Salary negotiations

[Singapura]

After a 13 year succesful career I'm offered a job at another institution. When I started in Singapore I took a slight hit in salary because I really wanted to come out here. I have earned a few certifications, finished my MBA etc. so my market value now should be higher then when I got my last promotion. Unfortunately, there were no increases in pay. A headhunter approached me with a very interesting new role and correspondent salary (considering the financial crisis  ) At least it's much higher then what I earn now.

All the interviews were succesful, they indicated that they really want me for the job. Now we have entered the remuneration negotiations, the prospective employer suddenly wants to see my current contract and payslip. This kind of surprises me. According to the headhunter it is common practice in Singapore that offers are based on current salary and not on market demand, peer group compensation or qualifications unless you're a fresher. I've never used this when I hired someone, since I tend to look at content not price. If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys right? 

Is this practice used in the US? I.m.h.o. this puts the employee at a significant disadvantage. Imagine buying your groceries and the lady at the counter asks for the bill of your last purchases to base a price on. 

[Ed_McCarron]

Is this practice used in the US?

Wow, I hope not...  I've never had that pop up.

[protokatie]

Never heard of this either...

Don't forget to hint about the 3 "other" employers who you are in interviews with, and the fact that they have only been looking at your qualifications and market value. Also, stall on getting the salary documents for them, commenting on the fact that you keep them in a safe deposit box (or similar), as you have never heard of an employer asking for this kind of information before. This might turn their hand.

On a related note: Any company that is doing something like this probably doesnt really care about the employees it hires. Maybe an upper manager came up with a "cost cutting" competition with the lower managers, and this is how it ended up. If that is the case, you will be entering into "Dilbert Land"...

Hope the best for you.

[danny_galaga]

singapura is from holland, so i dont know that it matters about what you call his MBA 

good luck with the job though 

[Hoopz]

Never heard of this either...

Don't forget to hint about the 3 "other" employers who you are in interviews with, and the fact that they have only been looking at your qualifications and market value. Also, stall on getting the salary documents for them, commenting on the fact that you keep them in a safe deposit box (or similar), as you have never heard of an employer asking for this kind of information before. This might turn their hand.

On a related note: Any company that is doing something like this probably doesnt really care about the employees it hires. Maybe an upper manager came up with a "cost cutting" competition with the lower managers, and this is how it ended up. If that is the case, you will be entering into "Dilbert Land"...

Hope the best for you.

+1
Solid advice all the way around. 

[shardian]

Your contract and pay with your current company is considered 'proprietary information' of said company. The other company has no business whatsoever seeing what your company pays or how it writes contracts.

[orion]

I got to say that that that's about the craziest thing I have ever heard of.  If its true that that is common practice in Singapore then I wouldn't be insulted or anything. It seems to run contrary to the whole idea of getting ahead, and I really can't see that as a cultural phenomenon. I would be really sceptical about that claim.. the headhunter really might want their commission perhaps?

[Kevin Mullins]

On a related note: Any company that is doing something like this probably doesnt really care about the employees it hires. Maybe an upper manager came up with a "cost cutting" competition with the lower managers, and this is how it ended up. If that is the case, you will be entering into "Dilbert Land"...

Bingo !!

Your question to them should be "how much am I worth to your company" ?

Anybody that wants to base your salary on previous pay is most likely going to give you the least of a raise in order to hire you. And even then you will not truly account for much of an asset to that company...... more like you would just be another number to them. (any other employee) (expendable, etc)

I'd take a pay cut to go work for a better company before I took a job with a company like that.

[Matthew Anderson]

I have heard once of this happening in the states... The guy told the truth about how much he made and was asked to provide a paystub on his first day of work...

Personally, I say you tell them how much you make and do not let that alter what you want from them... Just because they want to negotiate from that position does not mean you should...

Also all contact before you start working sets the tone...

They are asking you for some information, do you hide it or show it?

They are trying to negotiate the cheapest price for your talents, how will this effect your next raise?

The psychology of the hiring process fascinates me personally. If a company shows me "anything" which raises a "yellow" flag (not even a red one) I would stay in my secure (if underpaid) job... They are showing you how the business functions from stem to stern...

Good luck ... most importantly remember

Opinions are like ... well ... butt holes ... everyone has one and they usually smell pretty bad!

[ChadTower]

Standard questions for the headhunter:  Who does he work for?  How is he paid?  That will tell you exactly how trustworthy he is to you.  I've dealt with a lot of headhunters and you have to get that info up front in order to make best use of them.  It's all about where his compensation is coming from and for exactly what service.

