Negotiating

I want to talk with you about depersonalizing some of the things that happen during an interview that involve a negotiation or, for that matter, could involve an interview. No matter which 1 it is, job hunters sometimes get really testy and touchy about employer questions. It is though they never heard the line, " It's business. It's not personal." But they personalize everything. As a result, they become offended rather than looking at things as a negotiating ploy.

So, for example, when a firm is talking with you as a candidate pretty early on and they are trying to get a sense of how much you earn and how much we're looking for, and, if they are unwilling to reveal what they are willing to pay, job hunters take it very personally. "Why won't they tell me? I'm upset. You know I just want to know what the job is going to pay. "

Trust me. They will let you know if they don't want to talk with you again. If they don't see your value all at the price they're willing to pay or they can't pay enough to get you. It's really that simple. So rather than freaking out, very simply understand that they will make decisions based upon what you tell them.

So let's say you get to the offer stage. You made it past the thirty seven rounds and jumped through all the hoops that they wanted you to jump through and they've decided on you. Now they're doing some parameters testing and theQy ask, "Would reconsider a position less than the top range that they told you about?"

"WHAT?". And people get all sorts of indignant! "Why wouldn't they. . .!" They just want to know if you would consider something less.

That's because if they can save five or ten thousand dollars, they're happy to do that and you can just very simply respond by saying "Hey, look. You are bigger entity than I am? In. Is there a problem with paying me the amount that's been spoken about?" Make them defend their position proactively rather than flipping out, rather than getting defensive

If they wind up talking about some other elements of the job that winds up not being to your liking, instead of freaking out let's say they talk about a review policy), let's say they talk about a start date that isn't quite to your liking, a lesser salary, or a different review policy or start date estimate, "hat's different here," and make them explain it to you so you understand. It may not change your reaction but I think going for them explaining goes a lot further than turning your insides out, not knowing what's going on, freaking out, taking all these things as personal insults and affronts and going crazy.

Again it's business. It's not personal. They're not doing it to you. What they're trying to do was negotiate the best deal they can for them. You are experiencing the collateral impact. They're not thinking about you.

Once you try to humanize it by asking questions, it calms you down all lots and it makes them explain/justify why they want you to be flexible.

As a reminder, if you make a concession in some way, go for concessions on their side. An earlier review policy. Better benefits . . . something. Make them concede something.

If they're not willing to do that, there's a message in that for you. It's not personal. It may reflect a rigid structure that they can't defeat which you have to decide whether you are comfortable with. You have to start doing some trade offs in in your mind in order to explain to yourself why you would accommodate them and not accept or not required accommodation for them. Whatever you decide is OK; it's not bad intrinsically. It's part of the bargains in the negotiation that each side engages in.

Again, I encourage people to go for obtaining a reciprocal concession. They make something. It doesn't have to be a big deal. It can just be an extra vacation. They can be an extra personal day where the boss looks the other way and it's not counted. Whatever it is, just look for something in return.

I just want to speak to you today about what is is the biggest salary negotiation mistake job. I want to preface this by saying recruiters-- agency recruiters, corporate recruiters, all understand the principle taught from the movie Glenn Gary Glenn Ross, a fabulous movie and play; you've never seen it, watch it sometime. It helped launch Alec Baldwin as an actor. As I just said, there is a scene where you hear Baldwin talks about “the ABC of sales” and ABC stands for, “ always be closing.”

Employers and recruiters understand that you don't close at the end of the sale. You close from the from the very beginning. I am not talking but heavy-handed closing; it can be a very gentle close. So, it really starts off, “what are you looking for in the way of salary? How much are you making,” and how they respond to that knowing what the salary ranges for the position. So, for you is the job hunter, the mistakes you make are really in a series that leads up to the big 1.

The 1st 1 is you don't have an idea of your value in the marketplace. So, what you decide to do is walk in and believe that you are earning X number of dollars and you accept the notion that you are only entitled to Y number of dollars on top of that. That's because you don't research the market for what you do and, as a result, you walk in like a babe in the woods and accept the fact that . . . Well, you don't even notice the fact that they are trying to elicit information from you about what you're looking for. Thus, because you don't have knowledge, you are acting in an ignorant manner, you offer up a salary range because you've always been coached to give a range, right? That’s because you don't really know the market, you take other peoples’ word who have an ulterior motive in the scenario and accepted what they tell you as what your value is. You haven't done wrong on homework or done your own research. You have listened to the recruiter. You listened to the corporation and they've identified the value for you as “that's the price that they're willing to pay” through the corporate side or, from the agency's side, that's the price that they know their client is willing to pay. So, you are getting boxed in at the beginning.

So, most of you arrive and give a salary range. I’m just going to pick two numbers arbitrarily-- $150 to $160 or $100 to $120 and, if you are looking at a job ad and you saw there is a salary range there (I’m going to pick 100 K to 120 K going forward), you zero in on the 120, right and rightly so. You see the range; you want to get the most that you can, but they do the same thing and the result winds up being, when you the offer a range of 100K - $220K, the employer hears the bottom number, knowing that that would be okay and they are always going to be driving you to that point.

So, the mistake really comes down to don't talk about a range. Know your value. Know what the market pays for what you do and, as a result, ask for that number. Be prepared that, it's possible, that they might come in little bit less and that's okay. At the end of the day, what you want to be doing is knowing your real value, knowing what you should be getting, asking for it right then at the beginning of the process, not waiting until the very end when they have already established what they are going to pay and it may not satisfy you.