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New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

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Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#141

Post by Gargoyle »

komali2 wrote: post #111
disiplus wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how about telling the candidates in front that the expected salary is in the range of x-y.

Because every time I told a candidate a range, I'd hear back "ok so the salary is {{max_salary}}, cool." Nobody in the contracting world wants to undersell themselves. If somebody on the team is getting 75/hr, everybody better get 75/hr or hell gets raised. This is why the O&G industry out in Houston pushes back hard against any salary-sharing.

California employers will be required to give a range upon request under this same law. So might as well get it out of the way up front.

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#142

Post by nightski »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #123
cracell wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No thank you. My salary is private. I do not want my family and friends to know how much I make. I also have never told a potential employer my salary. I believe it stopped things from going on to the interview stage but the way they took my refusal made me assume they paid under market rate.

They don’t need to ask you anymore. You self-reported it to a credit agency and friends, family, potential employers can get that plus other financial information from these agencies.

Where are you seeing this? There is zero income information on any of my credit reports. In addition, if it was so easy to obtain how come my credit card bank still constantly begs me to update my income information?

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#143

Post by kileywm »

nicolashahn wrote: post #5
pmoriarty wrote: post #4

This is a ban on employers -- afaik, recruiters can still ask (and many probably will ask). But, IANAL. (Correction: It looks like recruiters fall under this prohibition too, if they are acting as agents of the employer.) I personally never answer questions about my previous salary or my expected salary. When HR has given me forms to fill out that have questions about either I just leave them blank, and they've never…

Kind of off topic but should one always hide their current salary, even if it's above market rate (given their experience on paper)? It seems as though if an employer were only looking to spend so much on a hire, then if you're already likely above that number, wouldn't it save both you and the employer's time? I can see the obvious downside of sharing a relatively low salary, but it seems like there could be benefit…

I'd recommend hiding it. Here's why:

Your future salary expectations likely have a basis in your current salary. Prospective employers know this. Prospective employees know this. If expectations are stated, with that understanding, then your current salary should be irrelevant. If you're having trouble signaling your value to a prospective employer, then your current (good) salary, seems like an easy way to communicate your value, but it's flawed. Salary is far too reductive of a valuation of yourself. If your value is so difficult to communicate, then perhaps a little self-reflection would help you to pinpoint your strengths to better showcase them.

Further, there are few positive reasons for a prospective employer to seek that number. While it offers them market research into salaries to be competitive, it mostly lets them optimize their offer for the bare minimum to bring you on board. It lets them offer in such a way that you'll compromise your expectations for something slightly better salary-wise and different. I liken it to purchasing a vehicle from a dealer and knowing their margins before hand. This is an oversimplification, and they can say 'no' to a low margin, but it's far easier to persuade them to say 'yes' when you still know they're getting something positive out of it.

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#144

Post by usaar333 »

rpowers wrote: post #38

Really wish this would extend to apartment rent applications. I'm fine with a credit check, but they don't need to know how high they can increase my rent before I'll need to move. edit I am referring to my experience renting apartments from Property Management run communities. (Think Essex or Prometheus) Rent increases every year with them.

You can always write a salary lower than what you make..

Regardless, it's rarely in your own interest to conceal it unless you have privacy concerns.

1. Landlords are going to prefer candidates with higher salaries.

2. It's really unclear to me that landlords use your salary to determine rent increases. e.g. My rent has always been well under what could be covered by my salary and I'd move long before it reaches that point.

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#145

Post by santaclaus »

geebee wrote: post #60

I'd prefer to see this go in the other direction and make all salary information public. Right now, employers have far more information than employees, and I don't think this law will do much to change that. To me, it's similar to real estate - imagine if only sellers had access to the database of exactly what every house sold for and when, but buyers had to go with unsubstantiated, scattered rumors. Or vise versa. T…

Salary information, with names and job titles, is public for most (all?) state employees. You can, for instance, look up the salaries of Berkeley professors.

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#146

Post by marvin »

ianai wrote: post #133
oh_sigh wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but know that completely rational nations have decided to go with OPs way(like Norway)

All such information is public there?

What you pay in taxes is public (anyone can look it up), and it's normally easy to calculate taxable income from that. (Not always, there could be various events that throws the calculation off).

Although in recent years, all lookups are logged and displayed to the other party, which has a chilling effect. I would like the old system back.

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#147

Post by mamon »

hildaman wrote: post #75

I don't think this will fix anything. Consider the following scenario. Employer to (theoretically) underpaid/under-represented minority: I offer you x. Underpaid minority: accepted. Employer to market-rate perspective employee: I offer you x. market-rate perspective employee: nope. Employer to market-rate perspective employee: how about X+25K? market-rate perspective employee: sounds good. This bill tries to fix a sy…

So, the moral of your story is: minority employees are underpaid because they never say "no" to low salary they are offered? Or maybe you are saying that possessing some basic negotiation skills you don't have makes me evil? I don't follow your logic here.

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#148

Post by make3 »

I always lie when they do that anyways. it's confidential information, it's not like they can go and verify with my previous employer.

if you do the sketchy thing of asking for unverifiable confidential information just to give yourself a negotiation leg-up, be ready to get lied to.

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#149

Post by beingmyself2 »

bargl wrote: post #54

I've recently been on both ends of the table here. I don't share my previous salary but I'm always willing to share a pay range. The range being higher than I'd ever expect to get paid. I find this to be important when discussing salary with an employer because it gives me a baseline to continue discussions. If they can't meet my bottom line then I'm not interested. The reason I give a range is because salary is only…

> The reason I give a range is because salary is only a SMALL part of your compensation package

I wish people would stop perpetuating this myth. Bonus is discretionary (meaning they can give you $0) while salary is not. Salary is a BIG part of your compensation package because that is the primary reason people work. Most would work for salary without medical but not the other way around. Claiming salary is small potatoes is just one of the more insidious things companies and their agents will spit at you to justify paying you less. Don't fall for it!

Re: New law bans California employers from asking applicants their prior salary

#150

Post by ronilan »

jpttsn wrote: post #110
ronilan wrote: post #44

Next: Employers should compensate interviewd candidates for their time at a rate equivalent to the position for which they are interviewing.

That’s like a store charging you to try on the clothes you don’t buy. I wouldn’t like that.

Employers don't buy employees. That's already the law.

So...

No. It is toatally not like that and hopefully such a law will help clarify the point to any who miss it.

Such a law will also provide balances in an unbalanced power situation and enforce economic efficiencies on an inefficient process.

I'm not a lawmaker nor an employer, though, so I'll leave the suggestion for someone else to pick up.

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