[Level42]

Run, run ! What a bullocks ! I've never had that asked (and I'm at my 7th (or so) job now. If I would be asked that question, I would ask the guy on the other side of the table to show his company accounts, just to check if he would be able to pay me. See how they respond to that....

I've once had a job interview and after already slow communications through mail, the woman simply let me wait for 45 minutes in her office after the agreed time. I figured, if she can't manage THIS, how does she manage the rest ? So the interview went pretty bad as I expected. When I told (_almost truthfully, we all bargain in negotiants) my current salary she went a bit pale in the face. At that time I was managing a 2nd line IT support desk and had 8 people working "under" me. The job I was applying for was managing a team of about 30 people.......So she expected to pay me less for a lot more responsibility and the new job would not even include a company car...

At the end she told me she would contact me within two days.  Guess what, no call. Then after more than one week she calls at night time and says she wants a second talk. I said, OK and we fixed a time. I didn't go. Hope she figured it out....

[SavannahLion]

Your contract and pay with your current company is considered 'proprietary information' of said company. The other company has no business whatsoever seeing what your company pays or how it writes contracts.

In the U.S. that is correct. If Company B wants to know how much Company A paid their employee they have to contact the employer. And even then, it's not supposed to be so specific as to know how much Junior is paid (practice is altogether different). In most companies, it's gotten so ridiculous that even individual employees within the company aren't supposed to reveal how much they earn to other employees or it's grounds for termination (or so they say). The common application is to determine an appropriate pay scale for a specific position and then to keep that payscale as low as possible.

Public employees (State and Federal) don't enjoy those kinds of "protections". But it's not always entirely open. It's public information how much my pay scale is, but my exact earnings are not. So I can be at the bottom of the pay scale or at the top. It's not hard to figure out how much someone like me earns since anybody can assemble a range of publicly available information and gleen my gross earnings.

However, the OP is in Singapore. All of this may apply or none of it.

[orion]

"Public employees (State and Federal) don't enjoy those kinds of "protections"."

That's true I am a state employee and everyone earning more than a certain dollar amount gets their name and their salary posted on a website for all the world and their co workers who make less than that to see..... doesn't do a whole hell of a lot for moral in my opinion.

[Singapura]

FYI - be careful calling the degree you got an 'MBA' if you come back to the states. 

Webster is not accredited.  Missouri puts up with that, in Texas it would be grounds for termination if your employer found out.  Other states will levy fines against you if you work for them and get a raise because of that degree, and they later found out you lied.

 

I think you need to get your facts straight before calling me a liar  . Webster has campuses on most military bases as well as around the world. Webster University in the Netherlands is accredited by the Netherlands-Flemish Accreditation Agency (NVAO) and is an approved institute of higher education under Dutch law. The president of Indonesia is a Webster alumni. My MBA study was chosen and paid for by my current employer. If you're going to make that kind of ignorant comment please don't comment at all.

Personally, I say you tell them how much you make and do not let that alter what you want from them... Just because they want to negotiate from that position does not mean you should...

Now that's useful advice. Thanks!

[Grasshopper]

In the UK it’s common practise for companies to ask what your current salary is on their application form. It’s always irritated the hell out of me and you’re right it does put the employee at a significant disadvantage. It ought to be illegal to ask the question but AFAIK it’s not. You’re not obliged to give that information but it could potentially count against you if you don’t.

What’s doubly irritating is that companies are generally very coy about what salary they’re offering. You rarely see a figure stated in job adverts these days.

[AtomSmasher]

In the UK it’s common practise for companies to ask what your current salary is on their application form. It’s always irritated the hell out of me and you’re right it does put the employee at a significant disadvantage. It ought to be illegal to ask the question but AFAIK it’s not. You’re not obliged to give that information but it could potentially count against you if you don’t.

What’s doubly irritating is that companies are generally very coy about what salary they’re offering. You rarely see a figure stated in job adverts these days.

I've been job hunting lately and it seems to be pretty much the same as that in the US.

[Singapura]

I don't know about your problems with Webster Pinballjim. Maybe you couldn't get in but the fact is that I don't care. You're calling me a liar and when I prove you wrong, you start making up excuses to "prove" you're right. Maybe Texas doesn't recognise the degree but if they recognise a degree from a certain president, bought for him by his daddy, all the best to them. The rest of the world seems more sensible.

In the UK it’s common practise for companies to ask what your current salary is on their application form. It’s always irritated the hell out of me and you’re right it does put the employee at a significant disadvantage. It ought to be illegal to ask the question but AFAIK it’s not. You’re not obliged to give that information but it could potentially count against you if you don’t.

