Salary Requirement Letter

A salary requirement letter asked by the employer is one of the trickiest situations you may have in your job-seeking process. If you state a salary that is too high (or sometimes, too low) you could be eliminated at this stage itself, which is something you don’t want. Normally the letter is required to be accompanied by your salary history, which gives out all the information about your earlier salary packages as well and then the employer holds all the cards while deciding on your compensation.

Though it may all seem rather unfair that you be judged on the past, you could use this exercise to view it as one that assesses your salary requirement with ‘true value’. Even if the salary history is not too bright or the salary requirement too high, you must use this opportunity to arrive at your ‘true value’ and stick to it with conviction. To arrive at a true value you must sieve through a lot of information regarding your past history and experience, people in similar jobs, the value you would bring, benefits to industry or employer from hiring you, geographical limitations and current industry scenario. Once you have arrived at a balance between the industry standards and current compensation scenario you can quote a ‘range’ that indicates your ‘comfort level’. In the letter you can involve the employer’s conscience and state that you expect a competitive and fair package and also convey that you are open to negotiation (makes things easier for all concerned because that leaves room).

Your strategy while sending out that letter should be to present your best picture in terms of perceived value to the company and build your pricing around that perception. Which means that when it all boils down to the business end of the negotiation, you hold as many aces as possible. Whether you choose to do that with sharp negotiation skills, holding information or by sheer conviction is up to you but needless to say, do not provide any information to the employer to allow him to pull your salary down.