Re: Questions Re: Previous Salary

[Damien Braniff <Damien_Braniff -at- PAC -dot- CO -dot- UK>]

Here in the UK there seems to be two main approaches re salaries.

For permanent jobs, adverts either state a salary/range (dependent on
experience) or just say "competetive" and ask for applications stating
current salary.  So they either know how much they offer or they're fishing
to see what they can get away with paying!!

Agencies tend to work in a similar way.  When you register they ask for
your current salary or what salary you're looking for.  They then would put
you forward for any that match these requirements with your experience.

There is also two ways of working for agencies here.  One is straight
placement - they find you a job and get paid for it by the company
employing you (usually a % of salary). It's therefore in their interest to
try and "sell you" for as much as possible.

The other is where you work "through" the agency - they pay you, sort out
tax etc and then bill the company employing you.  This has the benefit that
you get paid regularly (with the good agencies anyway!) with the agency
acting as a buffer. But it costs!  The agency typically takes anything
between 5-15% (depending how naive you are!).  Here the agency may well
accept your requirements, push for more and, if you don't know about it,
pocket any additional money.  OK as you've got the salary you asked for and
are happy - not that many would do that of course!!  Lucky in some respects
here as the country is relatively small and the reputation of agencies
tends to get around quite quickly.

Damien Braniff
Technical Author
PAC International

	http://www.documentation.com/, or http://www.dejanews.com/