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New Law Bans California Employers From Asking Applicants Their Prior Salary (sfgate.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: California employers can no longer ask job applicants about their prior salary and -- if applicants ask -- must give them a pay range for the job they are seeking, under a new state law that takes effect Jan. 1. AB168, signed Thursday by Gov. Jerry Brown, applies to all public- and private-sector California employers of any size. The goal is to narrow the gender wage gap. If a woman is paid less than a man doing the same job and a new employer bases her pay on her prior salary, gender discrimination can be perpetuated, the bill's backers say. Last year, the state passed a weaker law that said prior compensation, by itself, cannot justify any disparity in compensation. The new bill goes further by prohibiting employers, "orally or in writing, personally or through an agent," from asking about an applicant's previous pay. However, if the applicant "voluntarily and without prompting" provides this information, the employer may use it "in determining the salary for that applicant."
I must have been lucky -- I've never been asked that. I get asked what soft of salary I'm looking for instead.
I used to have spitting matches with recruiters because they wanted to know how much I'm earning, because my ask wasn't getting many hits on their job portfolio. Sometimes I gave in and told them, only for them to reply that I shouldn't be asking for as much as I was, because the jump is too high. They were making the decision of how much I'm worth for me. But I did push back and got what I wanted in the end, every time. I'm sure they were happy with the commission afterwards.
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
I foresee a lot of voluntary disclosure. :(
one where pro-worker laws actually make it onto the books. Then again this law mostly helps professionals. I can't remember the last time I saw a law that swung in favor of the blue collar types.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I worked a retail job for over a decade. I honesty don't recall how much I made per hour when I started that job. I mean, I know it was above minimum wage, but I can't recall how much above.
We were regularly told that we couldn't discuss how much we made. Didn't stop anyone, but we didn't do it within earshot of management. And that's how I found out that a brand-new hire, with no experience at all, was making just as much as I was, when I had 10 years at the job.
Needless to say, I don't work there any more.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Virtually every employment application I've ever filled out has asked me for my start & end salary at previous work places, along with start & end date of employment, plus why I left that position. I think those questions are pretty standard.
Yes many places ask for that information. I almost never provide any salary information (not usually relevant) as there is no upside to me in providing that information. Where I worked and when is fair game to ask but what I made at my last job really has no relevance in almost every case and providing that data really can only hurt me in most cases.
And this is why salary amounts shouldn't be verbotten but embraced. It keeps everyone involved real.
Gotta give the progressive morons in Sacramento credit for this one..This should be the law everywhere...
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
From "how much did you earn at X" to "how much do you expect to earn here?"
And you can't outlaw the latter question. After all, your employer needs to know what you expect to get in return for your work. So be prepared for the negotiation game.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Recruiters love to pigeonhole people. If you did the same kind of work for the last three positions and/or last three years, they assume that you want to do that kind of work forever. Never mind that the position you're applying for may be completely different.
... were the ones trying to stiff me.
yeah our Progressive laws in CA have sure led to our downfall. thanks for teaching me!
oh wait, we're statistically one of the healthiest, happiest, wealthiest states. nevermind Progressivism rocks.
And you can't outlaw the latter question. After all, your employer needs to know what you expect to get in return for your work. So be prepared for the negotiation game.
It's fine to ask how much an applicant hopes to make. That's a reasonable question based on future expectations. What they made at a previous job has precisely zero relevance and pretty much never benefits the prospective employee.
one where pro-worker laws actually make it onto the books. Then again this law mostly helps professionals. I can't remember the last time I saw a law that swung in favor of the blue collar types.
How is this pro-worker? If they cant ask, and you dont provide it voluntarily, this goes in the businesses favor. This will cause salaries to decrease.
Companies always, ALWAYS, low-ball the offer. Even if its a jump for you you can bet they could offer more but they always hold back. Its always in their interest to pay you less.
I wonder how this will affect career ladders in the tech sector, where people often find that the easiest way to get a promotion and salary bump is to switch companies.
Congratulations, with your awesome strategy, you can now not succeed in hiring anyone in the highly competitive market for software engineers in CA.
How the hell am I supposed to control a potential employer's starting offer?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
If the fundamental problem is that in starting jobs with no salary information, women get paid less than men, and that follows them through a career, how will having no salary information at every turn be better? Seems to me it may just as easily be worse. Is the idea that the starting salary problem has gone away and this is only following older, experienced women?
Are there other controls in place like a limit on how big the potential salary range can be?
Anything that prevents companies from playing HR compensation games when they hire new employees or promote from within is a good thing. Most big company HR departments absolutely will not entertain offers if the salary is over x% of what the person says they were previously making. Almost all companies enforce this rule when promoting someone too -- they want to pay as little as possible, not how much the job is worth.
I imagine this rule comes from California due to the extremely distorted labor market that SF/SV has now. I know the official reason is gender equality, which does need to be addressed, but the side effect is a more level playing field for all job applicants. If you can convince an employer that you're worth $250K as a rockstar Rust developer, but you're making $100K doing JavaScript, then companies will just have to do a better job figuring out whether the candidates are lying.