Singapore is very UK oriented, so maybe that's where the practice came from. In The Netherlands it is unheard of as far as I know. The strange thing is that here I'm contractually forbidden to discuss my salary with my colleagues but have to disclose it to a prospective employer before negotiations even begin. They seem to make a big problem if you misstate your salary and they find out about it. A colleague from another department almost got fired because of that.

[Level42]

"Public employees (State and Federal) don't enjoy those kinds of "protections"."

That's true I am a state employee and everyone earning more than a certain dollar amount gets their name and their salary posted on a website for all the world and their co workers who make less than that to see..... doesn't do a whole hell of a lot for moral in my opinion.

Got a link for that ? I'm curious

[SavannahLion]

"Public employees (State and Federal) don't enjoy those kinds of "protections"."

That's true I am a state employee and everyone earning more than a certain dollar amount gets their name and their salary posted on a website for all the world and their co workers who make less than that to see..... doesn't do a whole hell of a lot for moral in my opinion.

Got a link for that ? I'm curious

For California, the best place is the Sacramento Bee. I take back what I said about the pay ranges, it was like that when I hired on, now they have the exact or near exact amount, right down to overtime pay. Last I heard, the Union was fighting tooth and claw against the Bee publicly publishing individual earnings. I guess some people are using the information against specific individuals. 

At least people like me can see how pathetic our earnings are compared to our peers.

[orion]

"Public employees (State and Federal) don't enjoy those kinds of "protections"."

That's true I am a state employee and everyone earning more than a certain dollar amount gets their name and their salary posted on a website for all the world and their co workers who make less than that to see..... doesn't do a whole hell of a lot for moral in my opinion.

Got a link for that ? I'm curious

Here you go sir, the state of South Carolina employee salary database. What I think is funny is seeing how much more coaches make than the president's of university's. Steve Spurrier's salary is on here somewhere.

http://www.thestate.com/politics/story/17442.html

[Grasshopper]

That's true I am a state employee and everyone earning more than a certain dollar amount gets their name and their salary posted on a website for all the world and their co workers who make less than that to see..... doesn't do a whole hell of a lot for moral in my opinion.

This is one of the few areas in life where I think I’d be willing to trade some privacy in order to have greater negotiating power. I say “some” privacy because there’s no need to publish individual salaries, just the maximum and minimum salaries that the company is paying for a particular role.

As far as morale is concerned, I agree that publishing salary information will generally have a negative effect. But so what?

Morale matters but it should be based on reality. If a company is treating its workers fairly then there shouldn't be any need for secrecy. I don’t want to work for a company where moral is high only because the managers have successfully managed to hide how much they’re shafting the ordinary workers.

[Grasshopper]

In the UK it’s common practise for companies to ask what your current salary is on their application form. It’s always irritated the hell out of me and you’re right it does put the employee at a significant disadvantage. It ought to be illegal to ask the question but AFAIK it’s not. You’re not obliged to give that information but it could potentially count against you if you don’t.

Singapore is very UK oriented, so maybe that's where the practice came from. In The Netherlands it is unheard of as far as I know. The strange thing is that here I'm contractually forbidden to discuss my salary with my colleagues but have to disclose it to a prospective employer before negotiations even begin. They seem to make a big problem if you misstate your salary and they find out about it. A colleague from another department almost got fired because of that.

Well one difference is that in the UK it’s pretty much unheard of for a company to ask to see your previous salary slip after offering you the job. It’s certainly never happened to me.

However, employers can often get a pretty good idea of your previous salary by seeing how much tax you’ve paid so far in the current tax year. They get that information automatically from the Inland Revenue in order to calculate how much tax to deduct each month.

As far as contractually prohibiting employees from discussing their salary is concerned, I’m pretty sure that is illegal in the UK because if that could be done it would make collective bargaining through a union effectively impossible. That being said, one of my ex-employers did try to discourage people from discussing their salary but they were smart enough not to make it a contractual obligation. They were the sort of company that tried to get away with things that were borderline illegal.

[orion]

That's true I am a state employee and everyone earning more than a certain dollar amount gets their name and their salary posted on a website for all the world and their co workers who make less than that to see..... doesn't do a whole hell of a lot for moral in my opinion.

This is one of the few areas in life where I think I’d be willing to trade some privacy in order to have greater negotiating power. I say “some” privacy because there’s no need to publish individual salaries, just the maximum and minimum salaries that the company is paying for a particular role.

As far as morale is concerned, I agree that publishing salary information will generally have a negative effect. But so what?

Morale matters but it should be based on reality. If a company is treating its workers fairly then there shouldn't be any need for secrecy. I don’t want to work for a company where moral is high only because the managers have successfully managed to hide how much they’re shafting the ordinary workers.

