By Sam Lauron

Like most job seekers, I’ve had to answer the dreaded salary expectation question over email.

No matter how many times I’ve done it, it’s still nerve-wracking to put a number out there. What if I undercut myself because my number was too low? Or worse, what if I miss out on the job opportunity because my salary expectation was too high?

Aside from the anxiety I feel thinking about the outcome, the other challenging part of the process is writing the actual salary expectation email (or preparing the script I’d use if this discussion were happening face to face).

I tend to overthink what to say during tough conversations and can find myself writing and rewriting something like a salary negotiation email for over an hour.

So, I asked an expert how to answer salary expectations over email — and then I put ChatGPT to the test to see if it could write the email for me.

Table of Contents

• Deciding Your Salary Expectations
• How to Answer the Salary Expectation Question
• What ChatGPT Wrote for Me
• What I Learned From AI

Deciding Your Salary Expectations

Before you can even discuss salary expectations with the hiring team, you have to come up with your target number.

It’s important to have a desired salary in mind before you start interviewing with a company so you can use it as a guide throughout the process.

Based on my experience, here’s how to come up with a salary expectation in four steps.

1. Check the job posting.

Before you come up with your salary expectation, reference the original job posting.

Recent pay transparency laws in several states, including California and New York, require companies to include a role’s salary range in the job posting. If there is a range listed, you can use that as a baseline for the salary you want to request.

2. Research salary data.

If there isn’t a salary range listed on the job posting for your role, you can research average salaries for the role using websites like PayScale or Salary.com.

If the company is big enough, there may also be data from current and former employees who’ve shared their salaries on websites like Glassdoor.

It’s also important to consider the industry of the role you’re applying for. Tech salaries differ from government or nonprofit salaries, for example, so the industry you’re interviewing in affects your target salary.

3. Evaluate your experience and current salary.

Once you know the salary range for your role, consider your own experience to decide what you want to ask for.

You’ll likely target a salary higher than your current one — or, at the very least, the same rate, assuming this is a role you’re very interested in.

You may also be open to a lower salary than your current one for several reasons.

Maybe you’re making a career pivot or switching roles, and the experience is …read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog

Author: Aaron