There are a few active debates on LinkedIn, of course, between recruiters and candidates on why we ask for your salary.
It’s about time this gets addressed frankly.
Honestly, we don’t care to keep more personal information on file (POPI Act admin). Most of the time you are “underpaid”, haven’t received an increase in years and you’ve done your research and you know you’re worth it! Great, we got your back. If you can prove you worth it, what’s the problem?
Well most companies, when starting an HR / Recruitment contract with most agencies require these checks and documents:
ID verification
Qualification verification
Credit and criminal checks (in some instances)
References
A copy of payslip.
I’m not making this up. Honestly. this is the requirement from us or we don’t get paid. Do you honestly think we want to have another argument over documents when we already on thin ice with you? We want to make this process as painless as possible.
Think about it, even when you haven’t used a recruiter and you were at the offer stage, HR probably asked you for your payslip, right? And I’m not saying all companies do, but hey, if we going to charge a fee to be an extension of HR, we are going to be expected to do the work.
But we on your side. Hopefully, SA will follow soon with some States law that it is now illegal to ask for current salary. (http://www.askamanager.org/2016/08/the-first-state-has-made-it-illegal-to-ask-about-salary-history.html)