> If I want my employer to know what number Apple assigned me, I’ll tell them.
Literally this article is about employers being like "hmm you told me this number but we don't believe you because Apple says its wrong"
Might have been a problem in the past, but now you can point them to this article.
Background checks are frequently done by specialized 3rd party companies of varying levels of quality that don't communicate directly with the applicant, and have a lot of leeway to interpret if candidate was misrepresenting their past. You may not have the opportunity to point them to this article after being told a blanket "We regret to inform you that in accordance to clause 2(c) on the offer letter, we are withdrawing the offer of employment due to a verification failure during the background check."
I also can’t imagine verifying or asking HR to verify someone’s level or salary. They’d start questioning if I understood the point of the interview.
The whole prior salary thing is very touchy now, and in some states potential employers aren't allowed to ask.
The company my wife works for will only confirm whether an employee was employed at a given date, or not. No salary information. No titles. Nothing other than a yes, or no.
You dont need to when you can just look this up. Plenty of services offer this now. You're salary is pretty much public info. [1]
This is pretty common. My state is pretty liberal in terms of what's allowed legally, but even as far back as the 90s, the official party line in most shops was that you couldn't say more than "Joe was employeed here between 19xx and 19xx". And that's assuming you, as a persons former manager, were even supposed to take the call. Many shops had a "refer all inquiries to HR" rule and would only tell them the same basic answer.
Unofficially, a common tactic was (and I believe still is, if recent experience is anything to go by) to to exploit the use of "personal references" as opposed to former Employers. Hope (or 'suggest') the candidate used a former co-worker as a personal reference, and then on the call ask things like "On a personal level, given the opportunity, would you look forward to working with Joe again?" Anything less than an enthusiastic "oh definitely" was a polite tip off that Joe was not someone you wanted in your shop.
Hi, checking in. Your current/previous salary is no business of your future employer. You don't have to share it, and it shouldn't form the basis of your future salary.
If this seems alien, or improbable to you, people can and do learn how to tactfully steer conversations away from disadvantageous topics.
Still a trend I'm seeing is occurring in negotiation. Specifically "do you have a counter you want us to match? prove it with an offer letter"
orthogonal but still related.
My approach when dealing with future salary is to tell them my previous job paid me ((what I want from next job) - X %). Previous salary doesn't appear in the equation.