>> You want to start negotiating at your strongest point - when they have said “we love you, let’s make a deal.”
One simple practice is at the end of the interview when you get the, "So what's the salary range you're looking at?" question, I always give them about 5-10K higher than what I'm currently making with the caveat, "But I'm always open to negotiating." which keeps the door open for the company/agency to get creative with incentives or other valuable options to bring you on.
You shouldn't feel bad about asking for extra stuff. 95% of the developers companies are hiring are just taking what they offer them. If you negotiate, companies are more likely to give you some additional extras. You just have to ask for them.
This is poor advice. When you say "I'm always open to negotiating", you've immediately lost to a degree. Think about these two scenarios:
Q: "How much are you seeking?"
A1: "I'm looking for 80K"
A2: "I'm looking for 80K, but I'm always open to negotiating"
A1 may get 80K, A2 is unlikely to get 80K, because A2 has started negotiations before even being told no.
When you are asked for a salary requirement in a live setting, say your number (assuming you choose to say your number) and stop talking. There may be some silence, and that's ok.
This mistake is one I mostly attribute to entry level job seekers. I've been recruiting some junior level roles lately and these candidates almost always add the "willing to negotiate" to their number. I give them this same advice - say your number and stop.
This is generally good advise (don't suggest willingness to negotiate, because that suggests you will take less).
But, unless you've done research and have confidence that the $80k is viable for your experience and the position, you can also scare off many potential employers.
That's why I'd suggest delaying giving a hard number to much later in the process, after all the screening and interviews when its time to develop an offer. You'll have more information then to justify a given price point and more leverage for a "take it or leave it" moment.
I recommend giving either a range ($70-$90k) or your last salary (I made $70k at my last job, so that's a reasonable minimum I would expect). As an employer, I'd likely start on that low end ($70k) with an initial offer. That gives you the opportunity to decline (I made that at my last job, and my skills and experienced are much improved since), and then give me your terms (say $80k or even higher) with justifications.
No argument here - if you walk into any hiring situation without some knowledge of fair market value, you are in a bad spot. I think candidates don't prepare for the question as well as they should and try to improvise on the spot, and many are not good at the improv. Having a number that is well-researched is quite useful, and being able to negotiate on your feet as necessary once numbers are discussed is important. Email is made much of that easier, as numbers are often shared in that manner instead of in live conversation.
Yeah, but I assure you that most of your entry level job seekers have no idea and either ask too low or some wildly inflated number (my friend over at blah blah was offered $120k...). It's more about being able to justify your expectations than having an accurate number which is why softer targets like ranges or previous salaries are usually easier.
Entry-level tend to fall into two categories in my experience. One are the "...but I'm willing to negotiate" types that end up getting 10K less than their likely value, and the others are the ones who ask for some stupid number like you mention and end up blowing a handful of solid opportunities before eventually learning how the game is played. For both, it's part of the learning process.
I agree that ranges are not a bad idea, but having a target number to quote (even if it is a few K above what you are willing to take) and a basement number (will not accept below) is a good idea.
Never, ever, ever pin yourself down with a number. This weakens your ability to negotiate tremendously. Not giving a number forces the other side to present what they believe to be a good offer, as opposed to what you already mentioned as a desired number, which might be a lot lower than what they were thinking of.
I always say "I'm fine with a market-rate salary. I'm open to a salary cut from my current salary if the position has a great opportunity."
This routinely great advise (never make the first move!) just doesn't work in practice. Those making the hiring decisions are going to want to identify a range of possible salaries before continuing the recruiting process. Otherwise, if the candidate later demands an extremely high price, we both wasted a lot of time and resources.
Here's what I recommend and have used successfully:
A) Offer a range
B) Offer your last salary (with some expectation of a bump)
The key is that this gets you in the door for consideration without being committal. Once the employer begins to really sell themselves on you, then you have the leverage. Other offers can justify increasing your ask and now they're more hooked on you as the right candidate.
I've always used this very common tactic successfully in my almost 20 years living in Silicon Valley. If they take offense to this, then they're probably not a good employer.
The thing is, what you believe is a fair rate could be vastly below market rate. As a salaried employee, you don't have any real insight into what they are paying people.
For example, I've heard from a friend at Apple $170,000/yr + 250k in RSUs over 4 years. He said a co-worker accepted a job at Google for 180k + 400k in RSUs over 4 years. I would never have known these, and if I gave what I believed to be a fair rate, I might have underbid myself.
If your answer to "what salary are you expecting?" is: "I'm fine with a market-rate salary", I'll just ask you what you think market-rate is for your position.
Now, usually, you can just say something like: "market-rate will vary with the type of position, role and responsibilities".
The goal of the recruiter is just to get a confirmation that your expectations are in within the range permitted for the position.
If you suggest that others at Apple or Google are making $X and $Y for the same role, that helps the recruiter identify how you're evaluating a market-rate. It's up to you to not price yourself below what the market may pay for your services.
That's the fallacy of never making the first offer. This expectation that you could be undercutting yourself and your negotiation partner would have offered more. In reality, this almost never happens, especially if the expecatation that the terms are negotiable. The company will just offer the least favorable terms first expectating a counter if they're unsuitable.
I will admit to not knowing how things are done outside of Silicon Valley, so if that's the norm outside then I gladly defer to you.
But in Silicon Valley I've never been pressed to give a salary. So in today's market, if I were talking to you as a prospective employee and you pressed me to give you a salary without you telling me how much you want to pay for the salary, I would politely decline to continue the interview process. I don't need a job that badly (yet). It would feel to shady to me to have the prospective employer force me to give a salary expectation before they give me an offer. They know what their budget is, and if we're in the negotiation process, they know if I'm worth whatever their best offer is.
