A brief overview of salary negotiation before and after being hired. We discussed how to prepare for your interviews, a salary negotiation strategy overview, and how to get a raise or promotion.
Get the free guides, worksheets and email template that accompany this workshop at https://fearlesssalarynegotiation.com/gainesvillerotary
Welcome to the Fearless Salary Negotiation crash course.
Iโm a computer and electrical engineer and an MBA. I went to the University of Florida.
I spent about 10 years in the talent management industry, which is focused on software to help businesses manage employee performance, set goals, work on career and succession planning, and plan compensation strategies.
I wrote the Fearless Salary Negotiation book and video courses to help people get paid what theyโre worth, and thatโs why Iโm here today.
So what will we cover today?
Preparing for your interviews is a differentiator that will help you stand out among the other candidates. Your goal is to get a job offer and for that offer to be as strong as possible so youโre starting off from the best possible position in your negotiation.
Speaking of negotiationโyou should absolutely negotiate. It can be intimidating, but itโs worth it because you could make every single paycheck bigger.
Theyโre not going to pull your offer if you use my method.
Weโll walk through a summary of my negotiation strategy to give you a strategy you can use in your next negotiation.
And for those of you who are staying put, Iโll give you a quick overview of how to get your next raise or promotion by looking at each of them from your managerโs perspective.
Interviews are mostly just questions youโll answer. The better your answers, the more youโll stand out. But first you need to learn as much about the company as you can so youโre answers are as informed as possible.
Start with: Visit their website - available jobs (more opportunities), geographic locations, mission statement, look for trends. What are they trying to do right now? What are their goals? How do they make money? Who are their customers? How big are they?
You should also use Google to:
Read news articles
Look at their stock performance
Press releases
Blog posts
What are people saying about them?
Put it all together so you understand them better.
Are they trying to grow? Build better technology? Break into a new market?
How can you help? Think about this before you start interviewing.
This is how you โwinโ the interview. You prepare, learn their story, and then spend the entire interview process convincing them that your story will be better if youโre a part of it.
You could make your biggest mistake before you even get started.
Once youโve aced your interview, the company will hopefully make you a strong offer. Now your goal shifts from โget a good offerโ to โmaximize my salary before taking the jobโ.
Hereโs the headline: You should absolutely negotiate your salary!
You could be leaving a lot of money on the table if you donโt negotiate. The two main reasons people seem to shy away from negotiating their starting salary are First that theyโre afraid to start off on the wrong foot with the recruiter or hiring manager. They donโt want to burn bridges.
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But if you use my salary negotiation method, itโs not abrasive or
Most people donโt get many job offers, and they see them as special snowflakes that come along only a few times in a lifetime. This reverence for new jobs spills over into the negotiation process, so they treat negotiations very gingerly, afraid to jeopardize them.
From the recruiterโs perspective, your job offer is not a special snowflake. The job youโre applying for is probably one of many that particular recruiter is trying to fill, and one of many more that particular company is trying to fillโitโs no big deal to them. Most recruiters make job offers all the time , and they tend to see everything as numbersโthe candidate has an applicant ID, the job requisition has a number, the paygrade for the job is just a range of salary numbers. If they can get a good candidate at a good salary, thatโs a good day for them.
Itโs not just numbers to you because the outcome of this negotiation will affect your life. The numbers have real meaning to you, so you have far more skin in the game than the recruiter. But youโre leaving money on the tableโpossibly the equivalent of multiple paychecks per yearโif you simply accept the companyโs first offer. So itโs in your best interest to negotiate.
Iโm going to show you how to approach your negotiation like the recruiter or hiring manager that youโre negotiating with. Donโt be tentative or hesitant. Donโt be afraid of offending anyone. Be your own advocate. Fight for as much money as you can get because this is your final chance to maximize your pay before youโre in the door, confined by the rules for raises and promotions inside the company.
Before you begin negotiating your starting salary, you need to decide what your minimum acceptable salary is to do the job. This will be your line in the sand during your negotiation. If the company canโt meet this salary, then youโll walk away from the opportunity.
Itโs important to set your minimum acceptable salary nowโbefore you begin negotiatingโso that you can be confident you set it objectively and that you wonโt waiver when youโre under pressure during the negotiation.
The short version of this method is that you will counter somewhere between ten and twenty percent above the companyโs initial offer. Iโve chosen this range carefully based on my own experience hiring people, negotiating my own salary, helping other people negotiate the best salary possible, and several years of consulting with companies on their compensation structures.
Ten percent is the lower end of the range because itโs a relatively small jump up from their offer. The bottom line is that ten percent isnโt enough to raise any eyebrows. Twenty percent is on the higher side of the normal range, but youโll only counter twenty percent if your specific situation merits it.
Now that you have received an initial offer and delivered your counteroffer, you have a clearly-defined negotiation window between those two salaries.
Pretty much every step of the way, there are opportunities to stop putting in the work to get the best results from your negotiation. This is another opportunity to slow down and simply accept what the company offers in response to your counter.
But this window presents one last opportunity to maximize your starting salary, and you should capitalize on this final opportunity to nudge your starting salary higher.
And that makes it very straightforward to plan for the remainder of your negotiation because thereโs a very clear range of salaries that are in play in this negotiation window.
Now you just need to consider each salary increment in the window between their offer and you counter so you know what youโll say if they respond to your counter with that particular increment.
This sounds kind of complicated, but itโs really not.
Those first two segments were for those who are planning to change companies to pursue a new job. This section is for those of you who plan to stay put and want to make sure youโre getting the most out of your current job.
First, you need to define your goal. What exactly are you after? Before you can ask for a raise or promotion, you need to know specifically what you're pursuing.
โI want a raiseโ is extremely vague. โI want a promotionโ is almost just as vague. So whatโs your goal?
For a raise, adjust your market value estimate to account for your current situation at your current company. What should you be paid for your skillset and experience at you company? For a promotion, identify your target job.
You have to make a compelling case that that some of the available budget should be allocated to paying you a higher salary, or that you should be promoted to the available job and position.
Whatโs a compelling case for a raise? Your current salary was set some time in the past. Since then, what new skills have you learned? What other responsibilities have you taken on?
What additional things are you doing that add value to your company since your current salary was set? Thatโs your case.
For a promotion, you identified your target job. Do that job, then ask to make it official.
Document your accomplishmentsโthe things youโve done to add value to the company. For a raise it helps if these are quantitative, demonstrating the additional money made or saved by the company. For a promotion, it helps if these are qualitativeโhow have you improved the company?
Document your accoladesโwhat are the good things that others have said about your work? Make sure your manager knows that others think youโre doing a good job.
First, present your case to your manager in a 1-on-1.
After youโve had that discussion, follow up with an email so that your manager has YOUR version of YOUR case in writing in case it needs to be circulated to other approvers within the company.