If you were in the USA, your employers behavior was almost certainly illegal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Labor_Relations_Act_of_1935#Collectively_bargaining
Federal law prohibits employers from evening suggesting that employees shouldn't discuss wages.
http://www.npr.org/2014/04/13/301989789/pay-secrecy-policies-at-work-often-illegal-and-misunderstood
Then you would not get any new employees, and your competition would wipe the floor with you. Welcome to California!
Not that the gender pay gap is real, but there's an obvious loophole they will use: give a range of 5k (at most,) hint (or don't) through the interview of other roles or multiple roles, if someone bites and can demonstrate experience for those roles they get more, if not they get the entry-level posting the jobs will all be listed as.
I've seen a few comments that say just lie, or inflate the number etc.
Almost all companies do background checks for white collar jobs. One disturbing trend I've noticed recently is for them to require IRS income statements as part of the background check. They can pull that or have you pull from the IRS website.
Sucks, but it's part of the background check, and if you're at that stage, there's already an offer that you've accepted with all that entails (better than current job, want to take it, etc).
Not quite sure what happens if the discrepancy between what you said and what's there is too large. Technically it's a lie, but the hiring manager does want you, and is comfortable with the offer they've made, so would they really pull it? I don't know.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
As the lowest pay allowed by law is minimum wage, what youd get is only unqualified applicants unless the job itself required no special training, education, or skills
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
many companies contract previous salary information (for mortgages, job applications and such) to 'The Work Number' (a part of Equifax I believe).
I used it one when buying a home, and actually, the salaries from several of my past employers were there. Had it been a job I was applying for, the current hiring company would have known all of them.. The figures are provided not by you, but are exchanged among employers in this way.
It should be illegal, but apparently its not..
Leave it to California to come up with yet another piece of legislation that the other 49 states didn't feel a need for.... Hope they're all happy with themselves.
My experience in the job market (both in the midwest and now on the east coast) is pretty much the same. SOME employers will ask your previous salary. Others won't. It's always been the case that you're free to fudge the numbers if you think it's to your advantage to do so, when they ask for this information. (For example ... your previous salary may well have been X number of dollars, but did you receive any bonuses like a Christmas bonus perhaps? You can add all of that in to the total you give them and you're not lying -- and it wouldn't be a big deal if you rounded that estimated number up a bit, because of an assumption you'd get higher bonuses in following years if you stayed where you were instead of taking this new job.)
I get that nobody likes that uncertainty of trying to figure out how much to demand, without pricing yourself out of the range of what the person hiring wants to pay. But come on! Pretending employers hold ALL the cards here just isn't reality in the Internet age. You have web sites like GlassDoor you can use to get all sorts of info in advance about what an employer was paying other people, as well as how they liked it there. You can scope out the average salaries paid for your job title in your area by browsing listings on sites like Monster or Dice. I never felt like I need the LAW to force employers to stop asking the previous salary question in order to get a fair interview.
They were making the decision of how much I'm worth for me.
They already have that number figured out, their bonuses are determined based on how far they can widdle you down below that. Headhunters are fucking deplorable (and not in the happy-go-lucky MAGA way) - they tend to take 15% minimum (so if you get in the door at 85k you can bet the company you end up working for is paying 100k - which makes them expect more while you don't actually see it all.) At the same time they work for companies which are just as bad, and they might make $1k as a one-time bonus if they can get another 10k off. You "won" because they follow a script, most of them don't know how to negotiate but they work for absolute sociopathic pieces of garbage who have negotiating down so well they can train anyone to do it with a script. I've actually interviewed with headhunters who never looked up from the (quite literal) script through the entire 30-60 minute interview.
Then just don't provide an answer to the question. Instead, say something like "I'm looking for a salary of $X".
Who needs to ask the employee when you can ask Equifax or Transunion the same question?
--
"Ask me once, you a fool. Ask me twice, wait, What?" -- J. Muamma
Ironic that they're basing it on the non-existent gender wage gap. But, you know, "party of science" and all that.
Do you have ESP?
Looks like salary history is pretty much available: see KrebsOnSecurity.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/10/equifax-breach-fallout-your-salary-history/
We were regularly told that we couldn't discuss how much we made.
I hope somebody pointed out that this violates federal labor laws.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
California government employee salaries are a (mostly) matter of public record and are freaking posted for everyone to see.
http://transparentcalifornia.c...
I was speaking to a recruiter from a company that I was interviewing with and this subject came up. I had given in and told her what my current salary was, and what I would like it to be. She looked past the fact that I had just earned a masters degree, MBA for all you haters, and that my current salary had not been adjusted to account for that. She flat out told me that I was asking for too big of a jump, and that maybe I wasn't ready to take the next step in my career. I made sure to bring this up during my final interview and they were so embarrassed by the internal recruiter's behavior that I ended up getting more money as a result.
...salaries are public information by law. Curious what your professor or government-employed neighbor makes? Just look it up.
Technically it's a lie, but the hiring manager does want you, and is comfortable with the offer they've made,
Which means that prior salary is pretty much useless as a factor in hiring. If they like you, to the point of overlooking a lie, then why even ask?
