How to Negotiate your Salary

Congratulations! You've landed the
job. Now to take home the package that is most commensurate with your skills,
ability, experience and the job responsibilities. JobsOutNow.com reveals some
basic tools to use when you ask the employer to show you the money!

Negotiate

Yes, do negotiate. Employers actually
EXPECT you to negotiate your package even when they pretend they don't so don't
deprive them, or yourself, of that pleasure.

Negotiate After You Have An Offer

The time to negotiate your salary is
after the employer has decided he wants you on board and has made you a
concrete offer - not in the elevator on the way up to the Interview or after an
interview question you think you've particularly aced. An offer indicates that
the employer wants you on board and is convinced you have the skillset and
potential to be a valuable addition to the team. You now have the upper hand
and should use it to secure a compensation package commensurate with your
worth. It is far easier to negotiate a satisfactory package at this stage when
the employer really wants you and is focused on getting you on board, than
after you are on board and firmly entrenched at a given salary level and job
description. It is unlikely you will ever be in a better position to negotiate
a good package than you are at this stage.

Establish Job Responsibilites

Clarify your job responsibilities
before beginning to negotiate the compensation. Make sure you have all the
facts pertaining to the new position and are very clear about your role,
responsibilities and the job title. This detailed knowledge of the position
will come in handy as you negotiate your package.

Before you can begin negotiating, you
need to determine a salary range that you can base your discussions with the
employer on.

Firstly, determine the minimum salary
you could possibly accept, and make sure this is a salary that you can survive
on. This minimum is not to be revealed to the employer in your negotiations.

Next, determine a reasonable
mid-point salary based on what the job responsibilities are, what you have to
offer the employer and what you are worth in the market. To get a realistic
idea of what the position is worth, research the market. Look at published
annual salary surveys and job ads for similar positions in newspapers,
magazines and on internet job sites and talk to friends in the industry and
recruitment agents. If you are applying to a position at the right level, there
should not be a large discrepancy between what the position is worth based on
your research and what you are worth based on your experience, education,
compensation history and what you have to offer the position.

Finally, determine an extremely
generous salary level that is not too unrealistic for the position and that you
would be extremely ecstatically happy to receive.

Get the Employer to Reveal his Hand First

Always get your employer to reveal his
hand first to avoid pricing yourself out of the game or limiting the
discussions prematurely. If you are first to put a number on the table, you run
the risk of being perceived as 'overqualified' if your range is too high or
casting doubts on your professional abilities and track record if you shortsell
yourself. Revealing your expectations or salary history will limit your
negotiating range and remove a lot of the leverage you otherwise have.

Often, the employer will make you a
verbal offer and throw the salary ball into your field by asking you what
salary you expect, or what salary you made in your previous position. Try to
throw the ball right back in the employer's field by countering with another
question, such as "What do you think someone with my track record,
experience and skills could make in this position?" or "You now have
a good idea of my skills and track record and potential. What do you think is a
fair salary given the job's requirements and responsibilities?"

Do not reveal your previous salary if
you can possibly help it. Focus the discussion instead on what your background,
responsibilities and potential contributions are worth in this position. Your
goal should be to maximize your worth and potential value to this employer
through effective negotiation - the value your previous employer placed on you
should be irrelevant. Remember, what you are worth to this employer is a
function of the value-added you can bring to this particular job and your
potential contributions in the new role, not a function of how your skills were
utilized (or misutilized) in the last job.

If absolutely pressed for a number
and the employer will not give you an idea of his target range despite all your
best efforts to gain the upper hand, you can present the employer with the
range you have determined beforehand. The 'expected' salary range you reveal
will have what is really your midpoint as the minimum, with the upper bound
representing your 'dream' salary. Make sure you always start your negotiations
with a range, not a specific salary level.

Let the Games Begin

You are now officially at the
starting line, equipped with a verbal offer, your own well-studied salary range
and a solid understanding of your job responsibilities in this new role. The
negotiations will be fired either with the employer revealing his salary range
for the position or, despite all your best efforts to reverse the roles, you
revealing your predetermined 'expected' salary range first.

Best case scenario: You have played
your cards right and the employer extends you an offer that is at the upper
bound or significantly above your expectations. Your downside risk has been
eliminated and you can now focus your discussions on making a good situation
even better. If your predetermined salary range was £75,000-£90,000 and the
employer has offered you £90,000 - £95,000, you can counter with something akin
to "That is close to the range I had in mind. My expectations given my
background and the job responsibilities were closer to £95,000 - £105,000 with
£95,000 really having been my very minimum. How much flexibility do you have on
the upside?"

