Salary requirements when answering a blind ad

give 'em the sticker shock... going down is easy.... you should know that...

You want them to pay you, as well as employing you!

Sheesh! Da noive!

I also struggle with this. Applied for a job once, and put down what I thought was a reasonable salary range - only to have the interviewer say that she didn't easrn that much - and there's no way they'd be paying anything like that. Now I know why you get such stupid responses when you ring some companies.

Just put what you think the job is worth to you - then add a little bit extra - for good luck, or something.

Yeah, but the thing is, it's a freelance position, which is a little different than a regular job. It's almost like you are a company that they are hiring, and they are putting this ad out to look for quotes on a job. I think.

This is a real tough one for me. I've answered some of these before, and I haven't gotten even a response. Now, that may be because of a lack of experience, or that they hired someone they already knew, or a misspelling on my cover letter, or a whole bunch of other things, but it's got me gunshy about asking for too much.

That post was in response to BPB, actually. I didn't see yours until after I posted, margo.

So it didn't actually disqualify you right off the bat. At least they still called you. That's good to know. Is your line of work very cutthroat and competitive, like ad agencies in NYC are?

It was pretty bad at the time - so I took off in another direction.

Now looking for something else to do. My preference is to be a kept woman, but....

When I was in Italy I went to this swanky hotel for my birthday. Apparently this is the place where middle-aged to elderly men take their "nieces". This would suit me perfectly - but, I'm not blond, and I'm about twice the age of an average "niece" Wah!

If I had the money, I'd move to some Italian hotel with you in a minute!

Thanks for the info bella...

Why don't you tell them what salary you made on your last job and mention
something along the lines that if needed, you leave a small gap open for negotiations.

kicky, Once upon a time when I used to work (many lifetimes ago), I did what is euphemistically called "consulting." I charged what the "market will bear," and some of my contracts paid handsomely. Believe it or not, some paid about $300/month for less than half hour of "work."

I was able to do this, because I designed my own bookkeeping system on the computer that produced all the necessary financial statements the business needed to comply with all the accounting information for the business, and to file their income tax.

If you're in the same situation, charge what you think your "work" is worth - especially if you know that your productive capability is greater than the average.

Good luck.

Good thought, though my last job was through an employment agency, so it paid less than a direct-freelance position. I don't know what they were paying to the employment agency for me, so it's a tough call. But thank you.

I just e-mailed a friend of mine who has gotten work through craigslist before. Hopefully he'll be able to help me out.

Thanks, c.i. You are right, of course. Thing is, I am anxious to find something quick, now that I've been off on my little sabbatical for the past month. That makes me a little nervous about pricing myself out of the job. Plus, I have never actually worked freelance without an agency before, so I have no confidence in my own knowledge of what the going rate is. Hopefully the guy I just e-mailed has some information that will help in that. Oh well. I think I'll sleep on it and make the call tomorrow morning.

Is there any average per hour pay for the kind of service you'll be offering them? I think I'd just try to figure that out, multiply by the number of hours you think you'd work for them, and send it to them along with the justification. If it's consulting you'd probably be paid on hourly basis anyway, right?

dag's idea is a good start; it gives you a number to work with.

I usually try to not answer that in a cover letter. There's generally not enough info in the ad to get a clear idea of what the job truly entails. I'm reluctant to back myself into a corner. I will fudge around this or give a fairly broad range and say it's negotiable depending on the job responsibilities.

If you think this is not possible, then give a range. I also like the idea of saying what you earned on your last job, but then you're stuck with that figure. So even then, I'd say it depends.

But, hey, what do I know? I've been looking for ages. Sigh.

Good luck with this, kicky.

Roberta, The job offer is to do job X. In that kind of situation, the employer can't change job X to job Y without good reason. The company made an offer of a job X, and that's what they are asking its worth in compensation.

When I worked in management, we always made a job offer with the job title and description on what it entailed with the salary range. We would never think of changing the job description without good cause.

C.I. Absolutely true. But a job ad is not a job offer. And the problem is that there's often not enough information in an ad to know what the total job entails. This information is usually revealed after you get beyond the cover letter/send the resume stage. For example, I'm looking for a part-time job. Many ads for part-time jobs don't say how many hours, or they provide a range of hours. I can say what my hourly rate would be, but I'd have to do this without knowing what all the job responsibilities are. I won't do that, or I'll provide a range and say that it depends on what I'm asked to do.

Freelance work tends to be a bit less formalized than a salaried full-time job. Also, job titles for freelancers can be a bit loose, whereas a salaried job generally has industrywide standards--more or less.

For example, I answered an ad for a copyeditor. I was asked to take an editing test. The test required me to rewrite the whole thing (this was included in the instructions for the test). That's not copyediting. That's an entirely different kind of editing, and I'd ask for a lot more money to do that than I would to do copyediting.

A few ideas.
1) www.salary.com -- learn it, know it, love it. You'll get an idea of a range. Also try looking up whatever the title is (and some variants, e. g. I currently work as a Data Analyst but I also look up Database Analyst and Business Analyst) plus your location, just Google it with the word salary and see what you get. Also try large companies that might have freelancing jobs, see if you can get a handle on what they pay and then you'll have some real numbers.
2) Don't give a number. This is one strategy. Usually you can get around it with something like I'd like to reserve this estimate until I know a little more about the position. It's reasonable to request something more. The company will either give you literature (or direct you to it), or tell you to go scratch. If they do the latter, you probably don't want to work for 'em.
3) If you must give a number, give a range. Whatever you were paid at your last job (include benefits and any other perks, if I was to talk about this job, I'd add in commuting costs as I'm paid them here, for example) plus maybe $1k more, up to whatever is reasonably the highest based on whatever you got from doing research. Then you have room to negotiate and it's unlikely you'd be boxed into something very low.
4) A variant on #3 is to average your last three or so similar jobs, or use them as your range if they aren't too different. I know you move around a lot so the numbers are current. But if one of those jobs is from five or more years ago, or from a different economic area, it's really not relevant any more.

If your range is too high, they'll tell you, but you can tell them about your research. And let them explain why it's faulty (e. g. Conglomco pays more because they're seven times our size! or whatever). If it's too low, they certainly won't tell you.

As a freelancer you aren't receiving benefits so your range should be 50-100% higher than the going employee salary. If the employees of the company are earning $40/hour for similar work, you're ask should be $60-80/hour.

Find out what the market is like and then go a little higher.