All well spoken, however I do have a question for you then... is it fair for recruiters to ask and expect prospective employees to provide salary information prior to your making the hiring decision if you yourself do not provide the same information based on your reasons below?
Seems to me the decision to hire should be made based upon merit, skills match etc, not salary... Then if the salary offered is too low, the prospect should be afforded the opportunity to make a decision on what they can comfortably afford to take.... not you... because you don't know their particular situation, motivation etc.... All they become to you is a piece of paper with certain buzz words that is scored on how many matchups you are able to obtain. It takes the "human" part out of Human resources and makes your job a lot easier. See the problem with your logic? Let's be honest now.... most initial cuts on r�sum�'s are done electronically with word searches, not by reading each and every one you get as a corporate recruiter. Times have changed, and not necessarily for the better. I find that networking with professionals, and establishing a track record/reputation much more productive in job searching, than the shotgun resume' method. -----Original Message----- From: Lisa Hylas [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, September 23, 2002 3:58 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Salary Ranges and Posting: From a Corporate Tech Recruiter Hi Security Professionals: Please note that there are a number of reasons why we don't post ranges that include a minimum and maximum. And this is true for consulting/staffing agency postings as well as direct-hire, corporate postings. As Shawn noted, most people would ask (and do ask) for the top salary. Please note that each position in a large corporate enterprise goes through a compensation process that identifies the level or band, etc. of the position. That range is usually very wide. Why? One reason is that this gives the hiring manager flexibility in hiring as well as a benchmark for his current employees (fun HR stuff called salary compression). They also market price to determine regional salaries by industry or services provided. We might not like it, but HR is very influential and ultimately determines the range based on criterion that we don't always see. We as recruiters are constantly fighting the battle along with IT (our direct customer) to make sure that our IT compensation is fair and highly competitive. Also, salaries are very subjective when you think about it. A security analyst or engineer who supports a distributed Fortune 500 enterprise is going to be worth more than the same professional supporting a small company - even if the architecture/firewall/IDS used is the same. Remember, it is very often the depth and breadth of the organization itself that defines its technical needs. (i.e. variables like numbers of servers, WAN, business units supported and mission critical applications, etc.) We recruiters see this all the time when recruiting OS Systems Engineers. Everyone thinks that because they are an MCSE, they merit 80K without large enterprise experience, or hands-on experience in that size environment with the specific technology requested. As a corporate tech recruiter in South Florida, the salaries are about 25% lower than the DC, CA, WA, and NY metropolitan areas. However, we do not have state income tax here and cost of real estate balances this out. I personally moved from CT and took a 25% cut from my NYC salary (when I was in an infrastructure management position). But it evens out in the long run. It's the sticker shock that gets you! Also - market/economic conditions make this a buyers market. However, and this is a BIG however - recruiters are not out to nickle and dime professionals because of this. We know that if you don't offer a salary that the candidate is worth, come Q1 2003 our hires will be walking out the door. And guess who has to replace that person? My two cents: I believe the best way to apply for a position is to include current and requested salary and attach a resume as a Word or .rtf document. I also believe that the market will not open up until 1Q 2003. Keep that in mind when you're requesting a salary that's over 10% of your current salary. If you are not working, I would ask for the same salary as your last. Oh, and by the way, I don't know burger-flippers who make 65K to 110K - do you? Let's all realize that the dot.com craziness is over and come back to reality. Hope this helps and good luck to all of you.
