Providing Salary Requirements on Job Applications

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Trisha Hyatt

Many position descriptions for full-time positions ask candidates to include salary requirements with their resume and cover letter.

The RIC team has received requests for tips on how to handle this situation. Including a salary requirement is nerve-wracking. What do you do if the position description doesn’t provide a salary range? What if your salary requirement is too high? What if it’s too low? Can you say you are flexible and would love to discuss salary requirements over the phone? Do you have to answer the question at all?

I wanted to ask a few professionals that had some experience in this situation. I turned to LinkedIn and I received some great advice providing salary requirements!

Cori Swidorsky, Sr. Sourcing Specialist and Job Search Strategist at Informing Job Seekers, had this to say about salary requirements:

“Job seekers need to know what base salary they need to live on as well doing research on the industry average for that particular location. So for example, if a job seeker knows she needs to make at least $35,000 as a base to pay her bills and live, then that should be her starting point. Once that is established, go $10,000 to $20,000 out. So the range they would be looking for is $35,000 to $45,000 BASE salary. This is not including benefits or anything else. By giving a range, it allows for room to negotiate and it keeps someone safe from aiming your salary requirements too high or too low.

If the company is only able to pay $25,000 as a base, the job seeker wouldn’t be able to take that rate anyway. It’s best to figure out what you need to live on. If they can get more great! But I tell job seekers to not play the salary game, if negotiation needs to happen then it will, both parties need to be happy with the end result.”

Steve Puluka, Senior Network Administrator at Liberty Dialysis LLC, said about salary requirements:

“I included my salary of my last position in the cover letter on jobs that asked for this since that conversation. It gave them an idea of what I was used to but did not necessarily commit me to anything. I didn’t say I want/need/require X. If I had to provide salary requirements, I would say something like:

My salary at (fill in last job) was/is X. I am sure as I learn more about (the position) and you see how may skills work in this context we can reach a mutually agreement on compensation.

If my previous salary is way over their range I was dead on this job anyway. But if it is low for the position I’m not committing to that level yet either.”

Erin Davis, PR, Marketing & Communications Recruiter at Paradigm Staffing, said about salary requirements:

“…In every phone screen I also ask the question, positioning it as an absolute minimum base salary he or she would need to see in order to consider an opportunity. It’s always best to know what the candidate’s walking away point is in order to make sure neither the client nor the candidate is wasting his time if there’s a huge discrepancy in what the company can pay and what the candidate needs to make in order to pay the bills.”

Robert Bratton, Sr. Dot Net Developer with CTR Systems simply said the following about salary requirements:

“The best advice is to know what the market ranges are for positions you’re considering. You can use salary surveys and salary sites like glassdoor.com.”

Before you include your salary requirements in your application materials, be sure to give it a lot of thought and do your research! Look at similar job openings and find out what other employers are offering before you put salary requirements on a job application.

LinkedIn and Proactive Job Search

Posted on July 8, 2011 by Cori Swidorsky

LinkedIn is still one of the most used job search tools and for some people, it has been extremely successful for those who practice proactive job search. More than half of the people I talk with who say they are on LinkedIn, also say they aren’t “actively” using it. This means you have a profile up, but that’s about it.

Image extracted: Executive Career Insights

So again, a job search becomes the waiting game and it should never be a waiting game. With job boards, you are uploading a resume into a database so it is searchable. The job boards should also be used as lead generation resources. Once you apply to a job, that is when you start doing the research on LinkedIn and making connections.

One of the reasons LinkedIn may not be working for you is that it’s not being used as a proactive job search tool. Make sure all of your contact information is visible on your profile. Get involved in the LinkedIn Pittsburgh local groups as well as industry groups and stay active on the discussion board. A lot of times, recruiters put up job ads in the career opportunities section and in the discussion area.

A recruiter most likely will not see the responses because they forget about the post and don’t go back. It’s important that recruiters include their contact information, but surprisingly enough there are more that don’t include it than those who do. To help your job search, you should take the initiative to contact the person directly. If they do not include an email address, go to their profile and see if they list where they work. Then look up the number and call them directly. Trust me, as a recruiter of 11 years, it’s helpful when someone is proactive, that’s half our job!

If you are still having problems locating a number, I have a step by step video on how to locate someone’s email address using Google and LinkedIn. You can sign up here to get your free access to watch How to find someone’s email address.

Finding a Job After College

Posted on April 7, 2011 by The RIC Team

Image extracted from: The New York Times

According to article on the New York Times, the best way to finding a job after college is through internships. Of course this isn’t news to the RIC team and internship seekers that follow us, but Phyllis Korkki, author of the article states that: “Not only do college interns garner more job offers than applicants without that experience, but jobs that grow out of internships tend to command higher starting salaries.”

