How do I negotiate for a better deal?

August 6, 2005 9:33 PM

I asked for too little during the job interview. How do I push for more if I get an offer?

I work in a creative industry where people earn more prestige and more money by moving to bigger employers, and this sometimes requires big moves.

I'm one of the top-two candidates for a job 3,000 miles from where I live right now.

I currently make US$27,000. They said they wouldn't accept candidates who did not include salary requirements in their letters, so I asked for $33,000. My potential-future-boss let it drop that the budgeted salary for the job is $36,500.

I'm pretty confident that if I get it, they'll offer me $36,500. How can I successfully negotiate for more money? I'd like to try for $38,000, for the fuzzy feeling I'd get if I found myself getting a 40-percent pay boost. At the very least I'd like $37,000. I will be supporting my significant other until he finds work, so more money will matter a great deal in the short run, less in the long run.

Also, I told them that I would be able to start 30 days after accepting an offer. Now that I consider the repurcussions of giving two weeks notice, taking one week to pack up everything I own here into a van, driving it across country over five days, and then only having two days to adjust to a different city and a different climate ... it doesn't seem like enough time. Any tips on negotiating for an extra week or two?

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (19 answers total)

Just go for it! They're not going to retract the offer, after all. The ball is not really in your court until you have the offer on the table, so I wouldn't worry too much about what you said during the application process. Be confident.

I don't know if you're female, but if you are I'd suggest reading the book about women and negotiations called Women Don't Ask. They don't give specific negotiation tactics, but they explain the gender dynamics behind negotiating in a very helpful and eye-opening way.
posted by footnote at 8:14 PM on August 6, 2005

Here's one good quote from the aforementioned book:

"By neglecting to negotiate her starting salary for her first job, a woman may sacrifice over half a million dollars in lost earnings by the end of her career."
posted by footnote at 8:15 PM on August 6, 2005

I think you may be stuck with $36,500, but you may be able to negotiate some kind of starting bonus, moving bonus or whatever. This doesn't become a permanent part of your salary, but I've done some long-distance job moves, and you will need a lot of relocation cash for things you haven't even considered that will come up. Having some cash up front may be better than an increased salary, at least in the short run. Also, if you negotiate for more, it will raise expectations and it will be harder to live up to them.

As far as the 30 days thing, that's most likely a "ballpark" kind of thing. If you get the offer this week, you could probably set a start date near the end of September and they wouldn't think anything of it.
posted by Doohickie at 8:17 PM on August 6, 2005

I read your question twice just to make sure I understood it correctly because I was stunned by footnote's comment.

Salary negotiation is a game of strategy - you aim very high (sometimes ridiculously), and then you negotiate down to a reasonable yet still high amount. You absolutely cannot aim low - as I'm afraid you have done - and then try to go up. As soon as you make that low aim, your negotiating power has gone.

In your situation, I think you should consider yourself lucky if you get the $36500, and your (potential) employer will consider you greedy and capricious if you now ask for the $38.

And yes, I have been in this exact situation where a candidate changed his mind and wanted more, and yes we did retract the offer. We all decided that this was not someone we wanted working for our company - believe me, asking for more when you've already put your offer on the table looks really, really bad.

I'm sorry if this all sounds a little harsh, but *everyone* wants more money, so to get it you gotta have a game plan right from the start, not half way through.
posted by forallmankind at 11:02 PM on August 6, 2005 [1 favorite]

The difference between $36,500 and $38,000 is not worth risking losing the job offer over. I personally would not chance it if I really wanted or needed the job. Certainly I wouldn't bother asking for $37,000 if I'd been offered $36,500! I know the allure of getting a 40% raise -- it happened to me a couple jobs ago; I named a salary 40% higher than my last job, and they didn't blink. In retrospect I should have gone 50%!

You might ask for help with moving expenses -- that seems reasonable, especially if hasn't been brought up yet. They may ask you to commit to working there for a period of time (or else you'll owe them the moving expenses back) -- this too is reasonable if they're paying a significant amount of money.

You could ask for an extra week if you think you really need it, but I don't see why you'd need more than a few days to get oriented. You have the two week notice period to prepare. Go to Google Maps and print out directions from your new abode to the post office, the nearest grocery store, the bank, etc. Look up photos of the city on the Web, read about it, etc. Don't be shy about asking your new employer's HR department to recommend apartments if you need one, or to suggest areas of town to live in, or a bank, etc., but don't expect them to offer more than suggestions (they probably won't find you an apartment, for instance).
posted by kindall at 11:46 PM on August 6, 2005

One of the cardinal rules of job offer negotiation is: "first one to quote a number loses."

