Approximate income range

[audette]

So, I am job hunting (I was laid off just before Christmas).  Job hunting is rough for me, because I haven't really been able to do it effectively in ages (think over a decade).  With DH being active duty military, and us moving around so much, it just wasn't practical to try and find professional work with each PCS move when I had a telecommute job already in hand, even if it was on the underemployment side - it at least kept my hand in, and kept me somewhat up to date.


I am apparently at the point where I am getting interviews.  Yay!  I had my first phone interview today, and have my first in-person interview (different company) on Tuesday.




This leads to the inevitable question of how to answer the question of approximate salary range.  This always feels like a shitty question.  If you lowball it, you potentially end up getting a lowball offer.  If you highball it, you might lose out on an opportunity.  Because my last job was part time, and it was on the underemployment side of things, it's not a good reference point...



I've tried searching online listings like salary.com and indeed.com, and they feel like a mixed bag and really unpredictable.  Today I found the Department of Labor statistics page, which includes statistics on my metro area, broken down by occupational types.  Is that a reasonable bar to use?  I'm mid-career, basically, so would going with something approximating the average for our area make sense?

Does anyone have any other suggestions on how they'd go about figuring this stuff out?  I don't really have any local peers that work in my field, so there's not really anyone I can ask.

[dr.girlfriend]

Is your husband still active military? If not, I would be tempted to say, "I'll be honest...in the past, because my husband was active military and we had to move frequently, I prioritized the ability to telecommute over salary. For a position like this, my research tells me that a typical salary is in the range of x to y, and with my experience and professional skill set I would hope to be closer to the upper end of that range." or something.

[audette]

DH is now retired from the military and has a GS position at the local base, so we are effectively as permanent as anyone else at this point.

[ellipses84]

Did you try payscale.com? You put in your info, and it will give you a range for your area. If nothing comes up, find something most similar or try a bigger city near you. Otherwise, I think comparing yourself to whatever is most similar to the local stats you found is probably accurate and adjust up or down a little. For example, I’m not an accountant or engineer but I think the salary for my career probably falls within a similar range.

[covergirl82]

My job is a compensation analyst. I don't like the data available through the DOL, so I don't recommend using that source. I would use payscale.com and/or salary.com to give you a ballpark for what your job pays. You could also try to find job postings with an actual pay range on Indeed or other similar sites. (I just did a salary report for my job through payscale.com and found it to be pretty accurate compared to the salary surveys we purchase.)

I also agree with RockNVoll on how to respond during the interview process about questions related to desired salary.

Good luck!