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Salary surveys are pretty much useless for jobseekers, except perhaps as a means of keeping score and getting an idea what offer
represents a reasonable "ballpark" amount vs. an obvious lowball if one has been out of the job market for a while. I've never used
the surveys to try to convince a company to offer me more money. In most cases, the range has been set before I've even been called
in and is pretty much immutable, and even when a company discovers through unsuccessul hire attempts that its offers are not
competitive they usually only make adjustments for the next candidate; if you turned down a lowball offer, would you be inclined to
accept if the same company came back at you weeks or months later with a better one, or would you just figure that they're going to
be the same way in the future as well?
Where surveys can be useful is in discussions between hiring managers, HR and senior management in the setting of range prior to
making offers. If senior management can see that the BLS says the middle of range for a particular position is X, the Radfords say
1.1X and their last dozen or so (non-writer) hires wouldn't come onboard for less than 1.2X, a survey of writer salaries that says
writers are in a similar demand state can help the hiring manager get the range for a writer opening increased. A survey that
confirms the Radfords (and yes, in case you're wondering, (a) the Radfords are almost always substantially higher than BLS and (b)
the Radfords are regarded as more accurate, otherwise nobody would pay $20k/year to subscribe to them) would be somewhat less
useful, but nowhere near as useless as one that just parrots the garbage that company HR can already get for free from the BLS
website.
> And it's in the interviewee's interest to help HR look good. One way is
> to provide them with something on paper that helps explain why you're
> asking for a given salary. Since HR has a responsibility to contain
> costs, it's important for them to see that they couldn't hire someone
> with your attributes at a much lower salary.
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