Have gnu, will travel.
So your mom solution is to lie? Great...
No. No, they don't. Most of them do, but believing all do is wrong. I'm a hiring manager, and I determine comp for my candidates. I don't ask them what they're making right now, and I don't particularly care what they're making right now -- Our compensation strategy is "pay top of market," so I offer them what I think is top of market for their position. If they say "I don't think that's top of market," I ask for datapoints. If they say "well, you're offering me $X, but I have an offer from Google for $X+20, or I currently get paid $X+30," then great -- they just helped me figure out what top of market is. I adjust my offer, we move on. Never been turned down on comp yet.
Price a function of supply and demand. A company should use how much it needs you to determine the price, not what you used to be paid under different circumstances. Do you go to Apple and demand the cost price of the iPhone and say I'll pay that plus 5%? Does your company go to Microsoft and say I'll pay your cost price for office 365 plus 5%...or does it ask them for a price and perhaps if you are a large organization negotiate it. Only Walmart and one or two other companies are able to bully their suppliers to give them their input cost and then determine the price from that. Companies should ask what you would like to earn, or what they are prepared to pay, and you both decide if you will take the deal from there. Supply & demand, not demand and demand like a feudal lord.
49 other states didn't want it? And yet the article says this is following Delaware, Massachusetts and Oregon who passed similar laws recently. Do you want to revise your opinion after reading the article or persist in your ignorance?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
There's a post that has been circulating on LinkedIn lately that I've seen a couple of mindless recruiters send out (I won't link directly to their profiles, but it should be pretty easy to find). It opens with this:
"Have you ever been asked by a recruiter, what's your current salary or what are you looking to make?
What is it about this question that is SO difficult to answer? Why do I hear story after story of people who simply FAIL to answer this question appropriately? "
The responses to these recruiters is also completely appropriate:
"Because what I currently make is irrelevant to what the position is willing to offer"
"Because I don't feel that I should care much about your referral fee".
And this one has also started to pop-up:
"Because that's illegal in California"
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Well if you are contractor it is understandable. I work for IT at staffing firm, and made some commission calculators for them, so I spent a lot of time getting info from Accounting. Generally they don't pay their recruiters for anything below 24% because they cannot cover operating costs. The shit adds up. Of course bigger companies have less of a cost associated with it.
But overall there are some other forces they deal with that make no sense. For example it's easier for them to bill $80 on a person they pay $60 than to get $120 on a person they pay $100. It's insane, but once you hit magical $100 an hour, all of a sudden the company we staff for is counting pennies. Every dollar is like a battle, even though percentage wise the company is paying less premium, they still demand lower salary for fields where there is a lot of demand for specific technical talent, and low supply.
If you think the recruiters have a lavish lifestyle on your dime, I would wholeheartedly disagree. It is a thankless job, and one that only pays well for very skilled negotiators who negotiate with the company and not you, which are usually the Account Executives and not the recruiters (but believe me these people are really good at what they do). Recruiters try their best, but the commission is not a lot. Of the 24% the company makes, you only get about 2% as a recruiter, which is usually like $50-$100 a month. Of course if you can manage impossible and get like a 35% margin, well you might do better, but this is rare and usually only happens on lower paid positions.
That's it. Period. Good law.
I managed to whittle my recruiters commission from 20% down to 5% over a period of 3 years. My director let slip what the commission was, which bugged me greatly as his involvement was ~15minutes of time and I was the one working my ass off - yet he was getting 20% commission for the life of the contract.
I was on a 3mth revolving contract for most of that time and a few times prior to re-signing the contract I would renegotiate the pay through the recruiter. So it was steadily increasing anyway. One day my director forced the team lead to leave (she was frustrated with him so found another role elsewhere in the company), so I was the sole person that could provide him with the reports he needed to provide to his boss for his board of directors meetings (one of the 10 or so highest ranked people in the company internationally in a company that employs over 50k people).
This happened conveniently close to my contract renegotiation time. If my boss failed to provide these results he would have been fired, which put me in the fortunate position of being able to name my price. My recruiter almost choked when I told him what I wanted the increase to be. He kept on trying to get me to bring the number down and saying that if he was able to get me halfway there it would be a miracle. At one point he bluntly said he was going to lie and say I'd been headhunted by another company. I told him that he'd do no such thing, just stick to the number and to do his damn job.
When the number was approved, he tried to claim all the credit and how he was the best recruiter ever and how fortunate I was to be working with him. Yeah right. Next time I saw the commission he was taking it was down from 20% to 5%, so even though I'd increased my rate, he was still making less. I think that made me happier than the rate increase. I fkn hate recruiters.
I never suggested lying about anything! I suggested using a bit of creativity, just like pretty much ALL job applicants do with everything else surrounding interviews.
When you study all those ways to "properly answer interview questions", you're lying too, technically. You're not just having a regular conversation with the interviewer, giving the actual answers you'd naturally give. Instead, you've memorized canned answers you think they'd rather hear.
