How to avoid negotiating a salary.

[reddragdiva]

My lovely new HR department appear to be muppets. I presume the paperwork will arrive before my actual start date.

Here is how to avoid salary negotiations at the interview itself, when the only thing you should be discussing is your suitability to the job and the job's suitability to you, not your status as this week's supermarket special. You can gain nothing from discussing salary at this stage. They tried to bring up the pay discussion three times - initial talk to HR person, first interview with boss' boss and second interview with head of personnel and boss' boss' boss. The last of these went something like this:

"Salary. What are you after in the way of salary?"
"I have no idea. Australian salaries and cost of living really do not translate to London at all."
"Hmm ..."
"I was paid AUD$50k at my last job. Which converts as £18k. Which is not the same thing at all, obviously. In terms of living standard, it's something like £30-35k in London terms."
"Ah."
"I've been applying for jobs in the £25-45k range."
"Ah ..."
"I'm sure the pay will of course be commensurate with the position."

I think it would actually translate in pay-for-the-same-job terms as more like £25-30k. Regardless, although I know the boss' boss' salary budget is squeezed (the contractor presently doing the job is eating half of it), I suspect I could have named a slightly higher number and gotten it. But £30k+4k is really not too bad a score.

(Another useful phrase: "I'm leaving salary negotiations entirely to the agency. Now, about the job itself and me ...")

In other news, an official Mozilla 1.0 CD dropped through the letter slot this morning. A lovely souvenir, complete with big red lizard on the label. 1.0.1 (ultra-stable) and 1.1 (fancy new features) should be out soon, and hopefully someone will have at least papered over the bug that causes recent test builds to crash reliably on streetmap.co.uk if they want anyone in the UK to be able to put the thing to normal daily use ...

Update, 6:10pm: Mozilla 1.0 Party London pics up. I look profoundly antiphotogenic.