Reader question: how to negotiate salary

I received a question from reader Shana in a post last week (love this!) about salary negotiations in today’s economy, asking if I have any personal advice.

The bad news, Shana, is that negotiations are one of my least favorite parts about finding a new job and something about which I often ask others for advice. The good news? As a result I’ve received a lot of advice over the years.

Now, what I’ve mainly learned from the suggestions I received is that getting advice and putting that advice into practice (with success) are two very different things.

For example, I would consider my dad an expert negotiator, and over the years he’s always been the parent I turn to when a job gets to the point of negotiating salary. As many notes as I take and fancy phrases I borrow, I always feel as if I came across as unpolished and young. Is it in my head? Maybe, but that’s the problem, negotiating is a head game.

That extended intro is my disclaimer since I in no way consider myself an expert on this topic. But, if anything, by the end of this post you’ll at least have some comfort knowing that you’re certainly not alone.

So to start, a little history about my past jobs and negotiating:

Job 1: As I know I’ve previously mentioned, I graduated at a time when many companies were in a hiring freeze (hmm, sound familiar?) and despite my best efforts I couldn’t find a job. Finally, after a nervous breakdown and a desperate trip to a temp agency, a PR agency I’d interviewed with called and offered me a position. I was just thrilled to have a job so I didn’t even try to negotiate the paltry salary.

Job 2: A year later, I interviewed for a job in a national park and they offered me more than I was making at my current job. A year wiser and a little greedier, I hesitantly asked for and received about $1,000 more than their first offer. I was content and deep down, I really wanted the job so I took it.

Two months after I accepted and moved up to the park, my new boss left on maternity leave. That left me working 70 hour weeks and handling the job of two people. Young and anxious to make a great impression, I happily worked those hours and as a result received many compliments about the great job I was doing in her absence. Maybe too good of job as you’ll see soon…

A week after my boss returned from maternity leave, she announced she was moving to another position across the country. I, of course, thought I was perfect to take over her job (after all, I’d done it already for 3 months) and so did the muckety mucks at the company. But they were content to drag their feet on actually promoting me and giving me the salary boost that would come with it.

For six months, I worked both positions without any pay increase, becoming increasingly unhappy since my hard work wasn’t being rewarded with any real compensation. A breakup with my boyfriend, coupled with some other work-related gripes, eventually prompted me to make an appointment with my boss.

My boss was prepared for my request and she laid out the following proposal: a raise to $40,000 and the PR manager title, including retroactive pay for 2 months. I might have been content with that, except for the fact they weren’t going to replace my previous position – meaning I’d continue to do the work of two people – and I knew my predecessor had been making $47,000 even with me as her PR coordinator.

Let’s do the math. They’d been paying me $32,000 and her $47,000 so in total they paid $79,000 for PR for the company. Now they wanted to pay me to do it all for almost half of that!

If someone had a video recording of that day, with little editing they could have made it into a “how not to negotiate” training resource. Among the things I did wrong:

*I went into the meeting unprepared and without a clear number in my head
*I let my emotions get the best of me (let’s just say there were tears involved)
*I brought up that I knew my predecessor’s salary and that I should make at least that
*I wasn’t ready to walk away if negotiations failed

It makes sense that if these are the wrong ways to negotiate a raise, the opposites are the right way, so here is what I should have done:

*I should have had a number and a must-have list in my head. I knew I wanted more money, but I didn’t take the time to research comparable salaries and to find an amount that I felt was fair.

*I hadn’t written down a list of the reasons I deserved more money. Saying my predecessor made x amount was not a strong argument for why I deserved that salary. Anecdotally everyone had told me I was amazing and doing better than my predecessor, but I should have had statistics and specific examples to support my belief that I was worth more.

*There is no faster way to lose credibility than to cry in the office. I was at my emotional wit’s end and I let all of those factors affect my composure. Negotiating is a business deal, and to borrow from Tom Hanks, there’s no crying in business (okay, he said baseball but this is my blog so I can use a little artistic license).  

Yelling, threatening and sarcasm are also not good emotions to let loose in a salary negotiation. Thinking back, as ridiculous as their offer was, I could have responded by saying in a clear, calm and confident manner that their offer was not acceptable and that I felt I was worth much more for x, y and z reasons.

*Which brings me to what I consider probably the biggest factor in bargaining – I wasn’t willing to walk away. As unhappy as I was in my job, I think I had a naive hope that they would do right by me and offer me what I felt I was worth. When they didn’t, I was shocked and I didn’t have a Plan B.

Sometimes I wish I could be that person that spontaneously quits and walks out of the room in a dramatic fit. But I’ve always been a planner and the thought of quitting a job without one to fall back on quite frankly terrifies me. I do think back to this instance and wonder what would have happened if I’d challenged them and given the impression that I would walk if they didn’t at least meet me in the middle.

Knowing many things in hindsight – such as how good of job I did (which many people told me after I eventually quit) and how difficult it is for them to find quality managers willing to live in a national park – I bet they would have caved or at least met me in the middle.

But as always, hindsight is 20/20. Which leads me to…

Job #3: After the experience at job #2, job #3 was a dream. They offered more than I was expecting and I accepted on the spot. Which as you’ll read later on is a major no-no, but I loved the company and they’d exceeded my salary expectations, offering in effect twice my previous salary after cost-of-living was factored in.

A few years later, I was checking my boss’ emails while she was on vacation and I “happened” to come across an email she’d received from the corporate PR office. It was written around the time I was interviewing and in the email exchange my boss stated that she was willing to go up to an amount that was actually $4,000 more than what I was offered!

