The Salary Question. Don’t Fall For It.

When launching your career you don’t often get an opportunity to negotiate salary. Starting salaries are pretty much fixed. Regardless, you will find job applications ask you to state both your current salary and what you want to earn. You can’t leave the salary question unanswered. Now you have a dilemma. Too high and you might get filtered right out of that job. Too low and you’ve lowballed yourself.
Employers believe getting your salary information helps them identify the best candidates to interview. I don’t believe it. Nevertheless, you have to play the game. Here’s how:

Understand Starting Salaries

You benefit when you go into your interviews with an understanding of the industry, company and position starting salary. There are a number of websites to help you research salaries by industry, job title, location etc., and your career services center should have salary data. (Starting salary for the Class of 2013 was $45,327.) Some websites to start your research include salary.com, glassdoor.com, payscale.com, and salaryexpert.com. You can also talk to friends who graduated before you.

Understand Your True Value

With salary information, you can get a better understanding of how much you should be making based on your expertise and skills. A graduating senior with technology skills (and I don’t mean Microsoft Office) or a ton of lab experience has a skill set employers need, and they will pay more to bring those skills into the organization.

Don’t Leave the Salary Requirement Blank
When filling out a job application, don’t skip the salary requirement. Human resources professionals say no response appears as if the job seeker is ignoring what the employer asks. This will work against you.

If they Ask You, Divert
Knowing what you want to earn benefits the employer and chances are you will press you for salary information. Defer the discussion until after the employer has shown solid interest in you. One effective way to do this is saying, “…it depends on factors we haven’t discussed yet, like benefits and other intangibles the company offers.” Then you ask, “What is the range you expect to pay for this position?” Another way to handle the question is to tell the employer you have no specific salary requirements or you consider yourself flexible.

If You Absolutely Have to Answer, Offer a Broad Range 
When push comes to shove, ambiguity is the way to go. This means providing a range. The research you’ve done is very helpful in defining a salary range. You can provide a range that aligns with what you’ve learned or you can include a low end that is close to the high end of the employer.

The point is to be vague and push off responding until you absolutely have to answer it. Then answer it with researched information.