if you reveal your salary, you lose the bargain power later..
they will lowball you..

sendiri bodo lepastu tanya kenapa tanam anggur....


olang tanya gaji pasal mau tau boley bayar ka tak boley bayar....

the longer u wait , the less chance u have in finding jobs.......... remember, u r not the only one looking for a job...... there r thousands more ....... btw nothing wrong with revealing ur salary n fix allowance to company, cause they wont bother much anyway

not really... unless the salary that you wanted is far apart from your last salary, i don't think we will lose the bargaining power. Normally people change jobs to get higher salary. (if we do not count other factors)

they probably want to know the market rate, hence they asked your last drawn salary.

Haha. Just give. Adoi.

True. Every position will have a budget allocated for that. Be persistence in getting them to reveal that range. If it's lower than your current pay, politely walk away.

If it's higher, muscle your way in

For those who really revealed your salary, you definitely loose out

how they actually check your last drawn? call back to your previous company HR?

dont think company HR will reveal.

they cant check at all imo.

Yes, to all of the people seeking for better employment, please do not reveal your current salary . You lose your bargaining power once you reveal your current salary .

More often then not, HR calling people just to check out the current rate i.e. your salary. as they are often very naive in current market rate of others employed people .

YOU ONLY REVEAL YOUR LAST DRAWN SALARY IF YOU ARE SO DESPERATE TO GET OUT OF YOUR CURRENT JOB OR YOU ARE JOBLESS. YOU HAVE NO LEVERAGE HERE. PERIOD.

At the end of the day, the hiring manager, your future boss has the final say in determining whether he wants to hire you or not . If you are asking too much of his budgeted salary for a candidate , he can justify to HR if he thinks you are worth it . if you are asking too low from his budgeted salary, he will offer you, mostly likely of you have asked for , amount RM XXXX , without paying your the budgeted salary because HR will always say why pay more than when the candidate asks for ? HR KP1 is always low-ball the candidates, their intention is to hire the perfect candidate with the lowest price-tag.

The equivalent analogy,

The Retailer ( nike show seller ) will/cay never reveal the price he bought from the Nike OEM . He/she will never tell the potential buyers say the cost is RM 100 and he wants to make a 20% profit, wanna sell you for RM120 . You all should learn from this when you go for interview with a job in hand.

NEVER TELL YOUR CURRENT SALARY AND EXPECTED SALARY.

This is speaking of experience. Last time I asked for 30% of my current salary without revealing my current salary. THEY HIRED ME . only later I found out later that they have budget for even another 40% of what I have requested.
See my point ? If I never had revealed any figures, I could have got 60% more or less.

BOTTOM LINE, please don't be so naive .

1. just tell honestly your last drawn salary. the agent just need something to fill in/guideline only. you can always negotiate your salary after success interview.

2. if you uncomfortable to discuss salary, just ask them what is the salary range they offer, and take the middle range.

3. the importance of interview is to make you like the job and the interviewer like you. salary can come second.

One have to look at the current situation la...

Just because someone advice you not to disclose your last salary, you blindly follow that advice.

Since there are thousands applying for the same job, all the HR executive needs to do is move on the next candidate if you chose not to reveal your last withdrawn salary.

Well, unless you are someone with a great skill that the company desperately wants you, by all means do not reveal your last withdrawn salary.

I think this practice is very wrong and unfortunately has become an accepted HR practice in Malaysia. Your previous salary history is between you and your previous employer. HR staff requesting this are simply being oppressive towards the new candidate. By putting your existing salary on the table you are giving the employer the upper hand which will leave you out in the cold come salary negotiation. Hr departments should hire you based on the quality of your CV, your previous experience, skills and interview quality. those attributes should contribute to a fair offer based on Market expectations. Previous salary should have nothing to do with it. This culture is only acceptable because Malaysians allow it to be acceptable. As a lot of posts have said, if you say no then they will move on to the next candidate. Well if all candidates refused then whose market is it? You all need to band together in order to effect a change. As a hiring manager if I requested to interview someone and HR said that I cannot see this person as they will not reveal their previous salary I would insist to see them. Stand up for yourselves Malaysians.

