It’s Day 13 of 30 Days of Career Growth! Today’s task focuses on salary and benefits negotiation. Whether you have personal experience with negotiating or want to learn from others, this task offers you an opportunity to share your insights or engage with someone else’s post. Negotiating salary and benefits can significantly impact your career trajectory and financial well-being, so let’s dive in and learn from each other’s experiences.
Task 13
If you have personal experience with negotiating salary and benefits:
Share your own experience in negotiating salary and benefits. What strategies did you use? How did you prepare? Did you encounter any challenges or successes? Share any tips or lessons learned from your negotiation process. Your experience can inspire and guide others in their own negotiations.
If you don’t have personal experience but want to contribute:
Browse through the posts and comments shared by others about their negotiation experiences.
Like or react to the posts that resonate with you, showing support and appreciation for their insights.
Engage with the discussions by leaving comments or asking questions to further explore the topic and learn from others’ experiences.
Remember, this task is all about sharing and learning from one another. By participating, you can gain valuable knowledge and contribute to the community’s collective wisdom on negotiating salary and benefits. Let’s get started and make Day 13 a fruitful exchange!
Why complete this task?
Learning from others’ experiences: By engaging with other members’ posts and comments, you can gain insights into different negotiation techniques, strategies, and outcomes. Hearing about real-life experiences can provide valuable perspectives and help you expand your knowledge on salary and benefits negotiation.
Enhancing your negotiation skills: If you have personal experience with negotiating, sharing your insights can reinforce your understanding of effective negotiation techniques. Explaining your strategies, challenges, and successes can help you reflect on your own approach and identify areas for improvement.
Help maintain a supportive community: Engaging in discussions and supporting others’ posts creates a sense of community and encourages collaboration. By sharing your experiences or interacting with others, you contribute to a supportive environment where individuals can learn from one another and feel empowered in their negotiation journeys.
I was nervous about negotiating for my first tech role. I’d seen some horrific tweets where candidates shared that their offers were rescinded after they attempted to negotiate. But, in a way, the decision was made for me. I couldn’t afford housing if I didn’t get a bit more money as part of the offer.
I watched a video about negotiating salaries for career changers. I discussed all of the ways my previous experiences would be beneficial in the role and shot for 10% over my offer. They replied with a firm 5% increase. I tried to negotiate further with more PTO or a discount on my insurance premium, but no luck.
It was uncomfortable, but I’m glad that I advocated for myself.
On my very first job during university, I passed an interview, and the last question I got - was “How much salary do you want?”. I said X, thinking it is a reasonable amount of money. But then, the interviewer (head of engineering) just wrote X +40% amount on the back of the CV. So that was an unintentional negotiation. Or pure luck.
When I was a Senior Test Automation Engineer, I got a call from HR offering me a Tech Lead position at their company. After all rounds of interviews, they offered me the same salary as I had on my current job. So I asked again about the responsibilities and impact of a new position, and then I said that the salary should be negotiated cause the amount of work will increase for me. After a period of time, they offered me 35-40% more salary
For my first job, I didn’t have a choice at all.I passed out of university and we had a fixed offer for most of the people as it was a mass recruitment.
However, when I switched I had a figure in mind but they offered much lesser than thatI joined and left within a month with a slightly better offer than that.
I was dissatisfied even there after I came to know of my coworker’s pay . That made me realize I had very poor negotiation skills.
After that, I got really good offers by showing counter offers and communicating to them in a way that highlighted my importance and the value I could provide.
For me, it was always counter offers that worked out the best than negotiations because when I was negotiating they felt I had some inability and that’s why I was asking for it.
But I still do not know how to negotiate honestly and would want to learn fro someone who does it better.
Interesting post @al8xr - so am I summarising this correctly:
In the first example, when lacking experience, you unwittingly underplayed your expectations and it worked out positively.
In the second example, with much more experience, you made more demands, accepted the role in good faith, and they were honoured within a satisfactory amount of time.
That article you shared is epic! Too long for me to read fully but I appreciate the dedication to the cause
I do think salary / package negotiation is different between joining a new company and progressing within a company once you’re already there.
Alas, it tends to be harder to successfully negotiate once in a company - I say that as an employee, a hiring manager and a negotiator for my staff!
One thing that did work recently, to help make a case for redressing some imbalances within a group, was for people to update their CVs. I know I’ve tended to let my own CV stagnate while settled in a job, but over the past couple of years I’ve tried to keep it fresh on, say, a quarterly basis - you never know when you might need it
Whether negotiating for a current role, and I don’t think that happens enough in general, or for a new job I’d say evidence, evidence, evidence.
Over the years I’ve been fairly diligent in logging any successes, value adds / saves, positive feedback whether verbal or written. This can then be used to build a case for your increased value to the company. Gathering industry trends on average salaries can also be useful.
I’ve also found that asking using the words, ‘is there any appetite to review my current salary’ seems to be heard in a more positively engaging way than asking directly.
For me asking at half year about salary review has been a lot more successful as I seemed to get more then than an add on to the annual rise.
Hope folks find some of that useful.
You are absolutely right about both cases!
As for the negotiating article - it is great. But - it works mostly in the US / Western market with a lot of options.
If you don’t have best alternative to offer - it is almost impossible to negotiate. You can only bluff.
One of my friends, who is a CTO, said his negotiating strategy is to make an un-reasonable number of reasonable requests. In other words you can ask about and try to negotiate a lot of different attributes of a job.
I keep this in mind when I’m talking or negotiating with joining a company. Typically I’ll ask about and consider negotiating on:
Salary
Starting Date
Bonus
Sign on Bonus (cash on start)
Sick Days
Vacation Days
Equity % or shares
Health Insurance matching
Retirement Matching
There’s actually a ton of stuff that could be negotiated.
I remember joining my first company out of university and tried negotiating my salary. The HR lady laughed and suggested I just take an offer since it was my first job.
A lot of negotiating job offers depends on how willing I am to walk away and/or lose the job offer. Getting competing offers can help but it’s a lot of work and rather stressful. I got the biggest counter offer of my life by having a competing offer, although I ended up turning it down because the company’s culture didn’t seem good.
I wrote a bit about my career story recently and I shared my salary history: My Career Story (note: you’ll have to sign up as a member to read it).
Sharing salary histories with close friends can also be a good way to understand if you AREN’T asking for enough money.
Re salary: I tend to keep this simple, always state my current salary as the minimum salary I would consider before taking another role. This way, what ever they offered would be above that. If it’s less it would be a no straight away.
I see the current salary question as what’s the minimum offer you would consider.
In the United States and in my state of California in particular there are new rules. It’s the companies responsibility to share the salary range in the job posting. It’s also been against the law for a few years to ask the person applying how much they make now.
It’s always been a hard problem to understand what “minimum salary” you want or need. As you said Richard, minimum offer is actually what minimum you would consider to join a new company.
30 Days of Career Growth! Today’s task focuses on salary and benefits negotiation. Whether you have personal experience with negotiating or want to learn from others, this task offers you an opportunity to share your insights or engage with someone else’s post. Negotiating salary and benefits can significantly impact your career trajectory and financial well-being, so let’s dive in and learn from each other’s experiences.