Do you show up wearing the clothes you'd normally wear any other day to a job? Probably not! You're told to dress up in a suit and tie most of the time. In other words, you're making a special effort to project a different image of yourself to an interviewer than what they'd otherwise get.
The whole thing is kind of a game.... I'm saying, you may as well acknowledge it for what it is and work with it.
"Last years tax records have no indication of current year salary expectations plus benefit expectations now and in the future at ones past or current employer. What is IRS re portable as income has only a general relationship to total befits and zero indications of working conditions. " "My last HR department flew me to NBA, MLB and NFL games every week and brought me sandwiches before they stepped out at 7:45pm."
I read a similar article on this on a different web site and didn't read the specific Slashdot-linked one. So sure, if this one makes a point that Delaware, Massachusetts and Oregon ALSO supported the legislation, I'll happily revise my number to say 46 states instead of 49. Whatever .... Massachusetts is one of the most liberal states in the Union, so certainly doesn't shock me they'd be behind this one.
I stand behind everything else I said.
Just because you CAN make another law doesn't mean you SHOULD. In the grand scheme of things, I also said I'm not inclined to care a whole lot either way on something this tiny... It just isn't a "world changer" either way. It's just on principle I dislike it, because I'd rather not live in a society where we make so many simple questions "illegal to ask".
So if you don't volunteer your salary what are your chances of getting hired?
There's a company called The Work Number that collected detailed salary info from employers. Freescale supplied them, and when I requested the consumer report from TWN, it had every detail.
So don't lie, perhaps just put a range, or show it as approximately: $90k - $100k, or ~$100k.
Is there a theoretical gap in pay? Yes. However, when you look at the real numbers, it's quickly shown that the difference is because there is also a difference is time actually worked - IOW - a difference in experience levels, and once adjusted for that the gap goes away to within the normative ranges.
So yes, if you look at a man and a woman who are both 35 years old and say "oh, there's a $20k difference in their pay", but then...
- failed to account for work experience differences
- failed to account for time-off differences
Oh, and pretty much every employer - especially large employers - are pushed to have all people (regardless of age, sex, etc) at a given position level to be within a certain spread. If you're in the upper end of the spread, then HR pushes for a promotion so they can keep the numbers relatively close together. If you're at the bottom of the spread, then HR pushes for pay raises. Essentially, the position might have a spread of $20k, but HR pushes to keep folks within $5-10k of each other.
Still thing there's a gender pay gap? Take a look at the demographics of HR departments (it's highly skewed - opposite the general tech field).
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Well, actually, the way they try to get me to drop my pants on price as a candidate is that lately, I've been looking for jobs in other cities, and they want to tell me, "Oh, according to some source, $90K in my town is equivalent to $105K in your town.", as if I never took cost of living into account. I just straight up told one of these guys that it frankly offends me.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
I had a recruiter try to recruit me for a job I was interested in, but that was in a location I did not really want to work(bad commute, bad local tax rate). I calculated how much I wanted for the job. Then they asked me how much I was making. I told them that as well. They said, "Well, it will be hard to justify what you are asking based on what you are making." I told them that was irrelevant because what I was asking was what it would take to convince me to take the job. I am glad I did not take that job, I would have been miserable at what they wanted to pay me.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
California resident here. I have worked in the high tech industry for about 20 years and I applaud the new law.
This is great news. I have always hated this question when coming to the negotiation (or even starting a job application) as it puts the applicant in an awkward position. Obviously a "job offer" is a mutually beneficial affair, yet the employer's agent is always in a position of power while the applicant always comes around as asking.
Consider. You are just starting the usual song and dance with the recruiter who has a list of open jobs, thinks that they can understand bullet points on an engineer's resume and feels that he/she is qualified to "vet". The first question they ask after the the introduction is "So, how much are you currently making?". What can the applicant do at this point? Really, you don't want to close down, weaseling out is awkward and there is no good way to say "well, a market, yet I am looking for you to impress me". I've tried, this just backfires as there are other (easier) conversations that the recruiter would rather be having. Another few, more grounded points that are excluded from this $$$ question: what about the X units or stock that I received over the last year? What about the value of the private company and my exercised stock's value? What about the RSUs of the public company that I got, sold and made some extra money? Or kept in order to minimize the income tax? They never ask about total compensation, just the core salary.
So, yes, this is a very useful question for the recruiter to ask, yet is a pain for the applicant. I am very happy that the Governor has just signed this bill and I will not have to wince during my next interview.
Recruiters love to pigeonhole people. If you did the same kind of work for the last three positions and/or last three years, they assume that you want to do that kind of work forever. Never mind that the position you're applying for may be completely different.
These idiots keep trying to recruit me for a career I left nearly a decade ago rather the one my most recent experience is in.
A company should use how much it needs you to determine the price, not what you used to be paid under different circumstances. Do you go to Apple and demand the cost price of the iPhone and say I'll pay that plus 5%? Does your company go to Microsoft and say I'll pay your cost price for office 365 plus 5%
There's a big difference though between an employee and a supplier... The employee is stupid sheep who just trusts and believes everything is being done in a fair manner (whereas asking previous salary is inherently unfair). A supplier is a cunning, business-savvy person and knows that divulging that info means a huge drop in profits.
