Is it legal for a prospective employer to verify your current salary?

fkd1015

Nope, not in the least.

shelcom

Obviously its legal. Why would even think it wasn't???

HappyOne

If you've signed an application for employment, or some other form of documentation....yes. Typically, when an employer gets to this stage, they're certainly interested in you and don't use this measure as a screening method.

In this day and age of class action law suits and such, employers verify dates of employment, title and salary. Anything above that, such as reference checks from your existing or previous managers is a sticky situation....most mid to large companies will not do this as a practice, as they may be putting themselves at risk. To reduce the risk, these companies outsource this tedious function for a number of reasons.

The best way to get more money is to interview well...talk about your accomplishments and how you can add value, not merely do the job, and you will have more bargaining power. Employers expect pay higher to attract new emplyees, however if they feel they can "get you for cheap", some may, however this isn't a wise practice and typically contributes to high turn over and low job satifaction.

In any event, plan your interview....go in with the mindset that you are the MOST qualified for the role, hands down. Share how YOU lead a project, did something creative, were an active participant/contributor on a team and most importantly, what was the RESULT of your actions....did it save the company money, did it make a process more efficient, increase morale, land a new contract, etc.

Good luck!

Mel

Legal, and fairly common. The way around it is to state that part of the reason you're looking for work is that you know you are underpaid for your experience/educaiton level.

www.salary.com can give you some ballpark figures for the going rate in your area/job category. I find they tend to run on the high side, but it's better than nothing.

Good luck.

TaxMaven

How could they possibly verify it without you giving permission for them to receive copies of your w-2s or contact your present employer? You would never permit this, would you? Of course, depending on the type of job you have, it is likely that HR people have a good idea of what the pay scales are at similar companies.

Grand pa

some people are not willing to hire if your making more> i took a pay cut and it worked ok

Andrea B

I don't think that there is any way for them to know that you lied on your current salary but most companies use it to screen out people who were making more money at their previous job.

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