Stop telling me your salary

Some happy advice for job candidates

Jun 13

Hey friend. Every ~~Sunday~~ whenever!, this silly email helps you make better creative and strategic decisions. This week, I’m sharing some advice for creatives who’re interviewing for jobs. Last week, I shared a 12-Step Brand and Content Framework for making brand content that sucks less. Fun stuff. Absolutely delightful. Anyway, hello, it’s good to see you. -Steve

Happy Sunday from the Monday team here at Steve Bryant Industries. The Monday team is Steve Bryant. He says hello.

A big hand wave and howdy-do to our new friends who joined by way of Hugh’s handsome Storythings newsletter, one of the best reads in the known lands. Much obliged, Hugh.

Today we’re taking a brief departure from brand and content frameworks to offer some advice to talented job seekers out there.

I don’t often write about my recruiting work (I never write about my recruiting work!) so thanks for your patience with this one, and I hope it’s helpful. If you’d rather just use me for my handsome decks, there’s plenty of creative resources and such at the bottom of this silly letter.

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And we’re off!

Some advice about recruiting calls

As longtime friends may recall, and new friends should know, one of the things I do is help clients recruit.

I help brands and agencies hire content creatives and staff their studios, and I help publishers hire editorial and content marketing staff.

Recruiting is fun. Recruiting gets me talking to a bunch of people. I like people. Hello, people.

As a recruiter, I want to provide some advice.

This advice isn’t for clients. Rather, it’s mostly for junior job applicants who may not have the advantage of experiencing a great many interviews.1 This advice is designed to help you retain leverage in conversations with employers, and even advocate for a higher salary.

Here’s the short version:

If you’re having a conversation with a recruiter (like me) and the topic turns to money, don’t tell the recruiter (or me!) how much money you make, or how much money you want to make.

Instead, make the recruiter (me) tell you what the salary range for their open position is first.

That’s it.

That’s the advice.2

Don’t be the first one to mention a number

Here’s the longer version:

Recently, I’ve been recruiting for a client who’s building a newsroom.

For the uninitiated, this is basically what I do:

Develop target attributes. Develop a list of qualities we’re looking for. Create or contribute to job description (and sometimes, staffing model)
Find talent. Find people in the market doing excellent work
This is the fun part. I literally scour the internet for the people doing great things and who match our attributes filter. Referrals come in handy here, too.
Outreach. Reach out to those potential candidates to see if they’re interested in speaking about the open role
Screen. Have an initial conversation to understand who they are, what they’re looking to do, and whether they’d be a good fit.
Refer. If the candidate is qualified and interested, I facilitate an intro to my client. Depending on the gig, I also facilitate the interview process and offer stages.

As part of this recent gig, I screened a lot of junior candidates. And it was that experience that made we want to write this post.

Part of that screen was asking about their salary expectations. Towards the end of a conversation, I might ask something like “What are your salary expectations if you were to make a move?”3

This is a common question. Most recruiters will ask you this! You might think a good response is something like “Well I’m making X now, and for my next move I want to make between Y and Z”.

This is usually the wrong response.

Firstly, if you tell me you make X, I have to tell my client you make X. And then my client will assume they can pay you something that’s only modestly above X. In other words, you may be leaving money on the table.

Secondly, if you tell me what range you’re looking for, you’ll be negotiating against yourself.

For why, let’s look at my two reasons for asking this question.

Reason #1: I want to know if I can afford you.
Reason #2: I want to tell my client your range so they know how to negotiate your salary later.

Do you see why you shouldn’t mention your range?

Get the recruiter to say a number first

Let’s assume for a moment you're really interested in this job the recruiter has contacted you about. And let’s assume you’re likely to get the job if you make it through the hiring process.

Now, you certainly have a range of salary in mind. You know what you want to make in your next job.

The recruiter, me, also has a range in mind. It’s the range my client gave me for this role. You don’t know what that range is.

So, now. Let’s say I ask you what your expectations are:

If you mention a number that’s lower than the range the recruiter has in mind, you leave money on the table (that is, when it comes time for the employer to make an offer, they’ll offer something within the range you said, and you could have been paid more).
If you mention a number that’s higher than the range the recruiter has in mind, you may be disqualifying yourself for the position.

It’s certainly possible that you could mention a range that’s exactly the recruiter’s range. But, even if you somehow guessed the recruiter’s exact range, you’re once again limiting your potential salary.

But if you don’t mention a number, it’s possible that your performance during the interview process will entice the employer to offer you more than their initial range.

