A colleague of mine in the recruiting field shared this excerpt from the cover letter sent in by a prospective job candidate:
My salary requirements are based on what's required to provide shelter and feed my family and will require some added perspective about what it is you require.
Good of him/her to add the afterthought signaling some willingness to consider factors beyond living costs, I guess.
Unfortunately, as my colleague noted:
...since the law prohibits asking about someone’s family size, composition or economic status during an interview, this line in the cover letter means that the candidate can receive no further consideration.
P.S. If this cover letter came from you, please (please) see my post on Cost of Labor versus Cost of Living.
If you don't ask but the applicant volunteers, does that open disclosure "sharing" automatically make them toxic? That would seem to be discriminatory, in itself.
Posted by: Jim Brennan | March 13, 2012 at 10:59 AM
In the spirit of full disclosure (and attribution), I had a former boss who's response to this job candidate's statement almost certainly would have been something along the lines of, ". . . it's good thing for all of us that stupidity doesn't qualify as a protected category". She was a pretty wise woman.
And isn't it one of "Brennan's Laws", that when people say that "they want to be receive "cost-of-living" pay", what they're really saying is that they want to find an employer who's willing to provide them with a salary equal to the level at which they live? That's always been one of my particular favorites!
Posted by: Chris Dob yns | March 14, 2012 at 05:44 PM
Actually, I want to be paid to live like Donald Trump lives. I want HIS cost of living applied to my salary.
Posted by: E James (Jim) Brennan | March 16, 2012 at 02:32 PM
Jim:
I'm no staffing (or legal) expert, but I think that my colleague (who knows more about both) would say that in our current litigious environment, it is best to avoid the potential of getting into a conversation where a candidate or an employee "voluntarily shares" information that you are not supposed to factor into a hiring/term decision.
And yeah - we'd all like Donald Trump's cost of living applies to our salaries.
Chris:
Hard to know anymore where the lines of protected categories are drawn, I think. Can't, therefore, blame us for erring on the cautious side.
I think Brennan's law does indeed apply in this circumstance!
Posted by: Ann Bares | March 18, 2012 at 04:56 PM