When It Comes to Salary Negotiations, Are You Asking for Enough?

“Oh god, oh god, the hiring manager just asked me about my salary requirements” is a text I’ve gotten a dozen times from friends and coworkers over the years. For a young professional, it’s usually the most fraught moment in the entire hiring process.

And for good reason! How you handle salary negotiations has enormous financial consequences. The right answer can catapult you forward… and the wrong one can set you back years.

How do you know that the number you’re asking for is within the right salary range? And how do you start off on the right foot while negotiate your starting salary? Fear not, my children, for we are here with some tips that will help you make sure you’re not selling yourself short.

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Post a Salary Range in the Job Description, You Fucking Cowards

One of my favorite blogs, the ever brilliant Nonprofit As Fuck, has this great piece titled “When You Don’t Disclose Salary Range on a Job Posting, a Unicorn Loses Its Wings.” It’s a snarky, 100% accurate treatise on the evils of not including a salary range in the job description.

When I read it I felt like Bono listening to Hozier’s Take Me to Church for the first time: furiously jealous that I hadn’t written it myself.

Salary transparency in the hiring process has become my sacred battleground. Few things get this money nerd’s hackles up like the unfair, unethical, and straight up bullshit practice of salary secrecy. This righteous fury is bursting out of me and it can no longer be contained!

Because let’s be honest: no one gets a job because they’re enthusiastic about the contents of the company’s vending machine or the color of its cubicle walls. We work jobs for the compensation. We work to earn an income that will support ourselves and our families. Money, health insurance, retirement funds… all of this is far more important to a job candidate than anything else an employer has to say in the job description.

Job candidates want to know they can afford to work a job before they apply. They don’t want to wait through two interviews and a job offer to find out if the compensation will pay their rent and student loans. To pretend otherwise is ludicrous, irresponsible, naïve, and insulting.

So put a salary range in the job description, you fucking cowards.

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