Help! Need Negotiating Strategies for Job Offer

[BigDaveyL]

Originally Posted by oceangaia

I'm not making assumptions, I'm posing possibilities.

While you complain that applicants are being viewed in black and white terms that doesn't consider individual circumstances, you are doing the same in viewing employers in black and white terms. Employers have their own numerous and varied reasons for asking about salary history. As I said, some seek out applicants with low salary history and some rule out applicants with low salary history. Some use it because they are concerned with applicants used to making more and some use it because they are concerned with applicants used to making less.

Employers, in fact everyone, make generalizations all the time about all kinds of things. And there are always exceptions to everything if you drill down to individual circumstances. An employer has no obligation to spend the time understanding your particular situation. An employer is probably going to invest a lot more time and effort into an applicant if they have 5 positions open and 10 applicants than if they have 2 positions open and 50 applicants. These days it tends to be closer to the latter. Not everyone who applies may get called for an interview. Snap decisions are made to whittle down the pool and those snap decisions are made on generalities that may or may not hold true for any particular individual. Like it or not, salary history is often a criteria in that. Like it or not, employers may eliminate the applicants whose history is well outside the range they have in mind.

It doesn't matter whether or not you think salary history tells you anything about an applicant's past, present, or future. Except for when you are in the other seat doing the hiring. As long as it is legal to ask, employers are free to ask about it or not, to give it a lot of weight or none. Get over it.

Well, it's soon going to be illegal to ask, and employers may actually have to come up with better ways to screen candidates based on actual qualifications. The horrors.

[oceangaia]

Originally Posted by BigDaveyL

Well, it's soon going to be illegal to ask, and employers may actually have to come up with better ways to screen candidates based on actual qualifications. The horrors.

Any references to support that assertion? A handful of states have banned it. The vast majority of states allow it.

Also, you might not like the "better ways" they come up with to replace it.

[BigDaveyL]

Originally Posted by oceangaia

Any references to support that assertion? A handful of states have banned it. The vast majority of states allow it.

Also, you might not like the "better ways" they come up with to replace it.

They allow it but that doesn't mean people have to give it.

All that matters is whether the person hired can do the job or not. I do not care what they made elsewhere as that has no bearing on that goal.

Companies still discriminate on irrelevant qualities like race, gender, etc. These companies are all less than average places that are at a competitive disadvantage because of it.

[selhars]

The OP joined in April and made one post in April, this one.
And She hasn't come back more than a month later to say she took the job, or she didn't. Surely one of those outcomes has happened by now.

[Girl]

Think of it this way - healthcare is covered 100%, so you will NOT be paying out for that. Considering the cost of healthcare benefits, in many ways they ARE paying you $80K - but $5K of that pays for healthcare upfront versus per paycheck, which is what you'd have to pay ANYway.