Ask Vicki: Should I lie about my salary to get a higher offer?

Will lying about your salary get you a higher one?

Each week, Monster’s career expert Vicki Salemi—a former recruiter who utilizes 15-plus years of experience in recruiting and human resources to empower job seekers—answers user questions on Quora. We’ll be republishing the answers here. If you have a question for Vicki, send it to socialmedia@monster.com.

Q. Should I lie about my salary to get a higher offer?

A. Don’t lie about your salary in an interview with the hopes of getting a higher offer. There are other (smarter) ways to negotiate a bigger paycheck.

What you can do instead is tell the hiring manager what your overall current package is worth. Figure out what that number is ahead of time by including your salary, bonus, paid time off, employer portion of health insurance costs, the works. This way, you’re not lying; you’re just padding your base compensation with facts.

They might be asking about your current salary to determine what to offer you. From my experience as a recruiter, salaries were determined by looking at a variety of factors, such as what candidates were currently earning and the pay grade for that specific job (sometimes pay grades overlapped—a coordinator at the high end could be paid more than a manager at the low end, even though the manager was higher on the corporate ladder than the coordinator).

One time, for instance, a candidate told me she was earning $32k in her current job. I knew the pay grade for the job she was pursuing was $48k to $52k. Did we pay her $32k? No way. But, did we pay her $52k? Nope. We ended up paying her $48k because legally and ethically it was the right thing to do to put her in the range. She was thrilled! And it’s rare anyway to extend an offer to a candidate at the top of the range. In hindsight, anywhere for her between $48 and $50k would have worked.

Learn to get what you want

Lying about anything you did or earned in your past jobs will likely come back to bite you (ever heard of a background check?). As a rule of thumb, it's much better to come to the table knowing what you want and having a strategy for getting it. Want to learn how to do this? Join Monster today. As a member, you'll get career advice, workplace trends, and job search tips sent directly to your inbox. From acing the interview to getting the promotion to landing a new super-sweet job, Monster's experts can show you the right way to climb the ladder. 

Read Vicki Salemi's answer to "Should I lie about my salary to get a higher offer?" on Quora.