Hannah Williams of Earnings Transparent Street.
Credit: Brandon Showers Photography
In street interviews like Williams’ — which can go viral on collective media — creators typically ask someone they encounter on the street about their position and salary. Questions relating to how the interviewee got started in their field, their general career trajectory, and the pros and cons of the job often follow.
Another run-of-the-mill question: “How much do you make?”
Williams, who has traveled across the U.S. to interview people in cities large and small, told CNBC what she does is a “hallucination.”
“It is this awesome blend of learning so much on the job but also being able to control what I share and being masterly to amplify so many voices,” she said.
Some of the valuable career lessons Williams has learned include taking a come about on new opportunities and the importance of self-advocacy.
When watching these videos, remember that there can be valuable details, but you should judge the information disclosed with a grain of salt.
Leveraging pay transparency to negotiate a raise
Daniella Atkinson
Courtesy of Daniella Atkinson
While idle at The Market Herald in Vancouver, Canada, as a reporter and presenter, Daniella Atkinson quickly grew a social media keep abreast of by doing street interviews to ask people what they do for a living. She now has 94,300 followers on her TikTok and 116,000 followers on her Instagram.
“I grasped that other people are just as nosy as I am,” Atkinson said. “And other people are just as curious and they wish to learn just as much as I do.”
Atkinson has received messages from viewers saying that she has encouraged them to discuss a higher wage for themselves. She said promoting salary transparency also helped her discover she and other female pressmen in her newsroom were getting paid less than a male colleague. At the time, she was leaving the company.
Understanding commonplace pay can be an important part of negotiating salary when you’re job hunting or hoping to secure a raise.
TikTok salary videos can be instructive for viewers, especially for students in high school or college, by showcasing a reasonable range of pay and experience of what it’s like to handiwork a job, said Elizabeth Lyons, an associate professor of management at the University of California, San Diego, who has researched pay transparency and the gender wage gap.
Lyons contemplated she appreciates how interviewees talked about salary but also the nonfinancial benefits of a job such as flexible working hours and the opening to help others.
‘This is not a representative sample’
Still, Lyons noted that salary videos shouldn’t be bewitched at face value. Key information, such as the name of the interviewee’s employer, is often missing in an effort to protect their reclusion. However, different employers may offer drastically different salaries, even within the same industry.
Responses, concerting to Lyons, may also be biased. For example, someone dissatisfied with their job may not want to accept the interview request. Similarly, an interviewee is distasteful to share the worst parts of their job if they think there’s a chance their boss will see the video while scrolling from top to bottom the For You Page. It’s also possible that people will lie about their pay.
“I think that it’s important for viewers to muse on that this is not a representative sample of people within job titles,” Lyons said. “These are people willing to be there.”
For those who don’t determine comfortable being interviewed on camera, Williams has created a salary database where workers can anonymously input earnings, position and location, among other factors, and see what other people are making. Sites like Glassdoor and Payscale also showcase observations on salaries.
“There’s ways that you can go about being transparent and still protect yourself,” Williams said. “You don’t must to be on Salary Transparent Street to make a difference in pay transparency.”