Well let me say that I generally avoid that site like the plaque, because it does induce some feelings of resentment. I have walked into many a b*@!$ session because coworkers have been on it and gotten themselves worked up. It's really not a good thing.

[orion]

What I always found really weird about state work was the supervisors pretended it was like this huge agony to give raises and it was coming out of their own pockets.  And they'd give you 20 minutes of BS about how they thought long and hard about it and then you'd just get the 3.5% everyone else got. 

That salary information convinced me I needed to quit a job once. 

I saw how little the difference was between my supervisor and I and realized I was never going to do much better financially.   

If you don't get your money going in, your not going to get it, unless you can change jobs within the organization.

[FrizzleFried]

For one, nobody with a degree from an AACSB school is going to recognize it. 

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0DXK/is_20_18/ai_80803286/pg_2

It seem that as of 2001 PinballJim is right...









 

[orion]

If you don't get your money going in, your not going to get it, unless you can change jobs within the organization.

The quickest way to make 'money' working for a public university is to work there 2-3 years, hop to private industry for 2 years, and then come back.  You'll be making $5k/yr more when you come back than you would have if you had stayed.   

Yea I did that a long time ago, and when I came back I was making 10K more than when I left. I had worked for the state for a year in public television (interesting bunch) and when I found another job I decided to withdraw my years worth of retirement because I didn't think I would ever come back to work for the state (and because I wanted this really comfy lazy boy recliner)  I could buy back that year, but man is that costly... no thanks. There are a few advantages to working for the state that make up somewhat for the pay. The benefits are good, I get two weeks off at Christmas and they give me 10 hours of annual leave a month, which means I always can take off two weeks in the summer as well. The main advantage for working for the state is job security, and with the economy the way it is right now I see it a big plus.

[daywane]

This reminds me of a interview I had.
all was going well.
then the person asked to see my pay stubs and asked a bunch of questions about my moms birth name.
wanted a lie detector test.
That is when I Started to LOL and told the jerk he was only a manager @ toys R us
True story

[Level42]

My wife applied for a summer job as a dentist's receptionist and the application asked for age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, and marriage status.   

Age and marriage status sound pretty normal to me. All the others would be illegal to even ask here.

The fact of having persons names with their salaries available for everyone to see would be absolutely unthinkable overhere. There are privacy laws about such information. Although, with the excuse of fighting terrorism, our privacy is being hurt more and more every day. 1984 may not have happened but we ARE going into that direction.

[shardian]

I'm pretty sure it is illegal for an interviewer to require you to divulge marital or dependent status. I seem to remember hearing something about that in Senior seminar when learning about interviews.

[hyiu]

I believe they cannot ask your age in US.... that will lead to age discrimination...
I don't know about marriage status, dependent status... etc.
but I think the company is asking for trouble if they're asking these things...
(in US.... that is... since US is the law suit country.... lol.....)

and for the record... when I got my current job, I did was asked for my current salary...
and I did give the head hunter my current salary...
they did not ask for a paystub for prove...

does it put the job seeker in somewhat a disadvantage ?
I think so...
but they did give me a decent raise...

[ark_ader]

I would tell them to go and jump.  You have the right to privacy.

If they get nervy and don't offer you the job without that info, then go to the next best offer.

I would be very suspicious if a company wanted to know what I was paid previously, and as of yet only the US application forms have this requirement, which I leave blank.  There is nothing wrong in asking, and if you are dumb enough to contribute....

If the company wants you bad enough, you will get the job regardless.   

[Dartful Dodger]

I've got my annual/anal review today.

I haven't had any new projects for months and it doesn't look like there're any big projects for me anytime soon.

Last year I was pist when they tried to just to give me a "cost of living raise" so I demanded more.  It felt good having the upper hand during the review.

This year’s review is going to suk.  I'm going to have to act happy and fake gratitude when/if they offer me a “cost of living” raise.

[SavannahLion]

I believe they cannot ask your age in US.... that will lead to age discrimination...

You don't need to ask someones age to know it. Companies will get it from your birthdate or once the interview process starts. There's no way to hide how old a person is and it's guaranteed that if that strip club doesn't want to hire that sixty year old stripper, they're going to find an excuse not to.

In all seriousness, there are some rare situations where a company can legally refuse to hire someone based on age. Usually when the person is under 18/21. For instance, one can't hire anyone under 18 when the job calls for operating heavy machinery.

I don't know about marriage status, dependent status... etc.

I only know of one instance about ten years ago where a company was hiring only non-married people for a job. The company offered me a job to climb electric towers on the otherside of the world installing and repairing lines. Given the job locations, I wasn't all that interested risking electrocution or being used as a target.