A few weeks ago, one of my MKTG 490 students applied for a job where the application asked for salary requirements. She asked me for some advice on what to put into this area of the application. She is a soon-to-be marketing graduate applying for an entry level position.
One idea was to leave that line blank or say something along the lines of “negotiable”. I explained that the salary requirement issue is more applicable to people with a longer employment history.
Another idea was to conduct some research on the position at hand and provide a suitable salary requirement based on the data. As an example, Marketing Sherpa just published a blog post that includes two Free Salary Guides for Direct and Online Marketing courtesy of Crandall Associates. Both of the guides provide job descriptions and salary information on a low-medium-high experience scale for a wide variety of direct and online marketing positions.
On a side note, I was pleasantly surprised to learn how important it is for marketers to understand optimization.
I welcome comments about other salary guides and resources about marketing positions.
Usually when employers ask about salary requirements they just want to make sure you are both in the same range. If you list $50,000 and they usually pay $30,000 at entry-level, they probably won’t consider your application because they can’t “afford you”.
I’ve always learned to NEVER leave a line on an application blank, but maybe that’s just me. Negotiable is slightly better than a blank, but I think it’s best to leave a wide range (ex. $25,000-$45,000)… that way the company knows you’re both in the same ball park.
Greetings! I know this is kinda off topic however I’d figured I’d
ask. Would you be interested in exchanging links or maybe guest authoring a blog
article or vice-versa? My site covers a lot of the same topics as yours
and I feel we could greatly benefit from each other.
If you’re interested feel free to send me an e-mail. I look forward to hearing from you! Fantastic blog by the way!