A recruiter called and wants to know my salary. Should I give it to him?

I have found that a person’s next salary is always determined by two factors: salary history and how well you interview. If one of the two is a miss, a red flag will be raised in the mind of your next employer (or recruiter you’re dealing with) and this will negatively impact your ability to earn a top salary. I have spoken with about 30 candidates per day for the past 8 years of my career as a recruiter and I’d say that 99% of them disclose their salary during our first conversation. They tell me what they are currently earning and what they expect of their next salary. If their expectations align with my clients anticipated salary range, we proceed. If not, we either realign expectations or decide not to move forward thereby saving everybody a lot of time and headache.

Every once in a while however I’ll run into that one candidate who doesn’t want to disclose their salary history. This automatically raises a red flag in my mind making me think that either this candidate was underpaid, overpaid or will try to pull a fast one when it comes time to negotiate the offer at the completion of the interview process. This candidate typically states that salary is unimportant and that they only care about the opportunity, but what I have found is that upon completion of their interview process, they are the ones who are most adamant about getting the salary that is fair and that they deserve (no matter what their salary history is). If you’ve ever heard horror stories of companies low-balling candidates or candidates developing unrealistic expectations once it comes to offer time, it is because of situations like this where expectations were not clearly discussed at the onset of the process.

I know that in classic negotiation training, he who speaks first loses – but I would also argue that he who walks into a negotiation blind and with misaligned expectations loses too. Meaning you’re not doing yourself or anybody else for that matter a favor by keeping your salary history private.  My recommendation is to inject certainty and openness into your interview process by disclosing your history and expectations up front, otherwise you’re leaving the entire shebang up to chance which in my opinion greatly ups the likelihood that you and the employer will be left disappointed in the end.

In my opinion, the best way to get top dollar in your next job search is to play by the rules. Disclose your salary history, review/raise schedule and any anticipated reviews’raises in the near future. If you know what you want in your next salary, say so and put the ball in the employers hands to deliver. If you don’t know what you want, say that finding the right opportunity is the top priority and you trust that the right employer will come to the table with an acceptable salary. That’s it, now you’ve disclosed your salary history and your expectations; and the employer by agreeing to continue interviewing you has understood that in order to get you, they’ll need to hit your specified salary requirements. Now all you have to do is interview like you’re worth every penny and wait for the offer to come through. Of course, there are techniques that you’ll want to implement throughout the interview process in order to ensure you’ll be offered a top dollar salary, but we’ll save those for another post.

Good luck!!