PSA on Salary Expectations For New Grads
I work at a company who has a development rotation program for young grads. I’ve also been a part of a different companies rotational new grad programs or worked at places that had variants of the same. The number one thing that I noticed historically as I have helped with the filtering process is out of touch salary expectations for brand new graduates.
This is for many entry level roles though. Even though things cost a lot more you as a brand new graduate with limited experience are not going to get that 80k salary to start. I keep running into candidates who attend universities big and small asking for 70-90k base salary. Maybe if this was an engineering rotation or in a super high cost of living location but for the majority of the country especially in the south where I’m currently located you aren’t getting that type of starting base pay for most roles.
I’m happy to hear of some exceptions to this but I think a lot of young candidates are shooting themselves in the foot because they see online everyone making six figures so of course a new grad has to make 75k or 80k. The reality? Most new graduates programs for things like claims, underwriting, sales, credit analyst etc are going to pay 50-65k to start. 70-75k is if it’s something super competitive but that is the exception not the norm. So please keep your request reasonable. You’re not getting 80k in Atlanta to come be someone’s phone monkey.