Plus the law is against employees. What if the employee (before this law was passed) refused to divulge previous salary? Well in that case, he/she would not get the job in most cases. No such problem for a supplier, who would never ever reveal true costs.
If you aren't willing to provide the information, you'll be offered the lowest salary on their scale, every time.
Lol, and that's totally going to last forever. I'm sure California will not have a budget crash, totally sure. Hey, why not throw universal health care into the mix. Progress!
Just because they know your prior salary doesn't mean you have to accept what they offer. Quit being a loser and fight for what you want. Be ready to walk away if it's not as much as you want. If you take it because you can't afford to be out of work or whatever then you are stating implicitly that you are only worth that much. Don't EVER rely on government regulation to save you. That's a fragile safety net to put your self worth on. You can use it if you want, but if you rely on it, you're destined for disappointment and failure.
Yup, unfortunately the difference is that employment contracts and relations are actually based on Roman slave laws, whereas I expect ordinary supply contract laws are likely based on a far more equitable arrangement. Glad that this law helps people stop being slaves. It's not a true free meeting in the market where one sells labour and one buys labour if one party has perfect information and the other has no information. Information asymmetry.
Good.
I was offered a job at Oracle with compensation of $X. When it came time to sign the papers HR held up the deal because it was against company policy to pay that much more than my previous (non California) job.
I accepted the job at almost $10,000 less than offered because I had already re-arranged my life.
Establish your salary floor early in your career by working in NYC or Silicon Valley. You don't get respect for what you've accomplished, you get it for what you've gotten from someone else.
I must have been lucky -- I've never been asked that. I get asked what soft of salary I'm looking for instead.
Virtually every employment application I've ever filled out has asked me for my start & end salary at previous work places, along with start & end date of employment, plus why I left that position. I think those questions are pretty standard.
I've avoided such applications whenever possible because I don't think they should be relevant. I get paid for the position I want at the bracket they are willing to offer based on my skills and nothing else. Only when it is truly a good opportunity that I bend to this.
The ability for a company to make such questions a requirement is just one more thing that tilts inequality of bargaining power to the applicant's detriment.
I'm glad this law is being passed in California. Hopefully it will spread. Inequality of bargaining power will always be there, but a bit of equalization is almost never a bad thing.
The Obama administration did push through an update to the Federal overtime regulations to make the majority of blue collar workers, especially retail/restaurant managers eligible for OT again, because they mostly get salaries around $24k/yr whereas a $12/hr worker would get OT without question, but its been blocked in court and the Trump administration is trying to kill it.
How would they ever find out? If they don't (somehow) check during the hiring process, I doubt they are going to try and go back later and check.
That information is not confidential. There are companies like "The Work Number" that some employers (specially in defense) use for employee verification. Those companies can get enough detailed information to present an accurate salary history.
Now, this is the thing. If this is a really good opportunity, don't lie. If it is a defense company, don't lie. If it is neither, either skip the opportunity or don't lie. Your time will come when an offer is given. If they low-ball you, throw back a counter-offer to them with the number you want
Then, a) the employer will give it to you, or b) counter-offer you with something more of your liking, or c) they'll say "well, you got paid less as per your salary history."
In case "c", you have to decide whether to walk away (because it is too detrimental to you) or take it (because you need the money or job change.). You can take it and make money (and maybe you'll like the job and stay or maybe because it is a lateral move to learn something new.)
Or you take it temporarily while looking for the salary you want.
But just don't lie. Don't blatantly lie.
Negotiate instead. Learn how to negotiate. Fight for what you want and learn how to make your case. You will get a lot further doing that than just lying for something that is easily verifiable (and whose outcome might not necessarily satisfy you professionally.)
Learn to find ways to win, even if by increments and with compromises. Lying is typically a sure way to actually lose firmly.
I always listed or said my total compensation was $X. That way I'm not being dishonest, and the number is significantly higher since it included all benefits and bonuses.
At first I wondered to myself, "How did they actually manage to pass anything that benefits average people?" OH right, by framing it in terms of women's rights.
Maybe next we can get a living minimum wage because transgenders? I'm down, let's do this.
I wrote "NOT ENOUGH" in the textbox asking my last job's salary. The HR rep who called me to setup the interview was thoroughly entertained by my answer and I'm fairly sure it put me on the top of the pile. Unbeknownst to them, they offered me 15k more than my last position, which I happily accepted. Another good tip for those looking for a new job: when they asked me "do you work well under pressure?" I told them: "Pressure is how diamonds are made." My interviewer loved that.
Recruiters love to pigeonhole people. If you did the same kind of work for the last three positions and/or last three years, they assume that you want to do that kind of work forever. Never mind that the position you're applying for may be completely different.
They do, and they tend to fuck people up (and themselves). I had a situation once where I was doing C++ for a few years, but had more than a decade in J2EE/JEE (also preceded by bouts of C/C++ development).
When it was time for me to get a new gig, recruiters weren't willing to forward my resume to people I knew were going to hire me for Java work because "I was a C++ guy" or "you haven't done Java in a while."
