Question: Why it Pays to Be Upfront and Transparent About Your Desired Salary/Benefits?

Dear HR,

I’ve recently been interviewed by multiple employers as I’m looking for full-time work; however, sometimes I embellish the amount of my salary details from my previous job, whether that’s making it smaller than it is to not offset the employer from selecting me or making it bigger than it is so that they could potentially offer me more. What should I do? I don’t want to keep getting paid the same or lower amount from my previous job if I’m solely leaving it because of the money.
-Mr. Transparency

Dear Mr. Transparency,

Thank you for your question. When speaking with a potential employer, sometimes we get that urge to change or retain our salary information. However, this strategy hardly ever works in our favor. It’s actually better to be upfront and transparent about your salary from your current or former job.

But what causes us to withhold these details? Salary shyness. And there are 3 main scenarios.

1) Refusal to disclose salary

Sometimes people feel embarrassed about their perception of what’s a modest current salary, essentially believing that voicing it would eliminate them from the pool of applicants. However, there’s a possibility that the salary at your current job is higher than the one at the potential job you are applying for. Another reason people may hold back their salary information is that some individuals view the topic of salary details to be sensitive and/or vulgar. As a result, if those people aren’t even willing to talk about it with their friends or family, they absolutely won’t with a potential employer.

2) Including additional benefits within your basic salary

This is an extremely normal thing for retail bank candidates to do. If an individual is working at a bigger bank, they may be getting a percentage of their basic salary as a supplemental ‘value add’ package. However, some of these candidates withhold from presenting this breakdown, ultimately saying, for example, that they receive $40,000 when they actually receive $30,000 + benefits.

3) Including future earnings today

This is the most relevant accountants and lawyers who are expecting to qualify in the upcoming months. You can’t use non-guaranteed future earnings as a method of negotiating in the present day.

So what are the benefits of being upfront and transparent?

First, let’s say a recruiter is helping you look for work - they won’t be able to find you the right level of a job if they don’t understand your circumstances. Another thing is that embellishing the amount of your current or previous salary will catch up to you as the potential employer will ask for proof of your earnings during the recruitment process. Also, don’t think that your current, former, or desired salary will automatically eliminate you from the pool of potential candidates. From experience of a senior consultant, they said that they would provide their clients with 3 different ranges of candidates: lower salary than advertised (cost-effective as well as room for growth); salary as advertised (like-for-like); and higher salary than advertised (more money but with more experience).

Don’t be so fixated on the basic salary of a specific job because then you’ll start to disregard the additional values that could be offered, such as bonuses, pension, amazing company culture, good work-life balance, etc.!