Can Employers Ask About your current Salary? (2024)

Can Employers Ask About your current Salary?

Yes they can, but you shouldn’t reveal it.

I have got a call from a close person, asking “is it okay for the employer to ask for my current salary certificate?!”

Frankly I was bit shocked, cause the employer was not so pushy throughout my experience. They ask, and expect you not to answer, you don’t, and they move to the nicer and more reasoning version “what is your salary expectation?”

While the question seems routine to some recruiters, I find it very unpleasant for a number of reasons; and here is why:

1. It might lead to Salary discrimination, when this information is provided, it will be used to set your new offer. Since the hiring manager has a pre-set range where she/he can negotiate, and cannot exceed it. The information will be used basically to check if you can accept the lowest range.

2. We know career paths have ups and downs, it is not necessarily that my last salary is equivalent to my experience.

3. If you as an employer, are using this information as a market base survey, you are wrong. Since salary certificate usually doesn’t includes many entitlements and bonuses, it shows only the contracted payments, not the whole entitlements. Plus there are other tools to carry out this exercise, if you don’t know you can ask agency to do this for you.

4. By asking this question, and enforcing the candidate to reveal this information, you are enforcing them to breach their NDA with their current employer. And you should very much be sure that the next company will know your whole salary structure, and possibly more since you have brought this habit.

5. There are states in the US that ban those question legally. California is one of those states, and they take individual information privacy very seriously; refer to the California Privacy Rights Act.

6. Employer can ask, and they will ask, but you have the right not disclose this information. I might just ask you to be polite if you are unable to disclose this info due to your obligation towards your current employer, and you can even turn the table and ask about the salary range, and they will stop pushing you in that corner.

7. Finally if I am getting a dollar a month, that doesn’t mean I am dreaming of having 2 dollars. As HR looks forward towards the quality of the people you are hiring, and the ways to make them satisfied. Try not to look so cheap.

Please let me know if you have been through a similar situation recently! How did you react?

If you’re HR/Recruiter and you’re doing this, can you tell me why you are doing it?