Is this making sense? Your goal is to get the best fair market value from this employer. That value is as high as the employer is willing to pay for your specific experience and skill set. That means your strategy should be to get past the recruiter screen without divulging a number, then tell a story during every stage of the interview process that makes the employer want to hire you.

In other words, you want to flip the employer’s thinking from

what’s the minimum that we can pay?

what do we need to offer to convince this person to join?

And so. When a recruiter asks you what’s your expected salary range, you decline to give a number.

Instead, you answer something like this: I don’t really have a specific number in mind, but my goal, if I were to leave my current position, is for my next job to be a big jump in responsibility and compensation.

With that answer, you communicate your interest in the role while getting the recruiter to evaluate you on your skills first, not your expected comp range.4

Your choices look like this:

I hope this makes sense.

When you decline to give a number during an initial screening call, you’re protecting your ability to better negotiate your salary in the future.

Your current salary, your salary expectations, and how badly you want the job are the only unique pieces of information you have. Protect yourself by protecting them.

But what if you want to know the employer’s range?

All this said, you may have been reading this and thinking yeahhhh, but what range are *they* willing to pay?

Totally fair. Knowing what an employer is willing to pay helps you decide whether to continue with the process. Don’t be afraid to ask.5

When you decline to state your range, above, you can turn around and ask the recruiter what the job’s salary range is. Or, you can simply ask outright.

As a recruiter, I’ll tell you how I respond to this question either way. I won’t give you a range either. But! I will try to help us both out, and try to manage your expectations, by giving you the minimum end of the range.

Something like: “Dev, we typically pay a little north of $105,000 for this role. I feel like you'll get more than this because of your experience, so that’s kind of a baseline.”

I want to give you a number, because I want to be honest with you about where the opportunity begins and give you enough information to make a decision. I don’t want to give you a range though, like say 105k to 150k, because you’re more than likely focus on 150k. Then, later, if an offer comes in below 150k, you’d be disappointed.

Here are my choices for why you ask what the salary range is:

Hope this makes good sense, friends.

Remember to advocate for yourself by asking the salary range, and protecting your own information. And don’t worry about me. As a recruiter, I’ll respect your answer and find other ways to qualify you.

For more salary negotiating and recruiting resources, here are a few excellent joints I recommend:

Slate’s Negotiation Academy (great series on all types of negotiating)
Fearless Salary Negotiation (excellent script for responding to the salary question)
Game theory for salary negotiation (if you enjoy 2x2s)

Anyway, I wanted to write this post because I think it’s important for recruiter conversations to be as transparent and productive as possible. If you’ve been on the other end of calls like this and didn’t know how to respond, hope this helps. And if you’re a publisher or brand with hiring needs, especially if you’re building a creative studio or newsroom, or need to recruit creative executives, please get in touch.

Be back soon with more creative brand framework goodness.

Stay beautiful,

-s.

More delightful resources

12-Step Brand and Content Framework (in process)

Product Content Strategy 101

The Essential Guide to Frameworks

The Essential Laws of Creativity

The Creative Problem Solving Reading List

You don’t get it, you’re not the point

Make relationships, not things

How can I help?This is a 100% organic, free-range, desktop-to-inbox newsletter devoted to helping you navigate uncertainty, seek the most interesting challenges, and make better creative decisions in marketing and beyond. Delivery at 6pm ET most ~~Sundays~~ whenever! Your host is Steve Bryant, who is for hire. He’d love to help you develop and deploy creative and bold ideas or staff your newsroom, content, or marketing project. Thanks for reading. Be seeing you.

Tbh the advice can apply at every level. But I will say, as a recruiter, the way I’ve come to negotiate with senior talent is to simply be super explicit. “Here’s what I can offer. What do you need?”

There’s an old rule of thumb that goes like this: “Negotiating a salary is a game. He who says a number first, loses.” As ROTs go, this one is most helpful for junior applicants for positions where the employer might be considering a larger salary range for a role.

I don’t ask about current salary. Doing so is illegal in many states, here’s the NYC law.

You may be thinking yeah but I don’t want to play games, I know what I want to make. That’s fair. There is a lot of upside to being straightforward like that. The downside is you may leave money on the table.

Sometimes I reach out to candidates and the first thing they ask, over email, is what the salary range is. Sometimes, that’s the end of the conversation. That said, even if a specific role or range isn’t interesting to you, it may be worth talking anyway. Recruiters hear about a lot of opportunities, so it can be helpful to establish a relationship so they think of you next time something good comes along.

Delightful