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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 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. :(
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.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
I'm job-seeking right now and they always ask. ALWAYS.
I love how this was passed thru (the law) because of male/female pay issues.
the REAL issue is that it makes negotiating a one-way street, with the company having all the power and you have nearly none.
'the first one to mention a number, loses'
that's how the old saying goes when you are haggling.
and yet, there's few ways out of this game, especially since you can't just mark 'market rate' on the online hr forms.
its all about keeping you in your place. the god damned 'job creators' that we have been worshipping really don't have our needs in mind; they could not care less if we all starved and died on the streets. lots of indians to come over and work for a fraction of what a US person needs to live on.
good that this passed thru; but sad that it had to be couched as a male/female thing instead of 'strong company/weak worker' negotiation balancing.
either way, I expect companies to find loopholes to work around this 'unpleasent' rebalance of power.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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.
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..)
I've been asked the question by recruiters at major tech companies. It's been pretty quickly shut down by "I'm not in the Bay Area currently, I don't think what I'm on just now is in any way relevant to how much I should be paid over there".
I had a friend who instead of putting his last salary added up all his benefits with his salary and provided them with that. It bumped his "wage" by a considerable margin. Ironically, it was a law firm that he went to, working in IT. He argued that if they found out they would actually be impressed with how he framed it to his favor instead of giving his base salary. I think he's right.
That's still better than telling them your previous salary.
I mean, let's say you're interviewing for a position that pays $65k - $80k (and it was advertised as such), depending on experience. If you tell them that at your last job, you were making $60k, they're going to start negotiating at $65k.
But if the question is, how much do you expect to earn here, it puts you in a better position for negotiation. Maybe you have enough experience to flat out say "$80k". Or maybe, you want to give them a little wiggle room for negotiation so you don't come across as a hard-ass, and you say "$75k".
But you still have a better starting point for the salary negotiation.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
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.
Because then they will verify this as a condition of your job offer, find out you were lying, and disqualify you. Dishonesty is always a high-risk lay where one mistake will cost you.
Who needs to ask the employee when you can ask Equifax or Transunion the same question?
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"Ask me once, you a fool. Ask me twice, wait, What?" -- J. Muamma
Now that you mention it, I do remember such questions from a couple of lifetimes ago when I was applying for unskilled jobs. That was so long ago that I forgot. Those questions stopped when I started in engineering, though.
I've worked as an engineer for 20 years in the very best companies out there. All of them asked that. Some require a drug test, others don't. It's silly, I am not going to be operating a bus, I'm going to be driving a keyboard and mouse, maybe an oscilloscope if I get suckered into lab work. All ask for your previous salary on the job application.
These days I leave it blank, but often HR will ask directly. I give them a number that is defensible but misleading, and what I want them to beat to work there. So far nobody has ever called me on it.
They should not ask though. First, it is usually considered confidential information from current employers. Second, the should be paying me what they think I'm worth, not based on what the other guy thought I was worth, or via some fixing scheme where everyone agrees this is what we pay engineers, and when they get pissed we give them a few % more.
How can they verify it?
The best they could do is tax records, but that's sufficiently imprecise to cover you. They could do a credit check, but that only gives them a general range, not an exact salary.
But, if you don't want to lie, then just don't answer the question.
There's exactly no chance that I'm going to tell potential employers what previous employers paid me. That's very personal information that they have no legitimate need to know.
If that means I won't get hired for the position, that's fine -- if the information is that important to them, that's an excellent indication that I wouldn't fit in well in that company anyway.
A few years ago, I worked at a job that I absolutely hated. The hours were bad, management was brutal and oppressive, etc. One day I got a call out of the blue from a recruiter about a job at AIG. I interviewed, they liked me, we progressed to the offer stage. Part of AIG's offer process, and I've heard a number of other companies require this, involves you providing their HR rep with a recent paystub. I'm sure there's some perfect excuse one could offer to get out of this requirement, but for most people the options are submit the paystub or lose the opportunity. Or maybe there's a third option of mocking up a fake paystub, but there's the risk of eventually being found out and getting fired or accused of fraud. It is incredibly one sided, and laws like the one recently passed in California are a good start to making the negotiations a bit more equal.
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.
You mean the fact that Single Women just out of college earn more than their male counterparts, but an average of 8%?
"Census data from 2008 show that single, childless women in their 20s now earn 8 percent more on average than their male counterparts in metropolitan areas."
http://www.politifact.com/pund...
The wage gap myth is based on the idea that men and women make equal choices, and doesn't account for career choices, family choices, and other meaningful criteria. But hey, it fits the narrative.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I guarantee this will have unintended consequences. Interviews will be much longer. We'll hear stories of people who BS their way through interviews to much higher positions than they're actually qualified for. It's going to be a learning process for companies. I know I've already shared this with other managers on my team...many of us hire folks in CA.
Or.... how about you offer the salary that you think is reasonable for the position? Interview the skill-level of the candidate? Rather than trying to judge it based on what someone else previously thought they were worth. You've no idea how good the previous employer was at judging their worth.
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.