We were hiring for a software engineer at nearbuy (my previous startup).

The candidate we really liked was working at one of the IT giants for the past 3 years.

His salary was 4.2L p.a.

The HR manager asked, “how much should we pay him?”
“Why are you even asking?”

“As per the salary benchmarking we have, his salary should be 14.5L. That would mean a 3X jump on his current salary.”
“And why is that a problem? How does his current salary dictate what he gets paid in a role that he’s qualified for?”

“Because it’s not market practice.”

I never really understood this phenomena of asking for previous payslips, by companies.

To me, it is lazy and smells of an non-existent process to determine salaries in an objective manner.

We made the offer to the candidate.
He called assuming it was a typo.
He thought we were making a 4.5L offer :)

It was cute, and sad, at the same time.
We told him that the offer was indeed 14.5L

We upheld a process that worked for us.
He upheld his pride.

Win-win.