How do you respond to HR if your job offer is at a salary that is 20% below the market average?

Simple. Just say "No, thank you". They have their own budget and that offer reflects their current hiring power. But you need to keep in mind that salary is not the sole reason you should take or keep a job. Something for you to ponder: http://cutecoder.org/career/introduction-happy-fortune-matrix/

How do you know the market level salaries so surely? Is demand-supply in your favor? Is the salary greater than your current salary? Did you know that your co-workers would be much younger? Did you discuss your salary expectations in a pre-interview HR interaction? If the above was true, someone (either of the two parties involved) did not set the expectation(s) right. Looks like HR is not going to budge from the budget. Therefore you will have to politely decline unless you really want the job because of the likeability, learning or just needy at this stage. Edit 4th June: An ex-colleague of mine faced the same situation today, and I pointed him to this answer. And truth be told, he didn't agree with me, and I thought it would be nice to table a real world context, where answers from quora may not be applicable. Salaries sometimes are not discussed at an early stage, and between the early stage to the offer letter being received by you is a small time considering startups function fast usually. In this case the HR was to be blamed solely for not setting the expectations right, and expecting that my ex-colleague would join at a salary around 10% lower that what he currently receives. HR's argument: he gets to work closer to where he lives and would save considerable fuel costs. He rejected the offer, but not basis the financials, but because without a sane argument, HR lady tried to show him the fuel cost savings without knowing that he took public transport to his current place of work, and he would perhaps would need to drive to the new place (and he would need to learn how to drive and buy a car too). I coaxed him to reject basis HR's thinking, and when the CEO called him for an explanation, he explained the same to the CEO. Well guess what happened, the HR lady nearly got fired.

Each company sets the compensation strategy. The compensation strategy can help to build the sustainable competitive advantage. The lower levels of salaries can allow the efficient cost management. The job candidate should make a decision. The lower salary can be more than compensated by the corporate culture. The friendly and development focused organizations usually offer lower salaries than their direct competitors. The organization with a tight salary management usually does invest time into the search of the job applicant, who will offer the lower salary.

Who says you are worth the market average?  You? It's a fact of life that companies often let go of more experienced employees to hire less expensive, less experienced ones that can do a (somewhat) comparable job. If you are out of work, and interviewing for a role that appears to have an experience requirement more junior than your actual experience, your choices are limited.  Heck, if you responded to a role that (for example) asked for "5-7 years of experience" and you bring 10+, it's worth asking about your expectations: experience requirements are often directly correlated with both budget and existing internal equity of other team members. So what are your choices? 1. Stop interviewing for jobs that call for less experience than you have. 2. Politely decline offers below your own 'pass/fail' line. 3. Advise any potential employers that you have turned down *exactly* where your acceptance level for that job would be - "I can't accept 50,000.  My minimum is 60,000 and I would accept an offer at that number or higher" 4. Understand that (in the case of 3) you are telling them not to call you back with an offer of 59,999.99 or less.

What you need to do is of course to negotiate.And here are some resources that will help you make it possible: http://bitly.com/1fcAAdk http://bitly.com/1rqCy9T http://bitly.com/1ntcjlP http://bitly.com/1jYKKLZ