Damn idiots cost me money in the form of lost opportunities. I ended up contacting people directly, do the job for them and got hired. And then they were surprised I got the type of Java job they were refusing to forward my resume for (and pissed and confounded why I wasn't using their services anymore.)
There are some head hunters that are worth knowing and working for. But those are far and few. Most of them are clueless at best, and ignorant, arrogant weasels at worst.
One of the biggest pains when shopping around for a job was not knowing the employer's range. This isn't going to a damn thing about "wage gap", but it will help people like me who go into an interview and start the process only to find out later that "oh we misrepresented the job, our cap is %25 less then what you want"
I got offered a good salary out of college working for a company I really wanted to work for and then turned it down. I might be crazy- but the fact of the matter is I knew what I was worth and I am worth more than a good salary. Instead I took a part time job making $9 / hr (2007) doing computer repair for six months while building up a business that brought in significantly more than that good offer I had. Then I didn't actually intend to continue running the business I had built up. Rather my intention was to utilize the funds from it to jump start a startup that I had also started when I took that $9 / hr gig. The benefit to $9 / hr was I only had to put in 30 hours a week to keep me going while I worked on getting the other two businesses off the ground. The 2nd business took 3 years to get off the ground where it was really worth it. However that business today has made me very very wealthy. My paycheck (ie which is only a fraction of my total compensation and also misleading in terms of my net worth as I own a 100% of the company) is more than twice what others I graduated with would be making in some of the places with the 'best' salaries (and also most expensive areas to live). I don't live in California, Massachusetts, Washington, DC, Washington, Texas, North Carolina, Delaware, or any of the places where its expensive to live (I live in a very nice area of New Hampshire). I'm not a genius... I just don't take good offers that are below me. The moral of the story is stop demanding more legislation and take responsibility for your own actions. There are lots of opportunities to be had if you invest in yourself and don't take the 'best' conceivable deal. Nobody is forcing you to work for companies that pay you less than you think you are worth. If you can't get a good deal move. If you can't get what you believe you are worth start a company. You'll find out real quick what your talents are actually worth in the market when you have only yourself to blame (well, actually you may be able to blame the government as they have a lot of power to f'c stuff up, but beyond government's everywhere it's still within your power to move to some place that f'cs things up less).
some people will take a pay cut to work some where for more then a few different thinks.
U R DUM.
Employers post jobs without posting salary ranges, then ask applicants their current/previous/desired salary.
They do this to depress wages wherever possible.
The change makes them post salary ranges and prevents them asking about prior salary.
The law just closes loopholes in the existing regulations for fair hiring practices, such as making lower offers based on age, sex, race, etc.
That aspect of the background check would be illegal under this law as well. Asking an agent, e.g. the IRS to reveal your income is included in the things this law bans.
If you think the recruiters have a lavish lifestyle on your dime, I would wholeheartedly disagree.
Sorry if I didn't make my understanding of that point clear. I thought my statement that headhunters were 1 very skilled negotiator with a horde of unskilled recruiters working for them. Obviously if someone can convince hordes of highly intelligent individuals to essentially give up 20-25% of their potential pay by going through them so well they can script it and have people completely clueless to negotiating, the target industry, the target resources, etc achieve conversions then they aren't going to be paying the low-ranking guys well.
Then they asked me how much I was making. I told them that as well. They said, "Well, it will be hard to justify what you are asking based on what you are making."
This. Exactly this.
That is why as a California resident I applaud the new law. I really see no point in giving this information away as it can only do harm in my negotiating round.
And let me quote from the actual bill:
(a) An employer shall not rely on the salary history information of an applicant for employment as a factor in determining whether to offer employment to an applicant or what salary to offer an applicant.
(b) An employer shall not, orally or in writing, personally or through an agent, seek salary history information, including compensation and benefits, about an applicant for employment.