Worst case scenario: You have
prematurely limited your negotiating range by revealing your hand too soon and
the employer counters with a lower range, or the employer starts the
negotiations with an offer below your expectations. This is where your
negotiating savvy really comes into play.

Before you begin to negotiate, make
sure you and the employer are roughly in the same ballpark. If your well
researched and well thought out range of £75-90,000 was met with an offer of £50-55,000
from the employer, you have either misconstrued the job responsibilities or the
employer is paying significantly below the market. This is where your minimum
salary comes in. Does the range meet your minimum threshold? If not and your
negotiations don't bring you upto that minimum requirement, this may well be
the wrong position and/or company for you!

Justify Your Counter-Offer

Your £75-90,000 range was met with a
£70-75,000 offer from the employer. All is not lost. You will keep the
discussion alive by coming back with a sell proposition along the lines of
"Well let me see, the job's responsibilities as I understand them are
ABC" at which time you carefully recite in detail all the various aspects
of the job. "I really feel that someone with my track record and
qualifications could be making a minimum of £75,000 on the job. I was actually
looking for a salary much closer to the $80,000 mark." You then proceed to
justify your range. Confirm to the employer that you are very interested in
working with the company and that you feel you would really fit into the team
and could make a significant contribution there. Recap on your most relevant
work experience and mention again the skills you will immediately put to
productive use on the job. Mention that you feel your ideal salary is actually
very realistic given your experience and the job requirements.

Gain Leverage by Negotiating the Job
Responsibilities

If the employer's range is carved in
stone despite all your well-rehearsed negotiation tactics, move to another
stone. You do this by altering the role, albeit modestly to justify a higher
salary. This is where your detailed knowledge of the position comes in.

You can do this in three ways.
Firstly, you can add to the list of job requirements a task or responsibility
you have thought of beforehand; one that you have either read about, thought of
yourself or heard about from a friend in the industry. Secondly, you can seize
on one of the problems the employer mentioned during the Interview and offer a
solution that you would personally be responsible for. Thirdly, you can ask the
employer outright, what added responsibilities he would ideally like to have
the person holding this job ultimately assume if they were brought upto speed
quickly enough. Another way to pose the latter question is what added
responsibilities or areas does the employer wish your predecessor had taken
charge of. Asking the question "What are some of the areas you would like
improved on" or "What are some of the problems that my predecessor
faced" during the Interview comes in useful at this stage of the
negotiations as you try to establish additional value-added ground.

The 'business solution' or added
responsibility you come up with need not be monumental; in fact you should
refrain from making any big promises. It can be something as simple as a
Marketing Executive offering to arrange a brief monthly newsletter for the
firm's clients, or a database that would speed client reporting up, or a
slightly revised format for the monthly reports that would be more visually
appealing. The important thing is that once you have elevated the position to a
slightly higher plateau, you can then proceed to justify your 'ideal' salary as
commensurate with the increased responsibilities. You can go back to the
employer with "From what I understand, my role in this position would be
XYZ. However, I am also bringing to the job the following function(s) and
responsibilities . . . " at which point you recant the additional
responsibilities.

Justifying your desired salary as
being commensurate with a higher level of responsibility is an excellent way to
jumpstart stalled negotiations.

Negotiate the Package not just the Salary

You should be ready to negotiate the
entire package, not just the salary. Remember that you can enhance a less than
stellar salary by negotiating the perks. If your most ardent, well-rehearsed
salary negotiation tactics were ineffective at boosting the starting salary,
you can try to gain the lost ground at this stage of the game. Your discussions
can include medical insurance, car and housing allowance, children's education,
plane tickets home for expats, club memberships and further education and
professional training for yourself. Try to get any courses, seminars or further
education you intend to take included in your package. In many industries you
can negotiate a guaranteed bonus at a given date or a sign-up bonus. You can
try to secure a commitment to a minimum salary increase and/or title promotion
at a prespecified date in the future providing you meet certain performance
criteria. At the very minimum, you can ask for a performance (and salary)
review a few months after joining.

 

The Gentle Art of Saying No

It’s a simple fact that you can never be productive if you take on too many commitments — you simply spread yourself too thin and will not be able to get anything done, at least not well or on time.

