Glassdoor has many salaries recently posted that are far under the market midpoint Sabre rate. Many have only 1 reported salary. It looks like HR is scheming again with fake reviews and now salary postings. Look for people to be underpaid soon more than usual. Many Directors and VPs around $130K. Right!
4 replies (most recent on top)
Sabre has historically been under the market. This is nothing new. They know salary numbers and do regular research on them. Not uncommon to start negotiations at the bottom of the range.
Well someone hit a nerve with HR obviously. The fact is HR always wants to know your current and expected salary for an incoming applicant. They use this to offer s slightly higher 5% carrot to that applicant. Of course they would discredit salary.com or Glassdoor etc because, armee with that information they would lose their leverage. Market data gathered by Sabre would naturally be biased in the favor of Sabre paying the least possible.
Why would Glassdoor be anyone's benchmark? If you are so caught up in money that you are more focused on what other people are making than your own needs then maybe you should rethink your priorities. There is inherent inequality in salaries due to age, experience, personal circumstances, etc. Glassdoor data over time can be helpful in establishing baselines but you should never trust small numbers of data points anyway. Figure out what you need and push for it.
That said, I doubt our HR is doing this because Glassdoor is largely irrelevant. I have had prospective hires bring up Glassdoor salaries to me before and I tell them all the same thing, which is that we spend real money on compensation analysis and our offers are fair and in line with market demand for a given skillet and experience level. We have no problem telling someone "yeah, Glassdoor has some people making a lot more than you, but we aren't willing to start you at that level." If they don't want the job, fine, we will find someone else. It wouldn't be worth HR's time to screw around with Glassdoor.
If you want to get a leg up and not have to rely on Glassdoor, just be candid in your salary negotiations. "Although I know salaries vary widely on experience and skills, I'm curious as to where my offer falls. If you had to estimate, what quartile of the range for this position would you say my salary falls into?" If someone asks me that, I'll tell them honestly: "You are in the bottom half" or "you are close to the center" or "you are close to the top", and may have some insight for them as to why. Just be genuine and don't rely on anonymous people to provide information that's important to you!
Not surprising.... Setup glassdoor.com users with low salary numbers so new job offers seem reasonable.