Find Out What Your Pay Range Is
Monday, May 21, 2012, 2:00 AM | Leave Comment
When you go into a job interview, the often asked question is “What’s your salary range?” In a tough market, this question is very difficult to answer especially when you got the job interview after a long interval since your previous one. You should somehow defer the answer till you are absolutely sure you have been offered the job. Then you can discuss your pay with your employer.
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If you give a dollar number too low, you could lose out on potentially 1,000s of dollars.
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If you give a dollar number too high, you could price yourself out of the running.
There are a number of salary calculators and online websites (such as salary, salary expert, college grad, and many others), but they offer just an aggregated or best-guess figure. Two websites, however, stand out. You, as salary information seekers, remain anonymous on both websites.
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Glassdoor.com. It takes a unique approach by asking you to state their salary. You are required to give a detailed description about what it’s really like to work at a specific company. After entering that information, the site allows you to find out what jobs pay at different companies.
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PayScale.com. You need to fill out a multi-page survey about how long you have been on the job, degrees held and work experience before getting to the actual salary figures. But the site does offer a few nice features as well.
For example, you can add or change information such as location or size of the company and get updated pay ranges. And its profiles detail benefits you receive, which could help fine-tune a salary range and give insight into perks that may be open to negotiation.
In a Nutshell
Think hard and do research for giving your potential employer the correct possible answer.
