Should salary history be divulged before negotiating a job offer?

Q: I'm a recruiter and I don't agree with your advice that job candidates should withhold their salary history in an interview. I understand your point, but I think this limits the candidate's options. Wouldn't it be smarter to reveal your salary, get an offer and then negotiate the desired salary? This increases negotiation leverage.

NICK'S REPLY: No, I don't think it's smart to reveal your salary and then negotiate. That's like showing your hand in a poker game before making your bets. The game is already over because the other players will base their bets on your hand.

As a headhunter, you have more negotiating leverage when the employer doesn't know your candidate's salary history. Your challenge is to organize and present the candidate's skills in terms that will be highly valuable to the employer. The best offers are obtained by negotiating the fit between a candidate's abilities and the needs of the employer during the interview process, not by negotiating salary after an offer has been made.

You might argue that a headhunter's fiduciary responsibility is to the corporate client, and you'd be right. But that doesn't mean headhunters should ignore their responsibility to the professional community they recruit from. A good headhunter earns respect from job candidates because of the ability to negotiate a good deal and is also respected by employers for recruiting the very best workers. Great workers can be pricey, and it is the headhunter's duty to protect a candidate's value. The "price" of a candidate should be fair, but it should reflect the candidate's value on this job, not on the last one. Thus, it is not reasonable for the headhunter to share the candidate's salary history without careful consideration.

Please note that I don't tell job candidates to hide their salary from the headhunter. A good headhunter will not use the candidate's salary history to limit an offer. However, a smart candidate must make a judgment about a headhunter's negotiation style. In my opinion, a good headhunter can use the knowledge of the candidate's salary to optimize the offer for everyone involved.

THE HEADHUNTER TIP:

Salary surveys: Know when to fold 'em.

How much are you worth? Employers rely on salary surveys to make job offers. Shouldn't you use the same tools to gauge your worth?

Absolutely not.

If surveys were a good way to determine your worth, we'd check the survey and set your salary, take it or leave it.

But things don't work that way. Salaries are negotiated based on your unique skills, enthusiasm and street smarts, and on a company's needs. A job offer also depends on your ability to produce profit when you do a job. Surveys might suggest what a class of jobs is worth but cannot, by definition, establish what you should ask for when you're negotiating a job.

The measure of your worth lies in a discussion between you and the employer. When you refer to the surveys, you've gotta know when to fold 'em: right after you open them.

Copyright 2008. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate

Nick Corcodilos is author of "Ask The Headhunter: Reinventing the Interview to Win the Job" and the host of www.asktheheadhunter.com. He can be reached by e-mail at seattle@asktheheadhunter.com or at North Bridge Group, P.O. Box 600, Lebanon, NJ 08833. Sorry, no personal replies.