Re: salary for entry level position...
There's several books on this subject, such as "The Art of Negotiating" by Gerald Nierenberg and "Getting to Yes: How to Negotiate Agreement Without Giving", by Robert Fisher, Bruce Patton and William Ury, that essentially say the same thing. Whomever mentions money first looses. Yet, there are always exceptions. I've been on a couple of interviews recently where the interviewer asked what I expected to be paid for my services, and a couple where the pay range for the position was offered up front. In either case, doing a little research on the pay scales for the type of work being offered prior to the interview will keep you from squirming when they ask the question "How much do you want?" Also, even if the pay rate is a bit low, you can always negotiate other aspects of the job. For example, a friend of mine in New Mexico was offered a job at a pay rate nearly equal to what he enjoyed in Colorado. It was indicated that the pay rate was not negotiable, so he negotiated an extra weeks annual leave and had that entered into his employment agreement.
In *any* negotiation, the party that first proposes a number
(either as an offer or as a demand) is at a disadvantage. It can
be pretty amusing to watch the maneuvers that people use
to avoid being the first to state a concrete number.
Also, looking at sites like www.salary.com are a start, but you need to do more. When I lived in Alaska and asked www.salary.com what would be the expected the salary for a technical writer in Fairbanks, it returned a rate for a technical writer in Coldfoot. Coldfoot, incidentally, is a truck stop/hotel on the Dalton Highway (a 400 mile gravel road ending in Prudhoe Bay) that has between 5 and 15 inhabitants depending on the season, and it hasn't needed a writer of any sort since the newspaper folded a couple years after the original gold rush on Slate Creek over 80 years ago founded the place. In fact, until former Iditarod dog musher Dick Mackey built the Coldfoot Truck Stop on an old construction site next to the highway in the late 1970s, it was a ghost town. So, use salary.com only as a starting point.
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