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How Not to Reveal Salary in Online Job Applications

ChristinaJ | Oct 7, 2009 |

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Online employment applications are very popular with employers because they allow many job seekers to submit resumes and applications with very little interaction or time commitment for the company itself. However, these systems are often difficult to navigate and require you to answer questions that are irrelevant or disadvantageous to you the job seeker. Many of these systems require you to enter something for every field before allowing you to go to the next section of the online job application. This can be tricky when it comes to stating salary requirements.

Job seekers have always been told that you should never reveal a salary history or desired salary until at least the interview stage, and certainly never on an application. This is still true, because revealing this information to the employer gives them the upper hand when it comes to the salary negotiation later on. So, how do you get past this question on online job applications? Here are some ways that you can enter numbers just to get past this question in the online system.

You may need to try all of these formats until you find one that works. The concept here is that you are trying to trick the system into allowing you to move on to the next question without being forced to enter a real salary.

If the salary fields in the online job application will allow you to enter zero as a salary do that. No hiring manager will think you will work for nothing and it keeps your salary private. Here are some ways you can format this answer: 0, 0.00, $0, $0.00 or $00,000.00
If the online employment application won't allow you to enter 0 as a salary then enter $1 like such: 1, $1, $1.00 or $00,001.00
If you are asked to provide a salary range on the employment job application, I suggest you enter the following: $1.00 - $100,000 or $00,001 - $100,000
If none of these options work then it is obvious that the system is going to force you to enter a number. In this case, you should enter, or select, the lowest salary possible, such as $10,000. You aren't actually going to accept a job for this amount; however it prevents your resume from being tossed out because the salary is too high.

Many online job applications do not allow the use of the dollar sign ($) in the salary field. If you are having trouble with this field, make sure you aren't entering a dollar sign.