2. I’ve watched women go from being terrified of negotiating to
loving it. How? They changed their approach and started
thinking about negotiating as a simple process to follow and
as a thoughtful interaction with other people. When it comes
to negotiating a starting salary, here are my eight
recommendations:
3. I’ve watched women go from being terrified of negotiating to
loving it. How? They changed their approach and started
thinking about negotiating as a simple process to follow and
as a thoughtful interaction with other people. When it comes
to negotiating a starting salary, here are my eight
recommendations:
4. Educate yourself on the company. Ensure you’ve asked and
understand how the company reviews employee
performance as well as the process for pay raises and
promotions (which is a good discussion to have with the HR
person during the telephone screening interview).
5. Arm yourself with salary information. Spend adequate time
conducting research to find out average salaries and salary
ranges for similar jobs in your area, industry, and geography.
There are many websites that provide salary information,
including: salary.com, payscale.com, indeed.com,
careeronestop.org, glassdoor.com, and
jobsearchintelligence.com.
6. Know your strengths and differentiators. What makes you
special and unique from everyone else? Conduct a personal
SWOT analysis to understand your differentiators and the
special skills or experiences that could make you a more
valuable employee. Ensure you have these differentiators
written down as this information can then be used as
leverage to negotiate a higher starting salary with the hiring
manager.
7. Determine how much you’d like to make. Consider what
you’ve made in your last few jobs, the results of your online
salary research, and your strengths and differentiators. Given
that information, determine the target salary you’d like to
make.
8. Decide on an appropriate salary range. Based on your
research of similar jobs in your geography and industry, come
up with what you think would be an appropriate salary range
for the job. Your target salary should fall within this salary
range.
9. Define your “walk-away” point. Now that you’ve
determined your target salary and an appropriate salary
range, think about the minimum salary you’re willing to
accept and why you’d accept that amount. Then, consider
the reasons why you’d be unwilling to accept a lower
amount. Write these reasons down, as you may need to pull
them out for your discussion with the hiring manager during
the salary negotiation.
10. Practice your negotiation skills. Ask a friend or family
member to play the role of a hiring manager who has offered
you a salary that is lower than what you want. Then practice
what you’ll say and how you’ll say it to persuade the hiring
manager to increase their offer.
11. Keep in mind that it’s in the hiring manager’s best interest to
carefully determine the salary offers they make to new
employees. This is because he or she needs to make sure
their compensation offers are internally and externally
competitive and that they don’t offer too high or too low a
salary, given the education, experience levels, and
productivity of the employees currently working in the same
or similar positions. At most companies, a lot of research and
analysis goes into every salary offer, before the job offer is
ever made.
