If you've ever had an initial phone screen with a good recruiter, you will be familiar with the following question, "What are you looking for salary-wise?" If you've ever had an initial phone screen with a great recruiter, you will be familiar with the following statement, "Please tell me what you're currently making salary-wise and what you're looking for in your next position. And please be honest with me so that we don't waste your time or our's going through the whole interview process, only to find out at the end that we can't move forward with you because of salary reasons."
The latter is something that I would always ask candidates during my first contact with them. While it's inherently a not-so-nice topic to have during your initial call regarding a potential job, it's absolutely critical that this information gets hashed out at the beginning of the process. Unfortunately, even when a top-notch recruiter is adamant about the topic like in the second example above, candidates will often lie about what they're looking for, and either grossly understate or overstate what they're really looking for -- and often times by more than 25% (which is A LOT). Grossly understating what they're looking for is the biggest problem, so I'm going to focus on that particular issue for this story.
Why do candidates understate what salary they're looking for? Well the number one reason I've found why candidates do this is that they don't want to be excluded from a job opportunity just because of money. They think that once they interview at a company and the hiring manager falls in love with them, that they can then negotiate a much higher salary during the offer stage.
What most candidates fail to realize about this flawed logic is that 99.9% of the time, companies have a set budget that they have to stick to, regardless of the how "wow'd" they are by the candidate. Company budget is actually the #1 reason for why a salary range is the way it is. And if you think about it, it makes sense -- salary ranges across companies for the same position vary widely. But based on what a company has set aside for a specific type of position, that will be the salary at that company and that's it.
In addition, Employers are almost never willing to give a job seeker a raise of more than 10%-20% over what he/she was making at the last job compared to the new job. For example, if you were making $60K at your last job, then it doesn't matter how much you think you're actually worth or how much you impress during the interview -- the biggest increase that you're going to get is $12K for a total salary of $72K. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. But this is the case most of the time.
Which brings us back to the time-wasting factor. A candidate that has under-stated their desired salary to their next Employer (and has done a solid job of convincing the recruiter that this is what they're really looking for), is now headed down a slippery slope of not only wasting his/her own time, but also potentially burning a bridge with that Employer. Because nothing is more aggravating for an Employer than to have a candidate lie about their salary from the beginning and waste the interviewing team's time. You can pretty much guarantee that if you do this, don't plan on applying back to that same company anytime in the next 2-4 years.
So what's the solution for candidates? It's simple: be HONEST about what your current salary is and what you're ultimately looking for in your next job. Also be prepared to justify your stance on this at the very beginning and give concrete details for why it is what you're looking for. You'll develop a better relationship with the Employer and also save yourself a lot of headaches further down the road.
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