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A friend of mine is currenty interviewing with a company and she just completed her final interview.  The HR person contacted her and requested her salary expectations, vacation time, and a current pay stub to assist with writing the offer letter.  My friend ask if she should submit her paystub and be completely clear about her current salary in bonuses and I wanted to get the communities opinion.

I'm of the opinion that at this point you should be completely honest and forthcoming, but my friend disagrees.  What do you think?

John808's picture

I wouldn't provide my paystub. You will loose power in your salary negotiation. Assuming you make less than the company's current salary band for the position, this is a sneaky tactic, to narrow the salary band and recenter it around your current salary. Remember information is power in negotiations and laying all your cards on the table means you can miss out on a higher starting salary.

John808's picture

I wouldn't provide my paystub. You will loose power in your salary negotiation. Assuming you make less than the company's current salary band for the position, this is a sneaky tactic, to narrow the salary band and recenter it around your current salary. Remember information is power in negotiations and laying all your cards on the table means you can miss out on a higher starting salary.

timrutter's picture

This is one of my pet hates in recruitment. I agree with John, politely decline.

What your friend earns at her current company Jay is between her and her current employer. That is how her current employer values her, my question to the hiring company is 'how do you value me?'

By declinign to provide her pay stub, she's not being dishonest or witholding information. They have the right to a full and frank answer to any question they have the right to an answer to. In my own opionin, they don't have that right.

nwillis's picture

I have to say that i agree with all 3 previous replies.
Presumably they have already indicated what salary you can expect and its now a question of fine tuning he precise amount.
They are either trying to minimise what they are going to pay you or being over curious.
I think the question is irrelevant. You may be taking a pay cut in favour of other benfits or looking to a significant pay rise and maybe this was the basis for part of your interview or not. But i think a polite decline is best.

williamelledgepe's picture
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While I agree with the previous statements, my company won't offer unless they have that paystub. I have tried to make the argument that a paystub contains information we are legally not allowed to ask, like number of dependents/deductions, but to no avail. But at my firm if you don't submit a paystub, HR will tell you that you are no longer the preferred candidate. We do, however post every employee's salary on our website, so a candidate can compare their salary offer to others in the same grade/level. My company says no paystub equals no offer.

John White's picture
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I asked this question earlier on (Oct 2015) when I was transitioning. Jobs in the sales field want to see how you perform against quota and use your pay stub to help with that assessment. 

John White's picture
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Here's the thread I mentioned. It was about a W2, not a pay stub.

https://www.manager-tools.com/forums/asking-w2s-offer

JonathanGiglio's picture
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It's just an idea. The true risk in providing a pay stub is that they will unethically (and it is unethical) adjust your compensation based on the information you willingly provide them. The way to stop this is for them to make a salary offer without that information. If they don't want to adjust your compensation based on this information, it should not be a problem. The offers should be based solely on your expected value to the company and the market rate for those services .That said - the risk is of course that they will refuse to provide the offer. Balance that out with accepting an offer from an unethical company. It would be interesting to know if there is a lawsuit brewing based on the illegal knowledge they would be obtaining. Although, when working for a company that publishes everyone's salary MIGHT change the dynamic.