From: clifto@indep1.UUCP (Cliff Sharp)
Newsgroups: misc.jobs.misc
Subject: Re: they really want SALARY HISTORY
Date: 5 Nov 92 23:28:33 GMT
Organization: as little as possible

In article <1992Oct30.202904.24122@ads.com> henry@ADS.COM (Henry Mensch) writes:
>msm@mse.cmu.edu (Mark S McWhinney) wrote: 
>->reason for requesting salary history is to get a truer picture of the
>->applicants capabilities.  All the nice adverbs and adjectives on a
>
>exactly.  it also helps me figure out whether i (as a hiring manager)
>can afford you.  there's no point in doing a phone screen or calling
>
>->I believe that the rate of increase in salary is a better indicator
>->than final salary.

   There are those of us who don't choose to release salary history because:
1) We feel it's highly personal.  If you can't offer us something in the
    range we deserve, we'd like to know that off the bat.
2) We don't necessarily know whom we're talking to.  We don't need our salary
    laughed at because our current employer tends to deal in cents rather 
    than dollars.
3) In the Chicago area, many employment ads are to blind addresses.  (Whatever
    these employers are hiding, I don't usually judge; however, I've found 
    through various means that some of them are companies, such as CNA,
    Allstate, United Insurance, who have uncontrovertible records of doing
    massive layoffs without notice.)  If the company has to hide its name,
    I have absolutely no reason to tell it my salary history, or for that
    matter even my home address or phone number.  (Incidentally, by
    reputation, Booz, Allen & Hamilton has a VERY bad name in this area;
    most people who are laid off here get notice by meeting a large guard
    who will not allow them access to the building, or so I'm told.)
4) Salaries are ALWAYS negotiable.  If I tell you I left Zenith Data Systems
    at a salary of just over $22,000/year (the absolute minimum for my
    position), why does that make me less valuable than the lady there who
    told me she was not only a better programmer (she couldn't even handle
    examining incoming software from vendors, she asked for my help about once
    per DAY), she was a better PERSON than I was because she had a degree in
    Ancient European History?  (She was making $28,000/year; after she made
    her statement, she lost the only helper she had, and so far as I know
    she did nothing further except filing until she left the company.)
    JFYI, I left that $22,000/year job to become a $36,500/year consultant.
    Mostly because I _refused_ to discuss my current income, only my
    qualifications.
5) What gives you, or anyone in your position, the right to determine what
    my salary should be based on what it was?  When I walk into a company,
    I make damn sure that my salary is based on the amount of money I can
    make for that company.  I don't expect $100,000,000.00 to do programming,
    and I don't expect minimum wage for it either.  The quickest way to get me
    to call the "headhunters" is for me to find that someone much less competent
    than I is making 50% more money than I.  The second-quickest way is to see
    someone near me get a 15% raise for little or no work while I slave my
    butt off and get a 2% raise.

   If I read you right (and with appropriate apologies, perhaps I haven't),
you're exactly the kind of person who's more impressed with Ph.D.s than with
accomplishments.  If indeed that's true, you are already getting what you
deserve; underaccomplishers who do little more than demand training, training,
and more training, and leave your company when they find a place that will
give them more money to let them demand yet more training.
   Most companies that use my services find that my total lack of college
training (although I've taught at Morton College, Cicero, IL when I was 18)
is totally irrelevant, and ask me back when they have something significant
to get done.  (I don't sit in my chair and point to my degree; I sit in my
chair and get _results_.   That's what _intelligent_ clients pay money for.)
-- 
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|   Cliff Sharp  |      clifto@indep1.chi.il.us   OR  clifto@indep1.uucp       |
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Newsgroups: misc.jobs.misc,misc.jobs.offered,tx.jobs