If you are a recruiter, and this is the initial phases of the conversation, and you press me on salary expectations, then I most assuredly will not continue the conversation. I don't think it's appropriate for either side to discuss salary expectations at that point.
If I'm desperate for employment, then I'm sure my feelings would change on this, but so far (knock on wood) this hasn't been an issue.
Yeah, fair point. If by Silicon Valley, you mean the large tech companies (like Google, Apple, etc), you're correct that they won't ask your salary expectations since they have their own internal process for determining compensation for a given candidate. (They also generally think they can outbid anyone else).
I have been working with smaller startups (down here in LA, but I've seen the same behavior up north), who tend to filter candidates based on expected salary due to limited resources and hiring for an exact role. (We tend to mask our cheapness by using phrases like "hungry" or "passionate").
Given that, as an employee, you are the seller in the relationship, that would be like Walmart not posting prices on any items and making you suggest what it is worth at the checkout. It is not usually how business is done.
About the only exception that I can think of is in sales of commodities, where the buyer typically does make the offer. I'm not sure you want to treat yourself and career as a commodity, do you?
Wouldn't it be better to state your price alongside your sales material? If you're not in the ballpark, then you can even save yourself wasting time talking with the potential client further.
> Given that, as an employee, you are the seller in the relationship
Very serious question: Is that actually true, and why do you believe it?
Is it "I'm not the one with hard cash, therefore I am obligated to negotiate like a big box retailer"? Don't be fooled into adopting an unhelpful paradigm or power-relationship just because what you are bartering is harder to quanitfy.
In many ways your employer is much more like Walmart than you will can be. For example, they are a larger entity that can amortize risks over lots of individual interactions. Also. they invest significantly in accounting, data collection, and have better knowledge of what rate they can accept for a transaction.
Walk into a negotiation thinking that you "owe" the other guy an advantage, and you've already given it to them.
The opposite of a seller is a buyer. Do you think an employee is better described as being a buyer?
> In many ways your employer is much more like Walmart than you will can be.
This is the commodity situation I mentioned. Try being a farmer for a while and see what it is like selling your crops. You'll then know exactly what I'm talking about.
If you are just another person that is easily replaceable by any other person, then you are, in fact, a commodity. However, I don't think that is what you want to strive for in your career. Setting yourself apart is how you make more than commodity wages. And, in that case, only you know how much your time is worth since there is nobody, or few, to even compare you with.
If you don't even know how much your time is worth, how is anyone else supposed to know? If you do know, why hide it? You are (hopefully) the desirable smartphone that boasts to everyone how expensive it is, not the undesirable flip phone that has to hide its true cost in fine print in hopes someone might be foolish enough to buy it.
> Do you think an employee is better described as being a buyer?
No, I'm asking why you see yourself as a seller-like-Walmart, which is a subtype of seller who freely offers a public fixed price in advance of negotiations (if any.)
It's entirely normal to negotiate for different kinds of things in different ways... And your labor is quite different from anything Walmart sells.
> If you don't even know how much your time is worth, how is anyone else supposed to know?
Well, so what? That cuts both ways! If the company also can't price the tasks they need finished, how is anyone else (i.e. the employee) supposed to know?
> I'm asking why you see yourself as a seller-like-Walmart
I see myself as a seller, and sellers have largely chosen the fee up front model because it is more efficient.
If you need an income of $150K per year for your time, you're probably not going to find many who really wanted to offer you $200K, and you're probably going to deal with a lot of people who only want to offer you $50K. Why would you want to spend potentially months or years in talks with people who cannot afford you just to finally find the gem who wants to pay you even more? Setting your price at $150K gets you talking with people who will pay you that much.
Even if you managed to get an offer $50K above your hidden asking price, does that justify the time spent finding it when you consider average employment terms? You cannot look for work for free. It is actually quite expensive.
I will add that setting yourself apart means, well, doing that. You shouldn't even consider doing what other people are doing anyway if you agree with me on the premise of not wanting to become a commodity.
> If the company also can't price the tasks they need finished, how is anyone else (i.e. the employee) supposed to know?
Does it matter? People selling their employable services tend to price them by the hour, day, month, or year. If the project costs $100K or $1B, it doesn't really matter from your perspective, unless you are concerned about the well-being of the investing party – but that is a risk even with low costs.
One need not behave like Walmart to be a successful seller. Car dealers, Auction houses, and Turkish carpet salesmen, to name just a few, are examples of other extremely successful sales protocols.
"But, I'm always open to negotiation" is a good way to guarantee you won't get what you want.
It's pretty well accepted that the first person to give a number loses, so you want to push this on them. They are the business with a budget, and a budget for your position, they already know what they can and can't afford. All they are trying to figure out is how much you are undervaluing yourself.
This question typically comes up WAY too early as well. If this is part of the phone screen I just tell them it's too early to tell as I don't know the full responsibilities of the role and other factors such as growth potential, etc.
One simple practice is at the end of the interview when you get the, "So what's the salary range you're looking at?" question, I always give them about 5-10K higher than what I'm currently making with the caveat, "But I'm always open to negotiating." which keeps the door open for the company/agency to get creative with incentives or other valuable options to bring you on.
You shouldn't feel bad about asking for extra stuff. 95% of the developers companies are hiring are just taking what they offer them. If you negotiate, companies are more likely to give you some additional extras. You just have to ask for them.