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Job Offers: Your Salary

At any part of the job search and interviewing process, expect to be asked your salary history, your most recent salary, or your salary expectations. Try to avoid such disclosures too early, since they rob you of any future opportunity for negotiation.

Naming a number may create any of the following reactions:

• The figure seems too high, and they don’t yet see why you might be worth it.
• The figure seems too low, and they may question your qualifications for the job.
• The number is in their range, but your bargaining position is made more complicated, because they know where you fall in their range, but you don’t.

You must convince yourself that your prior salary has nothing to do with what you should be paid for a potential new job. Nor should it necessarily be the first figure that the company says it is prepared to pay you to do the job. An exception to this would be if the new salary were explicitly stated in the job advert to which you have replied.

Try to avoid discussing salary until an offer is made. Until they are convinced you are the right person for the job, they have little real interest in what you want and you have no real bargaining power.

Your bargaining power is at its highest, at the point you receive a firm job offer. By negotiating in a prepared, professional manner, you can increase both the employer’s interest in you and your negotiating power. Candidates who are too demanding or who communicate mistrust during negotiations, can actually begin to diminish the employer’s interest and hence their own bargaining power.