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Comment by madenine | Hacker News Reader

A close friend recently related to me that during an interview process the HR contact mentioned that they had just revoked an offer from someone who 'asked for too much' during negotiations.

Director level position (non-profit, Washington DC). Candidate asked for ~100k, and they were willing to give it to them - until they got a detailed salary history and found out their current salary was ~80k... so they would've only offered ~85k.

So they were absolutely fine with paying 100k for the job (very reasonable for the role and size of the org), until they learned it would be a decent pay increase for the new hire. Insane.

It will not surprise anyone to learn this org has a bad reputation for internal culture and holding on to talent.

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Them: "We'd like to see proof of your salary history."

Me: "Sorry- we arrived at an agreeable number earlier. I don't see how a salary history would change that."

Them: (stammers...)

Either way it's a win- you either get it, or they toss you and you dodged a FUCKING BULLET.

They won't stammer. They will without the slightest bit of shame attempt to cajole/badger/guilt/etc you into revealing the information. Then they may also engage in a background check / credit report goose chase to get or infer the information.

You say "you dodged a FUCKING BULLET", and I agree in principle, but in practice, a lot of employers do this, and a lot of people submit themselves to this kind of crap which makes you stick out more (like a sore thumb) when you don't.

They say former employers can only verify dates of employment, where else will salary information show up? I wasn't aware that this information shows up in background checks.

I wonder if you could just counter the request by saying you signed a NDA that forbid sharing that information.

Well, if you work for a state college/uni/other entity like I do, then the salary information is public. Former employers can say or do what they like, they rarely do anything other than verify dates of employment, confirm a few facts, out of a perceived fear of a civil suit, (I guess). Credit reporting agencies OTOH, and other similar companies use all sorts of information to build profiles about you / your habits / other demographic data, and I'd be surprised if there weren't some of these companies who would sell either predicted (and perhaps erroneous) salary range for you, or a factual (if partial) salary history mined from various sources.

>I wonder if you could just counter the request by saying you signed a NDA that forbid sharing that information.

Seems reasonable, or some version of "No thanks, I'd rather not."

> They say former employers can only verify dates of employment

I don't know who "they" is, but this isn't true at all. Many large-scale employers are only willing to verify dates of employment, because they're scared of being pulled into a defamation lawsuit. But that's just an overabundance of caution from them. There's nothing to stop your former employer from responding to requests with "southphillyman typically visits the toilet every day between 11:20 and 11:40".

Some countries publish salary / income for all citizens..

Maybe you're getting unlucky.

That's extremely frustrating to hear and seems VERY short-sighted by the company itself. If they already determined that person would be a good fit at $100k salary, it seems so silly to change their mind just because they learn about the candidates PREVIOUS salary.

Another reason not to disclose salary requirements, but also seems like a case of management myopia. Thanks for sharing :)

If the candidate lied about their previous salary, that would be a perfectly valid reason to drop them. Someone willing to lie to their employer for personal gain won't stop with the one lie.

Remove incentives to lie then. Don't blame people for doing something if there are incentives for doing so.

Having worked as a recruiter I have never heard of an offer being completely revoked for that. Are you sure they weren't just offered $85k and decided to decline it?

If they got the $85k offer, it would have been an opportunity to negotiate and prove why they were worth the extra.

It's a costly process for a company to advertise and interview multiple candidates, it's a huge waste to then fully revoke an offer to the best candidate.

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