Again, hindsight, but what it taught me is to always ask for time to consider an offer. If I’d done this, I might have come back with a counter-offer and a starting salary as much as $4,000 higher.

I’m still at Job #3 and enjoying it, but a long distance relationship in the last year prompted me to start the job search again as I hoped to move to California to be closer to the boyfriend. We’ve since broken up, but one positive that came of it was that I got back out there to brush up on my interviewing.

It had been over three years and to be honest I felt super rusty when some of the interview questions were thrown at me, but I did have two job offers come of it.

The first offer was a good $25,000 less than I wanted so it wasn’t even worth it to go through the back and forth of negotiating, especially since I wasn’t completely sold on the job. Not to mention, the recruiter had mentioned several times over the phone that the reason it had taken so long to give me a firm job offer was that they were going through layoffs. Um, yeah that doesn’t really make me want to leave my nice, secure job…

The most recent one, the job on which I blogged recently, did have some back and forth because they were pretty close to what I was asking. However, they eventually decided they wanted to interview some local California candidates since they were concerned about my salary and relocation expectations.

Two months later (which was last week), they gave me a call and said they were ready to make a decision and was I still interested? I’d thought about it a lot and I wasn’t interested but I also didn’t want to burn any bridges with this company. So I mentioned my recent “promotion” at my current job and how that would boost my salary even higher and that I still wanted to move to California but that I was content for now.

Before I could finish my rehearsed let-down, the recruiter asked about my raise and what my new salary expectations were as a result of my promotion. Which set off a little bell in my head that the level we’d been talking about before must not have been too off because wouldn’t she have immediately let me know that they couldn’t even consider matching my higher salary if that was the case?

I’ll never know because I basically told her that salary wasn’t 100% the issue and that I didn’t know if I wanted to move from a job that was secure and that I liked to an unknown job in this economy. If anything, this economy has made my standards higher because I know I have a good thing going.

I had too much respect for this company to engage in serious salary negotiations with them since I didn’t have any intention of accepting their offer, but part of me definitely wonders how negotiations would have gone in this situation where I clearly could have walked away from the negotiating table without any qualms. Especially because I saw they re-posted the position that same afternoon, leading me to believe they hadn’t found many other strong candidates…

It’s sort-of a Catch-22, because if I don’t want a job I usually won’t even bother with salary negotiations; if I do want a job, we get to salary negotiations and I’m hesitant to walk away because I’ve already invested so much time and emotion into it. 

Which is all a long-winded way of saying that the surest way I’ve found to be successful at negotiations is to have the ability to walk away.

In this economy, though, that’s not necessarily a luxury most people have so below are a few other tips gleaned from people I’d consider master negotiators:

1. Assess and prioritize your needs and interests – What do you really want? Is salary the most important factor or is it something else that the company may be in a position to offer?

2. Have ready a list of alternatives – what are some acceptable alternatives to your ideal offer? These are handy to have ready if they unequivocally come back with a “no” to your first request since it gives the impression you’re willing to meet somewhere in the middle.

3. Assign a value to the differences between your alternatives – For example, how much less salary would you accept in the new job in order to acquire a better title and more responsibility?

4. Assess the other side – It’s important to put yourself in the mindset of the other negotiator in order to find their weaknesses. How well do you fit what they’re looking for? Is what you offer easy to find elsewhere? Are there any time constraints to filling the position that would make them more anxious to reach an agreement?

5. Gather external standards and criteria relevant to the negotiation – As mentioned, knowing the typical salary for similar positions nearby helps because both sides want to believe that any deal reached is fair and reasonable. External or “objective” criteria, such as stats from salary.com or similar websites, are often accepted as establishing what is fair and reasonable. If you believe you’re worth more, be prepared to support this belief with concrete, non-emotional examples.

6. Prepare for flexibility in the process – this might be one of the areas I’ve always gone wrong. In my head I’ve practiced a conversation that always follows a precise order of events. However, I’m immediately thrown off-balance when the other negotiator asks an unanticipated question or brings up something unexpected. Don’t be rigid in your expectation of how the conversation will go, but do plan for a variety of circumstances.

7. Ask questions – Once you’re on the phone with the person you’ve determined is the decision-maker/salary negotiator, start by asking questions. My step-mom is especially a fan of this one because the more the negotiator talks, the more you may learn about the factors that are of most importance to the company.

For example, she advised me once to ask the recruiter how I stacked up against the other candidates they’d been interviewing, i.e. areas that I excelled and areas I might fall short of my competition. I thought it was a risky question and I cringed on my side of the phone as I asked it. To my surprise, the recruiter answered it (albeit with a little deflection on her part) and it gave me the opportunity to counter the “areas I fell short” with information I hadn’t previously provided.

8. Don’t accept right away – Once they do make a salary offer, a well-timed pause or even silence can have a wealth of meaning because such a non-committal reaction will have the negotiator on the other end wondering if they offered too low. Then, simply thank them for the call and stress how excited you are by the prospect of working for them, explaining that you need to think it over.  

9. Counter-offer – Call them back in a timely offer (usually the next day or a specific time you’ve agreed upon in the previous call) and again, explain that you are very excited about the prospect of working for the company and you’d like the job but the salary offered was a little lower than expected. If you haven’t done it earlier in the process, cite the research of comparable salaries or provide reasons you feel you’re worth more than what was offered.

10. Don’t be confrontational – Whatever you do, don’t get mad, tearful or overly emotional during the negotiation process. Ask for what you want, don’t demand or give ultimatums. Keep in mind that the employer thinks you’re the best person for the job and wants to hire you, so there’s no reason to assume an adversarial stance.

And lastly, they always tell me to have fun! Yeah, easy for them to say…

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