I actually got placed via a headhunter, the company liked me so much they bought out the contract and started paying me the same amount they were paying the recruiter once the term was up where the recruiter would get kickbacks if I got a raise (that's a thing.) Then the recruiter calls me a few months later with a job offer about 2.5x what the original salary was, I hear them out, they say they're going to get everything lined up and for me to call back the next day to do a conference call with the potential client. I call back the next day, there's obviously a conference line active, no client - just the recruiter saying they're expecting the client to come in soon. In the meantime he starts talking about salary, asks what I'm looking for, mention the figure he said without adding something like "that you mentioned yesterday" and then acts shocked and starts asking why I wanted the sudden pay jump if the original amount was good enough. I dimly response something along the lines of "for savings" or "to spend" without prefixing it with anything or elaborating. He continues the act and ultimately says he'll have to think about it. Within the next week he contacts the company I was placed with and says I called asking about a position that was much higher paying and outside my skillset and that I'm actively shopping around for new positions because I'm unsatisfied with the pay there, but they have another guy who has a track record of sticking it out with companies for years and is loyal as all Hell (found this out months later.) They hire Mr. Loyal, who turns out to be a complete fucking fraud who doesn't know shit about the job beyond how to pretend he's working and shuffle off blame on others, Mr. Loyal gets promoted to management within a month. 10 months down the road Mr. Loyal as lost 15% of the clients with another 75% teetering on the edge of wanting to leave, screaming at devs, managers, salesmen, the owner of the company, etc daily because their projects are late and nothing is what Mr. Loyal promised (turns out Mr. Loyal was outdoing the most sleazy of salesman, as a development head, in overpromising and under delivering.) Ultimately My. Loyal tries to cover his ass by trying to throw myself and another developer under the bus behind our backs while promising us everything was improving in private, this comes out in a group email where he chews us out CC'ing all the higher managers and HR and the entire dev team. So then comes a response of all of Mr. Loyal's fuckups, how he actively interfered with us "disrespectful" developers from patching up issues with clients, how these 75% of clients screaming at us every day about how they were about to leave and how there are communication issues internally which the dev lead assures them is not his fault, etc. Mr. Loyal "resigned" while kept on contract (mainly because they didn't quite know what to make of the situation, he was that great of a lying scumbag, but at the same time he failed to defend any of the ~40 specific points cited and simply send an email in mostly caps saying we were going to have a "friendly little conversation" [think Godfather tone, from someone having an ego-fueled power trip so intense he must have a micropenis] with HR.) 2 months of Mr. Loyal not actively fucking us at every turn (with the exception of 1 big client who was given exclusively to Mr. Loyal to prove himself,) and 65% of those 75% of clients were ecstatically happy with the internal change of promoting a non-dev to handle client interaction to keep our schedules clear while we focused on fixing everything. 3-4 months later that one client Mr. Loyal had finally got sick of the false promises and zero delivery (literally nothing,) and left. And so went Mr. Loyal, over a year after the fiasco began.
Moral of the story: headhunters can land you a decent position, but don't trust them for an instant.
That is the problem, now what is the solution?
How do we take the 15% for ourselves? In the end its all about networking and just doing the same legwork that headhunters do to find opportunities. The problem is you and half the other people who expect jobs have really high expectations and expect to give back very little in comparison. E.g. I should be making $120k/year as a VMWare sys admin. No. Or they expect to be allowed to work remotely and have double the leave while still collecting an average salary. No again. Then there is the attitude problem, and you know what I mean.. it's my way or the highway. Evident in OP's comment of "winning".
No once you sit down and understand what headhunters are doing and competing against, you realize they are filling a huge vacuum because there are no other companies who actually want to headhunt for projects. They just want to headhunt for a position and then either (a) take it themselves so they can feel secure just like how their $40k Audi makes them feel secure, or (b) try to replicate what every other shitbit headhunter is doing and try to get your third cousin to take a menial helpdesk job that pays even less than average because you're trying to get your cut (fuck you, pay me).
I want a company to help me build my strategy and improve my process. I will give them a budget and expect them to bring in qualified candidates. My final number I pay should be maybe 15% more than what I would have to pay myself. These jobs exist and they exist in great amounts, you just don't want to take them because of travel or it's 1099 and thus you don't get paid on holidays and that's a no-no for you. Now if I need a strong resource, I will gladly go to a headhunter because if it's not working out in 3 months, I can let the candidate go and pick someone new. I don't pay that 15% extra until after 6 months has passed. At that point I'm pretty certain they are good fit. If they keep up the work for another 6 months, now I have 15% extra that I can pay them directly as a bonus. every 6 months. Sure its a low salary but the benefits and bonus far outweigh the benefits. A great way to filter out loser candidates as well.
Moral of the story: headhunters have their uses but probably not for what you are looking for. you should become the headhunter then you wouldn't bitch as much.
Recruiters are dickheads. Period.
At one point in life, I signed up with a recruiter. During the face-to-face I told the guy, "I don't do database. I don't know database. Don't send me any job offers that involve doing database."
So I get sent on this interview. 30 seconds in, I realize it's a SQL job. Once the hiring manager finishes talking, the first thing I do is apologize for wasting his time. I explain that the recruiter shouldn't have sent me. I thank him for his time, and ask him to keep me in mind should anything non-DB show up.
Have never dealt with a recruiter since. Even when I was laid off.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
As a technical recruitment manager in the Bay Area, not being to ascertain one's salary expectations will inevitably cause a ton of wasted time. For example, we go through the entire interview process with a strong candidate, then find out in offer phase that the max comp we can go would be a significant pay cut to the candidate. To avoid this, we try to have the compensation conversation as early on as possible to make sure we're all on the same page and being transparent as possible.
With that said, is it not OK to ask, "What are you targeting for your next role?" and as a follow-up, "Is this target a significant bump from where you're at currently or a lateral?" Just curious what we can and can not say. Thoughts?
Aren't men, in general, more aggressive with salary negotiations? Won't they, disproportionately, be the ones to report their "former salary" to the new employer?
For example ... your previous salary may well have been X number of dollars, but did you receive any bonuses like a Christmas bonus perhaps?
I do not have to lie , they will not believe me if I tell the truth. :-) ... one when i do have time to get my degree
my answer is It depends on year up to 250k/y and background check will confirm that
the same position, the same employer just better and worse years
and one when i was sleeping 4h per day because there work to do.
