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Today’s Tip: Got An Offer? You Can Still Negotiate For More – Even In This Economy!
Companies feel that "talent" is on sale right now, and thus try to save additional dollars by offering candidates a lower salary than they have in previous years. However, unlike popular opinion, there are not many #2 or #3 candidates waiting in the wings. What most companies don't want you to know is that you are probably the only candidate that they feel comfortable making an offer to. Thus, you still have some negotiating power when that offer is placed on the table. Just like good poker players, you gotta know when to raise the stakes!Now don't get me wrong, I am not saying that an "All-in" is the right strategy, I am just saying I don't want you to call (or except) their first "bet" just because you are pleased to have an offer on the table and are afraid to lose it if you start "gambling".
As a general rule, I think you can get 10% more than their initial offer. If they offer 60k, then asking for 66k is reasonable. If successful, you just earned an immediate 10% raise! This is much better than what your expected raise will be one year from now. The lucky employees are getting around 3% in their annual reviews. So, you just negotiated 3 years of raises before you even started. And believe me, now is the only time you are allowed to have this negotiating power. Once you're an employee, you fall into a pre-determined set of matrix raises.
As long as you negotiate in a professional manner, you will not have to worry about them rescinding an offer because you asked for a little more salary. Most companies even EXPECT a little negotiation and when you don't ask for it, there is no easy way for a recruiter or Hiring Manager to suggest giving you more!
P.S. When you ask for more salary, make sure you hit on all your selling points that got you the offer in the first place. Make sure they see that you are an investment, and not a line item expense.
1 Comment
This is probably the most difficult piece of advice to accept. I spoke with a hiring manager last week that informed me that she was in the process of going through more than 300 resumes for the position I applied for. I have herd that the average number of resumes received for a posted position is close to 500. I have to believe that when the HR professional and the hiring manager are in the process of developing a short list and then interviewing those candidates they develop scenarios to fill the position. An example would be selecting a candidate A that is well suited for the position but perceived to be too expensive. If he refuses or asks for more money then candidate B becomes to more favorable candidate. Maybe I am being too logical. This is what I would do.
Kevin, What I think you are saying is that the hiring manager won’t consider candidate A because of the perception of being too expensive. Candidate B is the new candidate of choice and that they will accept a counter offer from candidate B.
The main point is that we all have to do our due diligence and understand what the market will bear. Can you suggest a site like salary.com that get one close to understanding what the market will bear? I don’t trust some of these sites as they seem to be working with salary information from 2007 or earlier.