully and decide what is suitable for your particular case.
Strategies for Handling Salary Requests
Three strategies for replying to salary requests:
- Ignore salary request
- Get around the salary request
- Meet salary request with a range
Ignore Salary Requests
Some experts will tell you to ignore the salary request. Now, what are the repercussions? If you totally ignore the salary request, the employer might think that you overlooked it because you are unsure of what you deserve, you are careless in filling forms or you are desperate and want to negotiate about salary but would accept whatever you got. If the employer specifically mentions a salary request, they have reasons for doing so. Usually, the salary request is a method for making sure that the candidate knows her/his market value.
Avoid Mentioning Salary Requests
The second advice you’d get is “Don’t think that employers are so easily fooled if you omit your salary expectations! They will wonder why you didn’t mention it.” So, try to get around this dilemma by using phrases like “Each position in my career has brought fresh challenges. I’ve been promoted regularly with suitable benefit packages. I’d rather discuss this issue of salary and benefits face to face during the interview.”
Give a Salary Request Range
The third advice from the experts is “Meet the salary request directly with a range.” One good way is to put a little more than the minimum you can accept as the lower figure on the range and the higher figure a reasonable notch higher. A typical example would be “Depending on the nature and scope of my responsibilities, I could negotiate for $35,000 – 45,000.”
Overall, if the job ad doesn’t mention a salary request, it is better that you don’t either. There is a possibility that you are screened out if you give the wrong salary expectation. You have better leverage in negotiating a better salary package during the interview process itself.
9 Comments
what if you just put one word “negotiable”. As an employer I would like that best
This is very useful. Thanks Rana.
I think it is important to know one’s market value, but one shouldn’t be too rigid on a particular figure. So I would prefer a range.
I hate this practise of not specifying at least a range for the job’s salary in an ad. A job ad without salary information is like a CV without a name on it
In fact I wrote up my thoughts on it :
http://stochasticgeometry.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/tips-for-hiring-new-engineers/
Good stuff. If you ask too little, you get too little. If you ask too much you might get nothing. But I agree that the applicant should have an idea what would be paid for that job.
I liked the article. Good advice. It’s so annoying when the job ad doesn’t give any idea of the salary they plan to pay.
Good post. It’s very annoying when they don’t mention salary scale in job ads.
I recently made a salary proposal after the hiring had manager requested it. The proposal referred to industry facts and agency recommendation to state market value but the employer responded by saying that my salary expectations were too high and therefore they could not consider me further. I had suggested to the employer to make an offer but they refused to do so.