All that this information is used for is negotiation of salary, the best price for a prospective employer to pay you for the benefit of your work.
What asking the question does is suppress wages for those who make less than the average amount earned in their industry/area. People will work for less than the average amount in their industry because they are used to it or need the job.
And on the flip side, If you can hire an highly qualified person for 5-10-30k+ under market value, just by asking one question, why wouldn't you?
This happens often enough that multiple states feel the need to speak up about it.
Unethical? Yes, illegal ? Not until 2018,
My point isn't that employers should continue playing games by not listing the salary range for open positions. My point is that it seems ridiculous to pass a specific law about ONE question you can't ask people, and pretend that fixes things!
If I was interviewing, I *might* want to ask about what a candidate earned at a previous job - and not just because I have some ulterior motive to underpay them compared to the going rate. It could be because they moved from a different part of the country and I was curious how much difference there was in pay rates for what they did where they lived vs. here.
Many places already have a pretty narrow range of pay they're allowed to offer for a given position. What you earned previously makes no difference in what you're going to be offered because upper management won't even allow that much flexibility.
The portion of the law ending the practice of not disclosing salary ranges isn't the part I took issue with.
How about a law that bans the far more evil California Franchise Tax Board from asking about salaries?
Whenever I'm asked how much I currently make my response is "doesn't matter, you tell me how much is the company offering for the position and I'll tell you if it is acceptable". Good recruiters will work with you, bad ones won't.
California is often in the forefront of useful ideas that eventually get incorporated elsewhere.
In most cases, the first person that gives a number is the one that loses....
I don't think that's necessarily true.
There is a huge amount of research showing that as a general proposition it is true. Not in every case but quite often. Negotiation is something that is studied quite carefully and it's a proven fact that in many cases for salary negotiation the party that quotes a number first is often at a disadvantage because they give away an information asymmetry. The party that doesn't go first knows more information about the expectations of the party that did go first and that can be very useful. Any time you know more about what the other party wants than they know about you it makes it easier to craft a deal that is relatively favorable to you.
I'll give an example from my own life. My first job out of college I was asked what I hoped to make. I quoted $SALARY based on what I had been told was the average starting pay for someone with my major from my college and when I got the job offer it was for exactly $SALARY to the penny. I found out later that had I quoted $SALARY+$5000 I could have gotten that amount or maybe more. I didn't know enough to simply ask what the pay range was. Big companies always have a range and what they wanted to know was my salary expectations would fall within it. Had I forced them to go first I probably could have made $5-10K more than I actually got.
What I find more interesting is that they shouldn't even find out through some other way : "(b) An employer shall not, orally or in writing, personally or through an agent, seek salary history information, including compensation and benefits, about an applicant for employment."
Whatever .... Massachusetts is one of the most liberal states in the Union
As opposed to the conservative powerhouse that is California?
I recently changed jobs to take an IT role at a major UK bank. As part of the process the recruiter asked for evidence of my previous pay. I held my ground, and ultimately got the job without having to provide a copy of a paystub or something else tangible to help pin my existing salary down.
Once I joined the company, I poked around in the salary banding and hiring policies section of our intranet, and our policies do indeed say that as part of the banding process, candidates are required to provide evidence of previous salary to justify pay at certain levels. I think he basically just made up a number and submitted it to get the number approved, but I was a bit surprised to see that this requirement was codified in the hiring practices.
The UK isn't the best at employee protection, but while we still have European workers' rights protections I was certain there must be something somewhere saying that disclosure of prior salary isn't required - but haven't been able to find anything explicitly rejecting that yet.
Making policy based on thoroughly debunked assumptions based on average incomes of males and females sounds like California.
An employer has no need of asking this information from a recruit. Equifax will tell them everything about a prospective employee's work history, including salary.
So, kinda a pointless law, no?
You're referring to contracting firms. They'will keep a substantial portion of what the employer is paying. For standard full-time jobs, they take their bonus as a lump sum, typically based on starting salary. This does give them incentive to try to get your salary up, but also incentive to keep it to what they're confident the company will pay, because getting a smaller bonus is better than not getting a larger one.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That is the problem, now what is the solution?
Same as all the solutions to all the other problems: slaughter the sales and marketing people of the world.
I knew someone who got a 50% salary increase by answering that question with "About $$$" (with the number rounded up quite a bit). Of course, they really wanted him and they had up the ante quite a bit to get any good tech people to move to South Florida.
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
If it is an automated form that asks, one won't be able to continue w/ the application w/o providing the information. So an applicant can either lie, in which case, he legally authorizes his potential employer to fire him if they find out, or has to provide them the details that helps them determine where to draw the line.
I'd love to see how the sleazy Indian IT companies get around this. They make salary disclosure mandatory in their applications, and draw a limit of not exceeding 30% more than what the candidate is making, even if the number happens to be less than the lower limit of their range. I have had applicants pull out because of disgust at such hiring practices. If the likes of Tech Mahindra, Infosys, et al can be kept out of California, that would be a great achievement. If any state doesn't need outsourced labor, CA should be the one.