"Please indicate your expected salary"

My slow and steady completion of Training Contract applications is going well and the majority of the process is fairly similar for each firm. 

Yesterday I was coming to the end of a shorter TC application when I saw the question in the title of this blog.

"Please indicate your expected salary"

This posed a bit of a conundrum for me. My inner Mr Burns (a little The Simpsons reference for you there) started goading me to type "£30,000!", exclamation mark and all. But I suppose that wouldn't really be my "expected" salary. I asked myself, what is a trainee's expected salary? 

I am due to complete the LPC in 2014. We all know that with the abolition of the SRA's minimum trainee salary in August 2014, the new absolute minimum would be National Minimum Wage (currently £6.19 ph and due to rise to £6.31 in October 2013, making your yearly salary a mere £12,305). For a maximum I looked at the Magic Circle firms: Linklaters at a whopping £39,500 in the first year of training, Slaughter and May at £39,000 and Clifford Chance and Allen and Overy at £38,000. It is yet to be seen whether firms will actually hire trainees at NMW but that could mean a difference of just over £27,000.

So where do you place your own expectations. There isn't a correct formula. The key is to assess the firm you are applying to and be flexible. This means that, although my inner Mr Burns was shouting at me to type £30,000, that figure is probably not realistic for a smaller firm situated outside of a city and with a handful of staff. Look at the firm's profile, look at similar firm's profiles. 

I also had to be realistic about myself. Academically, I am not a star candidate. I didn't achieve a first and I don't possess all As at A-level. Although I am very proud of my 2:1 from a fairly well respected university, it still has the potential to prevent me accessing those Magic Circle firms. In terms of work experience, I have some strong vacation schemes and placements which somewhat redeems me. I  hope that this means I have a good shot at some of the smaller regional firms. For these reasons, I know that my expected salary is probably around the middle to lower end of the scale. 

It is quite an interesting question for firms to ask and I do wonder what the implications of your answer might be. Pin your expectations too high- application binned, there are plenty of applicants who will expect lower. Pin your expectations too low- thousands of pounds of student debt all to work for little more than a waitress. The abolition of minimum wage coinciding with the serious lack of available TCs just screams a potential for exploitation to me. 

A good friend of mine started work in a bank a few years ago and the advertisement for the position stated that the salary was between £12 and £14k pa. At interview he was asked what he expected in terms of wages and he replied £13k- opting for a safe, middle of the road amount and knowing that it was within what they were expecting to pay. 4 months after he started working as a cashier the bank hired another cashier. They got chatting and he was gutted to find out that she had negotiated a £15k salary. 6 months later he was offered a promotion and an increase in salary of, you guessed it, £2000pa. That was the moment he knew he had to leave. How could he take on more responsibility and hours and yet still be earning the same as a cashier. It was the final straw. The moral of the story: don't sell yourself short, because it WILL matter. 

Tread carefully with the "expected salary" question.