Key Takeaways
Although negotiating might seem risky, hiring managers expect it. Knowledge is power, including knowing existing salary ranges for your position and region, as well as the skills you bring above and beyond the listed job requirements. Understanding the process and practicing your approach will add to your skills the art of negotiating, which is something you’ll use throughout your career.
“Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”
— John F. Kennedy, 1961 Inaugural Address
Okay, so Kennedy was talking about negotiating under the threat of global nuclear war. But the point applies to your relatively low-stakes salary negotiation as well. As much as haggling over a bottom-line offer might generate anxiety in even the most confident of applicants, it’s an expected move, and not one you need to fear. The key to reducing nerves is to know when it’s appropriate to negotiate and how to approach it to up the chances of getting what you want—or at least not blowing up the existing offer.
First: Build Your Case—If You Have One
Knowledge about the job market and your skills is your power, which is essential when considering the negotiation process.
Do Your Research
Key things to know going into a negotiation include the following:
- Average salary range for your position in your region
- How your experience stacks up against the listed job requirements
- Strengths and experiences you bring that aren’t required, but that will add value to your work and your team.
Dig Deeper
As we explore in “Job Compensation: What to Know and Why,” various concrete factors feed into an offered pay range, including a hiring manager’s staffing budget. Educating yourself about standard internal constraints and the external job market not only gives you the knowledge you need to decide whether or not to negotiate—it gives you a much stronger standing when you do.
Four Negotiating Tips
The following tips can help you to refine your approach to the negotiation process.
Tip 1: Timing is everything.
If a posted or otherwise conveyed salary range is far too low for you and the job doesn’t seem like a great fit, it makes sense to ask about flexibility as soon as you’re in consideration for a job. If they can’t go higher and you can’t make the range work, you gain nothing by wasting their time or your own.
If you’re more flexible on salary and/or the job aligns with your goals, wait to negotiate until you have a specific job and salary offer on the table. An offer shows that they value you and want you on the team, which gives you leverage going into a negotiation.
Tip 2: Prepare to Sell Yourself
Even if you’re an entry-level or early career professional, you likely bring experiences and skills to the table beyond the position’s basic requirements. Your job now is to be concrete about those extra skills.
To fully excavate them, brainstorm about past projects, GitHub and other online contributions, and all your previous job, internship, and volunteer experiences. Quantify any results if possible; if not, focus on the tech used and the skills gained—both hard and soft. Soft skills are perennially valued, so go broad in your brainstorming to unearth things that might not be on your resume. Examples might include those public speaking skills you honed in debate club or conflict resolution expertise you gained as captain of that especially combative baseball team. Commit your messy brainstorming to paper, then circle or highlight what makes you stand out. Next, recraft those hard and soft skills into a few concise sentences that relate to the target position and team.
This additional information—plus your knowledge of regional and position salary ranges—is your leverage, so be clear and confident about who you are, what you bring, and how you present it.
Tip 3: Practice
Practicing your negotiation approach is essential—whether you do it with friends, with an online interview service, or simply in front of a mirror. Actors run lines for a reason. Memorizing your essential points and practicing them will build your confidence when you present them and also free you to improvise if you’re interrupted by a question or a request for details.
Tip 4: Approach with care—and a plan.
Arrogance and ultimatums are not a good look. The best way to open a negotiation is after you’ve shown appreciation for the offer and excitement about the job, the team, and the organization. Only then should you begin, by clearly conveying that you’ve done your research on salaries, bring X, Y, and Z to the table, and were frankly hoping for a higher offer.
Say, for example, you’re applying for an entry-level software engineering position in Denver, Colorado, and were offered a salary of $88,000 a year. Having done your research, you know that Denver has a broad salary range for this position of $41,000–$198,000, with an average of around $107,000. After eloquently summarizing your brainstormed above-and-beyond qualifications, you might say something like, “Given this, I’d actually expected an offer more in the range of $95,000-$107,000.
If the response you get is a simple “Unfortunately, the salary isn’t negotiable for this position,” accept it gracefully and ask whether they might be able to increase the benefits package, such as by offering an additional week of vacation time, flexible hours, or paid certifications. Some companies—particularly start-ups—also offer profit sharing, stock options, and bonuses as part of the compensation package. This equity is also fair game for negotiation.
If the Negotiation Fails…
Don’t sweat it. Be gracious and ask for a day or two to consider the original offer. If it otherwise seems like a great job, you lose nothing by accepting the offer. In fact, if you’ve approached the process respectfully and delivered a solid pitch for why you deserve more, any result is a win.
After all: you’ve gone in prepared, shown confidence, and given them more details about how much you bring to the team. And, even if you decide not to take the job, you’ve survived your first negotiation and practiced key skills that you’ll be using throughout your career.
Disclaimer: The author is completely responsible for the content of this article. The opinions expressed are their own and do not represent IEEE’s position nor that of the Computer Society nor its Leadership.
