how to deal with a lowball offer

Originally Posted by samantha_wong

Hi,
I just landed a job with a local bank. I have been without job for a while. I think the HR is trying to lowball me. They are paying me less than what I was drawing before I lost my job. Very bluntly this HR manager told me 'take it or leave it. we know that you have no choice in todays market'.

Of course i need a job. but at least the local banks should not lowball employees. if i start my job dissatisfied how effectiveness will i be? what do others say?

I think you need to be humble especially when you are jobless for some months already. First you complain that HR ask too many questions in an earlier post making a big drama out of something simple, now you make noise about them not matching your last known salary.

Technically your last drawn salary is $0, not $4300. At the end of the day there is nothing in this world that say that any offer should at least be the same as your last job before you become unemployed.

Looking at your salary even if you are still in your last job, you are just a very junior associate at best, spend more time to build up your credentials and network rather than taking offence over all sorts of things. I'm not sure how fantastic you are in real work life, but honestly till now your online persona is far from being great.

Originally Posted by Jennifer

My 2 cents:

a. HR is right is lowballing the salary. But this creates discontent. Samantha may quit before long.

b. Salary should be paid based on the job content and candidate's abilities. Just becoz someone is unemployed today does not meen "push salary down".

We can only be sure if Samantha gives more information, like why did she quit or lose her job before, etc.

Note that in her first post, she put it as "lost her job" and not quit her job. That's 2 very different things and if it's "lost her job", we would need to understand why she lost it in the first place to be able to come to a proper and valid conclusion.

But for most ppl, if you have "lost your job", it means that you are deemed not useful to the company and there must be some reason for that, either you are overpaid or not contributing enough, hence the offer with a lower pay afterwards

I suggest everyone ignore this smantha_wong fellow. If you do a quick search for all her post, most of it is very dubious so far:

1) Complain about HR too many questions
2) Complain about how candidates no ethics negotiate using competing offers
3) Complain about being offered only $6k instead of $6.5k on the phone (sounds suspicious to me that anyone would offer an unemployed junior staff 52% higher)
4) Complain whether HR can check her reference and last drawn salary (why worry unless her disclosures are not truthful?)
5) Complain about latest offer too low for her liking