Isn’t that enough reason for you to consider not one, but several internships throughout your college years? If not, please read the full article by following the link: The Internship as Inside Track.

Many great internship opportunities however, are unpaid. Three-quarters of the 10 million students enrolled in America’s four-year colleges and universities will work as interns at least once before graduating, according to the College Employment Research Institute. But between one-third and half will get no compensation for their efforts, a study by the research firm Intern Bridge found – no financial compensation, that is.

Don’t be discouraged! At the RIC, we firmly believe that unpaid internships can be an investment in your career, and that’s why we work with employers individually to ensure unpaid opportunities are meaningful and flexible for students.

So, don’t waste any time and make sure to Register on the RIC website! It’s a FREE service that allows you to search for internships and post your resume so employers can find you.

Head start your career with the RIC!

Missing Out on 10,042,040 Job Postings?

Posted on March 18, 2011 by Cori Swidorsky

Could it be possible you are not aware of more than ten million job postings? I think it is possible and I strongly believe that’s the case for most of you reading this.

LinkedIn Groups
I ran a search without any keywords, just under the networking category and there are 251,051 groups that showed up.

Each group has a jobs tab where recruiters are able to post openings at no cost. These jobs are now listed under the category “career discussions”, within the jobs tab.

I went into a few of the groups and noticed there are at least 2 pages of jobs. Each page has about 20 job postings listed totaling 40 positions. Multiply the 40 and 251,051 and that gives a total of 10,042,040 job postings.

For those of you who are not active in LinkedIn groups or maybe not in any groups, I advise you to start using the groups as part of your daily job search research.

The groups are targeted for specific skill or location. It’s a great way to see what companies are hiring and to check out the career section for other possible opportunities.

Set a goal of joining one group a day that is relevant to your skill set and geographic location. Also search for specific job seeker groups such as Job-Hunt Help and Looking for a job?

Pittsburgh Job Search Resources

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Trisha Hyatt

Think the RIC is a great resource? Here are a few other great resources that the RIC recommends when looking for a job in the Pittsburgh region.

Imagine Pittsburgh

An initiative of the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance (an affliate of the Allegheny Conferece on Community Development), this is a website that pulls from all job search engines and lists local opportunites throughout 10 counties in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Dewey & Kaye Jobswatch

Dewey & Kaye, a non-profit consulting business, provides a list of current regional nonprofit job openings. Dewey and Kaye is a division of McCrory & McDowell, a certified public accounting and consulting business.

Pittsburgh Career Connector

This is through the Pittsburgh Technology Council, many jobs are technology related, but there are many business postings as well.

Western Pennsylvania Diversity Initiative

Western Pennsylvania Diversity Initiative member job postings. The WPDI is a non-profit membership organization dedicated to facilitating diversity by providing educational, networking, and other resources for employers and employees.

You might also want to consider being connected to companies you are interested in through LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site used to connect with people professionally. If you do not have an account, now is the time! Connect with recruiters who work at companies you are interested in.

New Year, new job search tactics

Posted on January 4, 2011 by Cori Swidorsky

Image extracted from: financialconcierge.map2finance.com

Happy New Year! It’s 2011 and some of you are starting the new year off with a new job, while others are continuing to job search. I’m one of those people who don’t believe in making new year’s resolutions, because we should always set goals for ourselves, no matter what day of the year it is.

Now that it’s a new year, it’s time to reflect on what job search tactics worked and didn’t work for you in 2010. Set job searching goals and focus on new job search tactics and tactics to position yourself to get hired. It’s important to realize what strategies and tactics you used in 2010 that didn’t work for you and make some changes.

“Your success in life isn’t based on your ability to simply change. It is based on your ability to change faster than your competition, customers and business.” - Mark Sanborn

Here are 5 tips to help prepare you for a 2011 job search:

Start your job search by knowing which companies, industries and types of jobs you will be targeting.
Research your targeted companies and industries by using resources such as Google and Vault.com. Companies that don’t match your qualifications and goals are not worth pursuing. The research you do on the front end will benefit your job search in the long run.
Utilize social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook to connect with people who can help you contact key people in your target set of companies.
Prepare your marketing pitch, also knows as an elevator speech so you can effectively present yourself to organizations and connections. Think about creating different versions of your pitch to meet the needs of each company you are targeting.
Search job openings for your targeted companies using job search engines such as Indeed and Simply Hired.

Don’t make the same job search mistakes in 2011 that you made in 2010. Make a list of targeted companies, stay focused and don’t waste your time applying for jobs that don’t match your career goals and qualifications.

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