When an Entry-Level Candidate Wants an Above-Market Salary
Posted Aug 09, 2023
Inc.com columnist Alison Green answers questions about workplace and management issues--everything from how to deal with a micromanaging boss to how to talk to someone on your team about body odor.
A reader asks:
I am hiring someone for an entry-level position. It is meant for someone straight out of college and new to the field who is interested in learning a lot, meeting loads of highly connected people, and launching a potentially awesome career. I've set the salary to be a little above what other orgs our size do for this position to make it more competitive and retain staff. This seems to have worked well over the years.
I recently offered the position to a candidate and they came back to me with a counteroffer. I'm glad people are advocating for themselves, but the issue is the way that they asked. First they said that other employers pay significantly more and quoted a salary that is meant for someone with several years of experience. Believe me when I say that I have done the research and the number they were citing is not for entry-level employees. Then they cited their experience as the reason why they would be paid this amount. But they just graduated college and have never held a job before! The only thing I could think of on their resume that they might have been referring to as "experience" was having graduated from a prestigious college. This position does not require a prestigious college degree and they were not hired based on this background.
Now I'm very worried that I've made a terrible decision. They haven't yet accepted the position and I'm wondering what I should do. Advice I have gotten has ranged from this indicating really bad judgement and I should revoke the offer, to they are just getting bad advice from their college's career center and I should ignore it. In theory this person was following basic rules of engaging with a potential employer: give a counteroffer on salary and cite competing salaries and your experience when you do so. But you actually do need something to back that up, which this person lacked and therein lies my concern. Your thoughts?
Green responds:
There is a ton of terrible guidance out there for people just entering the workforce (and everyone else, for that matter) -- from parents, friends, campus career centers, and more.
There's also a lot of advice that, as you note, makes sense for someone with more experience and leverage, but not for someone at the very start of their career. And very rarely do you see caveats that say "wait, don't do this if you're brand new to working."
So it's likely that someone told this candidate to approach the job offer this way ... or that they read one of the many "always negotiate" articles out there and didn't apply critical thinking skills to realize that "cite your experience!" doesn't apply when you don't have experience.
Because they're young and new to all this, and because there's such awful advice out there, I'd cut them some slack unless you've seen other worrying signs from them. If this is the only troubling thing you've seen and everything else is great, this isn't something to pull the offer over. But do look back and see if anything else from the hiring process now reads differently to you.
However, you can absolutely make the points you want to make to this person -- and you should, because it's useful information for them and because it sets the boundaries in the right place from the start.
Ideally when the candidate said that other employers pay $X, you would have said, "Those salaries are typically for people with several years of experience. Our offer is actually on the high end for entry-level work in this field." And when they said their experience warrants more, you'd ask point-blank, "What experience are you referring to? My understanding is that this would be your first job." (Maybe you did say those things!)
But absent other red flags, I'd put this in the category of "people brand new to the work world often stumble in weird ways." And I'd also be very quick to address any additional signs of cluelessness about norms if they start working for you.