And to the people in this thread saying they can use this to screen out candidates that do not fit the budget, this is BS, the expected salary is what effects your budget not what I'm currently earning.

Finally this is contributing to Malaysian poor income standards, Part of someones plan to keep you poor and dumb.



This post has been edited by mixhali: Oct 10 2014, 04:38 PM

Well... do allow me to share my opinion why employer is asking your current salary and expected salary...

I was once annoyed with such questions too. but when i start becomes the employer side. That is important for a company to know the budget they need to hire someone for that position.

Besides, if everyone is get 40% jump on every time they change jobs... Guess who is at the losing end??? the employers, not a single company but the industry as a whole. In order to keep the competition in term of cost, they will want to keep a certain % of increase from your previous salary.

As the area and industry that i'm working for, the employer will offer max 20% more from your previous salary. of course there will be exceptional cases. But in general that's the real job market.

Try change your perspective from employee to employer, you get to know all the reasons for them to ask. i would say not only Malaysia asks for current and expected salary, i believe the Asia culture works that way.

That's just my experience and opinion. One day you have become the Employer... you feel the pain... for paying too much for someone...

Spot on! Perhaps we can apply some forms of law, e.g. Personal Data Protection Act 2010 into this so that we can come to terms on the requesting salary issue. Anyone?


That's a total bull. You pay based on what you can afford. If you have a budget that can only get you a Proton Saga, do you expect to buy a BMW at the proton price? This is how market works, and how a job market should work. If every employer offers 20% increment from the previous salary, what is the point of job interview? You can just simply call that employee/applicant and offer him/her the standard 20% raise based on his/her relevant work experience and banzai, you have got your new staff.

This post has been edited by abc2005: Oct 10 2014, 07:12 PM

Unless you can control gomen, if not how you want to pass law based on your own opinion?

The problem is, the value of human being is very subjective. There is no fixed price on our heads, nor do we have specs like proton sagas do. If no one revealed their salary, it would be even worst, employers would be so afraid of overpaying that they lower their pay range instead to compensate,

How do they judge your value and decide how much you are worth?

Availability of your particular talent - It doesnt matter how much work you do, how much money you help the company earn. What matters is how many people else can do your job. Data entry people often work very hard, and help company earn money (no data entry = nothing come out), but they are paid so little because so many others can do the same job. If you dont want to do data entry for 2k, they can just hire the next person, or the next, or the next.

To be highly paid you need to distinguish and differentiate yourself from others. A special skill in a particular niche is the best. Best if no one knows what you are doing, how you do it, but that you must do it or company will fail, then you can demand XXXXXXX and goyang kaki.

This is why people work smart. If you data entry everyday boss wont appreciate it, if you do 1 mistake only also boss will marah. But your other "lazy" colleague everyday run around learning new stuff but not really doing his real work (data entry), so when boss got problem he know how to solve and also give boss credit for it. Guess who can get the promotion.

The point of job interview is too see whether or not you are suited to the post. Even if they want to offer you 20% increment fixed also need to see whether you are suited or not first what. Its actually better that they ask people to show their pay slip. Like that they have more information to make decision and pay people less (maybe its HR KPI) Then when you dont show, they will have more budget and can afford to pay you more! If everyone dont show and demand more, hiring budget always the same. So either everyone gets paid less, or they hire less people and you OT till 12am everyday.

This is already a law (PDPA 2010) that has been passed and gazetted within the laws of Malaysia. For more information please click HERE. Please refer the Section 8. Disclosure Principle in regards with the personal data disclosure. Anyone has the right not to disclose his or her personal information to any third party other than the authorities.

That is the one and only reason for interview, to look for suitable candidates to fill the posts and solve the problems. Why do employers have to worry about overpaying when they are already paying within their budgets in the first place? If the employers come clean with their expectations, I don't think it would be an issue to find a candidate that is willing to work within the employers expectations, and saving both sides the pain of heartaches. If no one is willing to apply for the post, the employer should know what is happening in the market.

