3 Questions That Can Replace “What’s Your Salary History?”

Asking for a potential employee’s salary history is falling out of favor. Consider asking the following interview questions to help find your next hire. APRIL 13, 2017 When you interview potential employees, one of the questions on your list is likely salary history. While knowing about an employee’s salary history can help you determine the viability of hiring certain candidates, this is a question that is increasingly being considered potentially detrimental to the jobseeker and even the employer. New York City Public Advocate Letitia James spearheaded a bill in August 2016 that bans public and private employers citywide from asking interviewees about their salary history. Her aim was to even the playing field for all job applicants in terms of potential pay. That bill—which applies to only New York City—passed City Council in March 2017. There are benefits to not asking employees about their salary histories, believes hiring consultant Scott Wintrip, founder of the Wintrip Consulting Group and author of High Velocity Hiring: How to Hire Top Talent in an Instant. “The amount of money someone has been paid is a poor indicator of the value that person has brought to their current or previous job roles,” he says. “The work they’ve done may have been worth more or less than the financial rewards received.”

Use Effective Interview Techniques

Rather than first pinning down salary history, consider identifying whether the job applicant is a good fit, notes Phil Shawe, co-founder and co-CEO of TransPerfect, which provides language translation services and technology solutions for global businesses. “Interviewing is more an art than a science,” says Shawe. “Most job applicants have studied and know the right things to say in an hour-long interview. For that reason, I recommend doing multiple interviews with different managers. Making it a collaborative process is more likely to ferret out a candidate’s true character and determine if the person is a fit for the organization.” During one-on-one interviews, rather than asking for salary history, Shaw focuses on questions surrounding ethics and problem solving. “Most importantly, I have interviewees tell me how they got to where they are in their careers,” he says. “From this, I’m looking to see if they can tell a coherent story with a logical timeline and if they can do so in a likable and engaging way. I’ve found that it’s best that interviews turn into two-way conversations, with the interviewer asking about the candidate and the candidate asking about the company.”

Ask Questions For Fit

Wintrip starts the interview process with a phone interview. “This conversation provides an opportunity to discover how a job candidate’s values, helpful behaviors and personality features may or may not fit into your company culture,” he says. Wintrip has found that the following three questions can help indicate if an applicant is a good company fit, much more so than salary history.

• Why our company? “Motives are important,” says Wintrip. “Knowing whether your candidate is inspired by your company’s mission or just looking for a job will help you pick the best people.”
• Why now? “Knowing what’s driving a candidate’s decision to job search is vital in choosing the right people for your company,” says Wintrip. “Is the candidate desperate to make a change and ready to leap at the first offer? Or is the applicant happy and simply open to a new opportunity that could make life even better?”
• What job suits you best? “Too often, interviewers ask candidates about their perfect job. Such a question sets up the candidate and the employer for failure, since jobs and companies are rarely perfect,” he says. “Instead of asking about perfection, ask about personal fit.”

Conduct Experiential Interviews

After the initial phone interview, Wintrip suggests that business owners shift away from conceptual conversation and instead hold hands-on interviews. “During face-to-face interviews, candidates are always on their best behavior, which is why people interviewed aren’t always the same people who show up for work.” Experiential interviews allow you to base your hiring choices on facts instead of guesses, adds Wintrip. “You get to see candidates doing sample work rather than speaking conceptually about the jobs,” he says. “Computer programmers can be given specs to write computer code, accounting candidates can analyze financials and marketing staffers can design promotional campaigns. Witness candidates doing the job firsthand and you access their skills and have a more complete image of them.”

When to Approach the Topic of Salary

Of course, you can’t hire new employees without discussing compensation at some point. One course of action is to bring up salary history when you’ve decided that a candidate is a good fit and you would like to hire the person. “There’s a right time for the employee salary dialogue,” says Wintrip. “When it comes time to talk about compensation, it’s an easier conversation, because both parties already know the opportunity is a fit. At that point, knowing current and desired compensation is an important frame of reference for attracting top talent.” Read more articles on hiring & HR.

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