Hold off on salary questions until after the job interview

Q. I am wondering if it is bad form to ask a prospective employer the salary range of the position before agreeing to sit down for an interview.

P.W.

A.

In general, it’s better not to pose this question before agreeing to an interview. It can make the employer feel that the job itself isn’t interesting to you — only the money.

In any case, you probably have a rough idea of the salary already. If not, you might be able to learn about the salaries generally offered for similar positions in companies of similar size. For example, assuming you are sending out resumes for work in your field, try feeding words like “salary” and the name of your profession into an Internet search engine. This might yield surveys or statistics you can use for comparison purposes.

Bottom line: Assume that getting an interview is a good thing, then make a plan to wow them into offering a good figure — or to negotiate if they don’t.

Q.

Please provide guidelines for employment history divulged in resumes and job applications. I’m 69 years old and have 55 years of history, which includes being owner of a fast food restaurant and owner of a print shop. I’ve also been a garbage truck driver, a licensed insurance agent and a certified public accountant.

Should I limit my work experience responses to the past 20 years? Further back than that makes little sense with employers who have sold or gone out of business.

D.L.

A.

The best guideline for resumes is to include the information that will be most relevant to the employers who receive them. If you apply for positions with a trash company, at any level, your garbage truck experience should be on the resume, no matter how far back it was. Employers always want to know if you have a hands-on understanding of their line of work. To soften the blow of the oldest dates, consider replacing them with time spans (instead of 1963-1968, say “five years”).

You can also exclude jobs from your resume, or cluster others into a single category (for example, Professional Services: CPA and Licensed Insurance Agent, 16 years). Again, your main criteria for resume entries should be relevance to the reader, not the age of the experience or the current status of a past employer.

Job applications are a different story. Since they usually include a signed statement that you have given your whole work history, you will need to provide a complete picture. Since this picture may not flatter you, my advice is to skip the application whenever possible. Offer the resume in its place or agree to fill out an application only with a scheduled interview.

Q.

I am a contractor with no benefits. I am on my third month of my 18-month contract. I have my medical insurance with my husband. I am pregnant and due next July. I am afraid that my contract will end at that time. I am working on a project that is time-sensitive and I think they will contract someone else to replace me and not have me come back at all. Can they do this? What are my rights? Is my contracting company responsible for anything?

R.A

Although I am not qualified to advise you on legal issues, I do have some questions and information for you. First, if you are an employee at a company that contracts you out to another business, I can almost guarantee they will replace you on the contract at some point. This is because they have an agreement with their client to complete a project in a timely fashion.

Whether they would put you back on the project after maternity leave is hard to say; a lot would depend on how your replacement was faring in your absence. That’s not to say they wouldn’t put you on a different contract, however.

Here is my question: Do you like working for your contracting company? If so, it would be wise to talk with your manager early on about the situation. Although you probably aren’t showing yet, you certainly will be soon. Together you might come up with an acceptable solution for handling the client’s work while keeping you on the project as much as possible.

If you’re not wild about this job, it might be time to make a switch. Although it can be awkward to interview when you’re pregnant, I know from my reader mail that women do it all the time and manage to land good jobs in the process.

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