If I were in your employer's position (and I have been), I would think you were being greedy and not the kind of person I want working for me. And yes, I would definitely say goodbye to you. So don't assume the offer won't be retracted. Everyone has a budget. If you had been head-hunted and made an offer, you might have been in a slightly better position, but you weren't.


(Aside: this is a true story. I was once interviewing a person for a project manager position and asked him what kind of salary he was looking for. After hearing the figure, which was quite high, I asked him why he thought he was worth that much. His answer was: "You're a big, well-known company. You can afford to pay that much.")
posted by madman at 11:48 PM on August 6, 2005

Going from 27 to 36.5 is already going to be a big difference. Hell, you were happy aiming at 33.

You'll never notice the difference between 36.5 and 38 anyway.

Congrats on the new job.
posted by mosch at 12:54 AM on August 7, 2005

Are you confident in your abilities? If they make you an offer, ask for a three month performance and salary review. I was in the same situation as you, and this strategy worked for me (although, I didn't realize how much it would until that salary review!).
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 5:41 AM on August 7, 2005

I still think it's a bad idea to ask for more money after being given 10% more than your initial request.
posted by mosch at 7:07 AM on August 7, 2005

You've pretty much boxed yourself in when you required $33K and 30 days. Consider anything over a gimme. If there's a decrease in this company's benefits compared to your existing job, you could conceivably negotiate more compensation for equivalent benefits...that's about all you have. IMHO 30 days is plenty from the employer's perspective unless you have specific timing issues that couldn't have been discussed in interviews.
posted by nj_subgenius at 10:44 AM on August 7, 2005

You *can't* ask for more once they've agreed to hire you. That is at once both underhanded and desperate. You *could* contact them prior to their decision being made and inform them that, after much thought, you feel that your skills make you worth $38k and you want them to take that into account before they decide. That's better, but not by much. And yes, mosch is right, asking for more when they went beyond your original request is poor behaviour. Is this the first/second impression you want to make in a job you presumably want to keep for some time?

When I was contacted by an employer for an interview prior to receiving final grades from school, and then I got those grades and they were lower than my previous marks would have made predictable, not only did I not attempt to go through the hiring process without mention of them, I contacted them prior to interview to say "These are my grades. Do you still want to interview?" I didn't want the interview, let alone a job offer, on false pretenses. They were sure. And they hired me. *If* these people hire you after you weasel in a higher wage, be assured that this will form the basis of your reputation in your new workplace, at least among the hiring staff.
posted by dreamsign at 10:53 AM on August 7, 2005

They haven't even extended her the offer yet -- she still has a chance to correct her initial salary estimate if she does it with finesse.

Frankly, if an employer retracted an offer to me just because I attempted to bid up from an initially low salary requirement I had made in a cover letter, that's no employer I would want to work for. I would count myself lucky to have not been hired.
posted by footnote at 3:14 PM on August 7, 2005

Oh, I just realized I misread the OP -- maybe it would be cheeky to ask for more than the budgeted amount right away... (I thought she/he was just worried about getting the 36.5). NotMyselfRight Now's solution seems best.
posted by footnote at 3:25 PM on August 7, 2005

Bear in mind that the $1500 salary difference you're angling for comes out to about $50 on a bi-monthly paycheck after taxes. It's not worth getting your relationship with a new company in a new town off to a bad start over.
posted by mkultra at 7:29 PM on August 7, 2005

Prove yourself for a year's worth of work and then renegotiate at your first salary review.
posted by matildaben at 7:45 PM on August 7, 2005

I still don't think that readjusting a salary requirement in light of information received in an interview is totally unacceptable. What if you listed a particular salary requirement, then discovered in the interview that the job involved much more time/energy/discretion/travel or whatever than you had anticipated? Wouldn't a good employer prefer that you state honestly what you think you're worth?
posted by footnote at 7:49 PM on August 7, 2005

Wouldn't a good employer prefer that you state honestly what you think you're worth?

Yes. And a good employer would also prefer an employee who is willing to reconsider their position in light of new information...
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 7:50 PM on August 7, 2005

So I guess the moral of the story is "never state a specific figure as your salary requirement."
posted by footnote at 8:12 PM on August 7, 2005

My two cents: don't ask for the new salary directly in this situation, it's too, well, tacky if nothing else. There's a bunch of other ways to handle it, though--bonus, benefits, short review time. You can ask for a salary figure in this situation only if you can belivably tie it to new information--but that'd be hard. You're supposed to take everything into account when spouting off a number--one reason why it's hard.

It's a good reason that if you do have to throw out a number, it's a good idea to qualify it: "Well, any exact figure would of course be dependent on the specific job responsibilities which you are more familiar than I, but based on the industry and my own qualifications I feel X is appropriate." At least, that's what I've always thought.
posted by RikiTikiTavi at 12:43 AM on August 8, 2005