I repeat. That is the whole point of the interview process. You judge the candidates' values and capabilities through interviews, not on their previous salaries. If employers are having issues judging that, I highly doubt their abilities to lead the team and steer the company direction.

You kinda mixed both points together, thus creating some confusions here. First, I do agree the point that it doesn't matter how much work you do. They might be some kind of works that are of little value to the companies. Someone might be working 24/7 and yet the values he churns out can be negligible.
However, you completely missed the point why companies hire in the first place, which is to help the company make more money or contribute some values in some senses. If you ignore the ones who helped you to earn monies, the peril is yours and your company to suffer if the bottom lines get affected in the end.

This is not relevant to the topic. However, as many pointed out here, you hire for the work that you need get done with the range of values that are worth the range of those who are willing to accept the offers.


You are partly correct to say that job interview is to see the suitability of the candidates to fill the posts. As we all know, the employer already has a budget for hiring. Why is it so hard for them to select or reject a candidate if they already know the candidate's expectations? The request for salary slip is completely irrelevant here.

This post has been edited by abc2005: Oct 11 2014, 12:24 AM

Exactly my point of view, 100% agree.

Very simple only, If you have the budget of RM2000 to hire a person, Just offer him to whoever you think is perfect for the job . Please don't hide the fact that you just wanna low-ball the person. Just admit that you wished you could find a water fish for RM 1500 then you could save RM500 for whatever use and the person is so naive to be happy. Please. You just wanna low-ball the candidate.

If you asks your vendor how much his real cost is and request him to tell you how much profit he would like to make?
The answer is HELL NO, not single vendor is stupid/idiot enough to do that.

If you asks your (candidate) how much his current salary and request him to tell you how much profit he would like to make ?
The answer is there are simply too many naive people out there, too crazy.

At most, a vendor will give you a price , you want him, pay that.
At most, a candidate should say his ideal(expected) salary,you want him, pay that.

abc2005 's argument is very valid . To all of the fresh graduate out there, please learn from here .

Just because I have a budget of RM 2,000 doesnt meant I want to pay someone "perfect" for the job RM 2,000. That is why HR always have a range for a position, like RM 1,500 to Rm 2,500.

Maybe I meet a worker A who has perfect pointer, prior work experience (impressive previous work resume), smooth talker, polite, convincing, I would surely like to offer him the highest range of my budget RM 2,500 to try and attract him.

Then I meet a worker B who isnt that good, so i offer him RM 1,500.

Both will be able to do that job, becos my company so stronk that sales automatically keep rolling in bla bla bla, But worker A obviously has the capability to maybe even exceed my expectations, or have the potential to rise in my company. While I feel worker B does not have such potential. Yes, both can do the entry level job I am advertising for RM 2,000. But human beings have different capacity, and so I lowball B in order to have the budget to hire A.

Asking for payslip is just part of my evaluation, like many have already said in this thread, it IS NOT MANDATORY for you to show it, but employer IS ALLOWED to ask for it. It is up to you whether you want to give or not. There is no right or wrong here. Saying the employer is wrong to ask for it (unethical/lowballing) is false. Payslip reflects a persons value quite accurately, especially the longer you work.

Going back to my example:

Let say I ask for worker A's payslip and I notice that his pay always around RM 1,000 to RM 1,500 for the past 10 years, while job hopping around. Suddenly I might have to rethink my evaluation. Why was he always paid so low? Was there a problem in his previous company? Has he perfected the art of interviewing after 10 years and is trying to con me now?

Then worker B refuse to give and I immediately hire worker C, who just come in, roughly same standard as worker B and is willing to show his payslip.

Clearly, whether or not you show your payslip is up to you, and can be good or bad depending on the circumstances. It is part of your evaluation, and is another form of the question "tell me more about yourself". You can tell them, or you can choose NOT to tell them. Problem is when you choose not to tell them, what will they think?

Bottom line:

Employer is RIGHT and SHOULD ask for your payslip. You CAN CHOOSE whether you want to give or not.

In most circumstances, showing your payslip means you are on the losing end of negotiations, but please also consider what you lose by choosing not to show your payslip. Right or wrong, it all depends on the circumstances and how you handle the situation.