Stating your salary expectations can be a tricky business as many employers still use them as a criterion to select applicants. Photo: dpa
If you're looking for a job, then prepare to see plenty of requests to send an application stating your salary requirements.
That may leave you wondering what best to write, as figuring out the appropriate salary requirement is not necessarily a straightforward business. So it is worth taking some time to answer the question.Why do companies even ask your salary requirements in the application in the first place?
“Salary requirements are still partly a criterion that companies use to select applicants,” says Katharina Hain, an HR Manager at Hays Recruiting.
She says this is supposed to show whether applicants have a good assessment of their own skills and also know the market.
At the same time, she says, it’s an indicator of whether the company and the applicant can reach some agreement when it comes to negotiating a salary.
So what should you consider when formulating your salary expectations?
Start by defining a lower limit, says career consultant and author Christoph Burger.
Applicants should write down their living expenses in relation to their other assets or income, such as that of their spouse, so they can determine the amount below which they would definitely not accept the job.
It’s just as important to work out how much responsibility you want in the company. More responsibility pays better, but it is not everyone’s cup of tea.
Career coach Bernd Slaghuis recommends considering the basic question, “Do I want to help shape the company strategically and conceptually, or am I better at implementing operational tasks?”
Both are important, he says, but the jobs behind them can have very different salary structures.
Personal skills and experience also count.
“The experiential knowledge gained from work experience and life experience makes employees valuable to an employer,” Slaghuis says. That’s something applicants should be aware of.
Salary, he says, is not just about meeting a standard of living, but also about one’s own personal value and self-esteem.
How can I reliably find out how much salary I can ask for?
A quick way to check is to go to a comparison website online, but beware: “The sites often only have estimated salaries that are determined from the information provided by users, which is not necessarily meaningful beyond an initial orientation,” Slaghuis says.
However, the sites can help you get an impression of the industry and the region, both factors that have a direct impact on salary.
For example, in Germany, the national employment agency publishes a pay atlas that provides a good overview of median salaries for many professions in different regions of the country.
There are also websites, such as Glassdoor, that provide average salary levels based on search criteria such as job title, region, educational qualification, age and gender.
You can also get help from unions and professional associations, especially if you are applying in an industry with collective wage agreements.
Trade union websites usually publish pay scales and many associations carry out studies on salary trends in their industry and offer advice.
It’s also worth asking your friends and acquaintances if there are suitable contacts there.
“The most reliable statements are, of course, from people with comparable careers and experience working in similar positions,” says Burger.
After an initial search, it is also important to consider how the company’s business situation is looking.
“Suppliers to large companies are often squeezed on price and are accordingly unable to pay more. On the other hand, there are niche companies that practically have a monopoly position in their field, even though they are very small,” says Burger.
These factors are closely related to the structure of the company and influence the salary.
“So try to find out what exactly the advertised position entails, where it is in the company hierarchy and how much responsibility is associated with it,” says Slaghuis.
If you are worried about going too low or too high, then Hain points out that stating a salary expectation that is too low is not usually a disaster – unless the job requires a persuasive personality, for example in sales, she says.
Some companies may ask about your previous salary during the interview, then offer 10 to 15% more.
“It’s none of an employer’s business what you earned before,” Slaghuis says. He suggests you ask during the interview why this information is important for the selection process and to be clear about the future salary.
In Burger’s experience, an applicant is eliminated from the process if there is more than a 10% deviation from the actual estimated salary. “However, there is no clear-cut rule.”
Where no precise estimate is possible, his advice is that it is better to ask for more rather than less as an applicant. – dpa/Victoria Vosseberg