But requests for your time are coming in all the time — through phone, email, IM or in person. To stay productive, and minimize stress, you have to learn the Gentle Art of Saying No — an art that many people have problems with.

What’s so hard about saying no? Well, to start with, it can hurt, anger or disappoint the person you’re saying “no” to, and that’s not usually a fun task. Second, if you hope to work with that person in the future, you’ll want to continue to have a good relationship with that person, and saying “no” in the wrong way can jeopardize that.

But it doesn’t have to be difficult or hard on your relationship. Here are the Top 10 tips for learning the Gentle Art of Saying No:

1. Value your time. Know your commitments, and how valuable your precious time is. Then, when someone asks you to dedicate some of your time to a new commitment, you’ll know that you simply cannot do it. And tell them that: “I just can’t right now … my plate is overloaded as it is.”
2. Know your priorities. Even if you do have some extra time (which for many of us is rare), is this new commitment really the way you want to spend that time? For myself, I know that more commitments means less time with my wife and kids, who are more important to me than anything.
3. Practice saying no. Practice makes perfect. Saying “no” as often as you can is a great way to get better at it and more comfortable with saying the word. And sometimes, repeating the word is the only way to get a message through to extremely persistent people. When they keep insisting, just keep saying no. Eventually, they’ll get the message.
4. Don’t apologize. A common way to start out is “I’m sorry but …” as people think that it sounds more polite. While politeness is important, apologizing just makes it sound weaker. You need to be firm, and unapologetic about guarding your time.
5. Stop being nice. Again, it’s important to be polite, but being nice by saying yes all the time only hurts you. When you make it easy for people to grab your time (or money), they will continue to do it. But if you erect a wall, they will look for easier targets. Show them that your time is well guarded by being firm and turning down as many requests (that are not on your top priority list) as possible.
6. Say no to your boss. Sometimes we feel that we have to say yes to our boss — they’re our boss, right? And if we say “no” then we look like we can’t handle the work — at least, that’s the common reasoning. But in fact, it’s the opposite — explain to your boss that by taking on too many commitments, you are weakening your productivity and jeopardizing your existing commitments. If your boss insists that you take on the project, go over your project or task list and ask him/her to re-prioritize, explaining that there’s only so much you can take on at one time.
7. Pre-empting. It’s often much easier to pre-empt requests than to say “no” to them after the request has been made. If you know that requests are likely to be made, perhaps in a meeting, just say to everyone as soon as you come into the meeting, “Look guys, just to let you know, my week is booked full with some urgent projects and I won’t be able to take on any new requests.”
8. Get back to you. Instead of providing an answer then and there, it’s often better to tell the person you’ll give their request some thought and get back to them. This will allow you to give it some consideration, and check your commitments and priorities. Then, if you can’t take on the request, simply tell them: “After giving this some thought, and checking my commitments, I won’t be able to accommodate the request at this time.” At least you gave it some consideration.
9. Maybe later. If this is an option that you’d like to keep open, instead of just shutting the door on the person, it’s often better to just say, “This sounds like an interesting opportunity, but I just don’t have the time at the moment. Perhaps you could check back with me in [give a time frame].” Next time, when they check back with you, you might have some free time on your hands.
10. It’s not you, it’s me. This classic dating rejection can work in other situations. Don’t be insincere about it, though. Often the person or project is a good one, but it’s just not right for you, at least not at this time. Simply say so — you can compliment the idea, the project, the person, the organization … but say that it’s not the right fit, or it’s not what you’re looking for at this time. Only say this if it’s true — people can sense insincerity.

Ugliness and practicality of real life

Singapore birthrate will continue to fall if no mindset and employment changes takes into effect. I am 31 and my wife is in late twenties. We think that we are at the right age and do plan to have our first child unfortunately something adds to our already existing many concerns. Recently she went for a job interview in one of the Government agencies. Skip the usual interview questions. I am surprised and taken aback when my wife told me, instead of stressing on my wife's competence, the interviewer actually asked about her marriage, age and if she plans to have children? We are not stupid. We all knew the underlying meaning the interviewer trying to imply, that is "I do not want to hire someone and then goes on 3 months maternity later on". Can she tell lie and hope that the interviewer will hire her or say the truth and not get the job? We are same as any other couple wanted to build up our career and salary so as to save, raise and give proper degree education to our children. However, sad to say, let's faced it, everyone!. This is the ugliness and practicality of real life happenings.

P/S: We did not hear from the Government agency anymore.