Five Questions to Ask Yourself before Negotiating Your Salary
- Jul 1, 2016
- 3 min read
Come on down! It’s The Price Is Riiight. How much is this lovely candidate worth? We’re going to find out!
Sound like your situation, sans the cheesy gameshow music? Yeah, that’s how it often feels when you’re negotiating your salary. Bid too low and you’re undervaluing yourself. Bid too high and Drew Carey will move onto the next candidate.
Employers use job requirements and candidates’ unique capabilities to determine A) who is best for the position and B) how much that person is worth. As a prospective employee, fully understanding the position requirements and how your skills and experience will be an asset to the company is how you’ll defend and get the salary you want.
To start the negotiation process, ask yourself: 1. What makes this job challenging?
Are there special or additional requirements in the job description which makes this job more unique and challenging? For example, did you find out in the interview process that it’d be helpful if the employee was bi-lingual to handle calls from different customer segments? If yes, then ca-ching! You just became the Cheesecake Factory strawberry cheesecake candidate, not the lowly grocery store one.
2. What can you offer?
What unique experience and skillsets do you have to differentiate yourself from other candidates? Consider other unique and valuable skills you have developed along the way. Do you have experience in sales which would help you in a new marketing position? Did you minor in finance, allowing you to provide financial advice in addition to providing marketing strategies?
3. What are other people saying?
You don’t have people shouting at you from the audience, holding up fingers with numbers they think are right. You have something better; you have the internet.
Benchmark the salary of comparable employees in the company with glassdoor.com. If it’s a small company without any info, compare the position to others in the area using payscale.com or a general Glassdoor search for your position.
4. What else is this company offering?
Sometimes 401K matches, profit sharing, and sign-on bonuses are equally valuable to you as a yearly extra K in your bank account. Stay open to being compensated in other ways.
5. Do you need anything else?
What other benefits are you looking for? An extra week of vacation, free data plan for your cell phone, funding the setup of a home office can all be enticing. Many of these "other benefits" are easier for an HR professional to get approved than a salary increase or sign-on bonus.
Don’t be shy! The worst they can say is no. Ask for slightly more than you think you will get (within reason, of course) because, as in any negotiation, you want to leave room for concessions. Provide reasons behind your requests to help justify them with logic and facts.
Armed with the answers to these questions, you might find you’ve won something even better than the bakeware set, designer watch, or kayak (even though you don’t live by a body of water); you got the job and compensation you want.
Good luck!
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Jackie Vermeulen is the founder of The Career Mint. She is the messenger (put the gun down, you!), working closely with the mentors and some off-site experts to address the hard-hitting career topics in articles like the one you’re reading now.
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