CAN A COMPANY DEMAND TO SEE MY PAY STUBS?

Q: Are you familiar with the following contingency being placed on a job offer? "This offer is subject to receipt of documentation of your current salary." In other words, the company wants to see recent pay stubs. Is this legal? How should it be handled?

NICK'S REPLY

Some companies require proof of past salary. It's their way of making sure they're basing hiring decisions on the judgments of their competitors. My sarcasm is intentional. I find this practice completely illogical. I think your past salary is no one's business.

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that it's perfectly legal for a company to request your old pay stubs. However, you are not required to provide them. Of course, that could cost you a job offer but you must consider how disclosing your salary affects your ability to negotiate.

This can get tricky. What happens if you accept a job and they ask you for an old pay stub after you're onboard? Now you're an employee, not an applicant. If the employee manual you agreed to live by when you took the job requires you to turn over a stub, you are stuck. As long as they require this of every employee, they're not discriminating against you. Suppose you decline to provide it or it doesn't match what you told them in the interview. That may be grounds for terminating you. So, be careful. My advice: If you're going to divulge your salary in an interview, don't fudge. It could cause problems later.

A good way to avoid the pay stub risk is to let an employer know in advance that you consider your salary history confidential and that you do not divulge it. In my opinion, employers should base salary offers on their judgment of the candidate, not on someone else's. In other words, your old salary shouldn't matter.

Now you have some choices to make. It's worth noting that this topic has generated more reader mail than any other -- and most people wholeheartedly support salary confidentiality.

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THE HEADHUNTER TIP

What job hunting is all about

Job hunting is not about resumes. Why do I say that? Because resumes are about you. A job is not about you. It's about the work. So, focus on the work. Address the work. That is what a savvy employer wants (and will pay for), and if you can show you respect the work, the employer will fall all over itself to respect you, hire you and pay you well. But don't start with any self-centered idea that job hunting is about you. The idea promoted in the media that you must market yourself is simply wrong. If job hunting (and hiring) were about you, employers would beat a path to your door.

Think like the employer thinking about the work that needs to be done. Prepare a presentation about the work, and show how you will do it. That's what job hunting is really all about.

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COMMENTARY

What a question. Could job hunters possibly believe they're not entitled to feedback after investing their time to meet with an employer? We might as well ask: Does a job hunter owe an employer answers during a job interview?

Nah, let's all just waste one another's time and agree that our time is worthless and that rude behavior is par for the course.

But your time is not worthless, and rude behavior should not be normal. An employer owes you candid, detailed feedback after a job interview because it's the right thing to do. Unfortunately, while job candidates complain that they are treated badly, they tolerate such behavior as normal and unavoidable.

Bunk. The answer is not to tolerate how companies behave. The answer is to raise our standards even higher and to expect more -- and to let companies know it.

Employers expect people to spend their valuable time discussing the company's needs, talking about how they would do a job and sharing their experience and expertise. Employers want you to fill out forms, divulge your salary history, share your references and even to pee in a cup so they can see whether you've been ingesting illegal powders, drinking steroid shakes or tootin' marijuana. They use all this information to judge you.

But too often they shun any responsibility for giving you feedback. They won't tell you why they aren't hiring you or what they found in the cup. It might put them at legal risk.

Yet, if they make you a job offer that's feedback, too, isn't it? It's a judgment of you. What kind of risk does that create?

I'll tell you. A company makes you an offer, your current boss finds out about it, gets annoyed at your "disloyalty" and terminates you. That's the risk you take every time you go on a job interview. So, do you avoid interviews and the associated risks? Of course not. (When was the last time you consulted your lawyer before going to a job interview?)

Any business meeting poses risks because it requires exchanging potentially sensitive information that potentially puts us at risk. That's why we make informed judgments, we try to do business with people who have integrity and we aim to avoid situations that will hurt us. We know that if we lawyer-up all the time, the competition will walk away with the prize.

The liability risk must be mutual, and trust must be demonstrated. But what we see here is a corporate policy that does not suggest mutual trust: "We want to avoid liability because if we tell you what we think of you, you'll sue us."

But now we cut to the HR department, which is checking your references. It wants your professional friends to tell what they think of you so the employer can make a sound judgment about you.

Is it reasonable to have this double standard? Of course not. The Human Resources department instructs managers not to tell you why you were rejected and not to provide references about former employees, but to obtain references on job candidates and to find out everything they can about candidates in job interviews.

It makes me dizzy. If I'm going to go on a job interview, I expect honest feedback. That's not to say I can't survive without it. I just don't like giving companies a pass on this poor business practice.

Maybe it's time to get the lawyers and the personnel folks out of recruiting, interviewing and hiring. Maybe it's time to be big boys and girls and just tell what we really think.

As is often the case, the answer to today's Challenge is common sense. Providing feedback is just part of the competitive hiring world and employers should just accept it -- or smart job candidates are going to walk across the street to a competitor who respects their time.

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Write to Nick at P.O. Box 600, Lebanon, NJ 08833 or www.asktheheadhunter.com.

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