You are applying for a job and the application requests that you indicate your salary requirement. But how do you know what your compensation should be if you are entering the work force for the first time or transitioning into a new field? It doesn’t help either that the slave wages of graduate school and postdoctoral research can have the effect of making any offer above the poverty line sound like an improvement. Well, it’s going to take a little investigative work.
A former colleague of mine was faced with this dilemma. She was applying for a scientific journal editor position and wrote to me because she recalled that I have a friend in publishing. Shortly after contacting me I was able to fire off an email to a former classmate requesting general salary information. I also checked with a coworker who has previous journal experience. It was not long before my former colleague had an informed salary range for her job application. The lesson to be learned, use your network. You can consult a number of salary resources on the internet but undoubtedly, someone in your lab, school, alumni database, family, or social circle has a friend-of-a-friend who works in field X who will be happy to share his or her wisdom with you.
A word of caution about etiquette: never ask someone about his or her own salary. The strategy is to request a range that someone might expect to make in your position. For example, “what do you think is an appropriate salary for someone just entering the field or with no prior experience?” Further, bear in mind that it is also less awkward to broach this subject with someone at a higher level in the organization than the level of the position to which you are applying.
While it is a general rule of thumb that you should avoid salary talks for as long as possible (and negotiating offers is a whole other topic unto itself), at some point you have to know how much you are worth and willing to accept.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010 at 07:00PM