Negotiation is painful, and sometimes so painful that business students would rather pay more money than go through the experience again! Nonetheless, by far the biggest bang for buck that you can do with your time is negotiating a compensation package for a new job.
The one thing I learned from negotiating was the value it creates. I coached someone on how to negotiate their new hire comp, and the massive increase was lifechanging.
Love this article Deb. Incredibly important to remember that few things are rigid and seeking to understand first can make the process collaborative. Thanks for the great read!
can you talk about the scripts you used to respond to "final" and best offers? Do you find multiple rounds of negotiation risky? Ie. just go back to them with all you want once, and then work around that, rather than keep asking for new things as the rounds progress? how do you deal with negotiating with the hiring manager and not offending him or her
I will use your question as a seed for my new advice column I am testing out where I answer things which are more tactical, and less of a larger article.
Will put it on the list for one of our first posts.
From a recruiters perspective I feel there are different ways of approaching it. Every recruiter has there own way of making an offer and how much money they hold back on and how much they offer.
Talking about myself after spending 15 years in the industry and 5.5 years at Meta doing executive hiring, I would say it’s the expectations you set with every candidate and the trust you build with them that you are their advocate and doing your best to bring them in. Holding back on say 10k signon will not make a big difference to companies like Meta but that 10k is significant for a candidate. So as a recruiter if I have the approval from the comp team I would rather give that 10k and make the candidate happy about the offer than use that in doing back and forth negotiations.
On the flip side I know of many recruiters who go back and forth with candidates and give them little by little even though they have the approval from the compensation teams to go all in.
Different perspectives and ways to work. Ultimately it all depends on the trust and relationship between the candidate and recruiter.
Thanks for the inside look from the perspective of a recruiter. I have always been the behind the scenes (hiring manager or company rep for comp), and only rarely the person speaking to candidates on the actual negotiation. I have much more experience coaching candidates, so this point of view is really interesting.
First off great post and love the content generally. Thank you.
I’ve got a general question for you, but hopefully it’s in the spirit of this particular post :)
Why do you paywall some of your content?
I ask because the obvious answer for most newsletter writers — to generate income — wouldn’t seem to apply to you particularly (based on what I understand of your professional circumstances, which isn’t a complete picture I know).
And I think the topics you write about are most valuable to those of us early in our career, who might not be willing or able to spend to unlock content.
I’m genuinely interested in your thought process here. While I personally think you’d have more of an impact making your perspective as broadly available as possible, perhaps there are specific reasons you think gating is the best approach to releasing your product.
If you ask for any of my content (reply to the newsletter email for any paid post), I will send it to you. Starting in 2022, I doubled the content (one of which is behind a paywall) because I had to hire someone to run the blog. I love writing, but the admin functions of managing a blog this size started to take a lot of time. 100% of the money from the blog goes to the admin and my editor actually. Both are amazing and have enabled me to continue this effort.
Hi Deb! appreciate the response. I don't think I properly think about the administrative burden of publishing this much stuff, so thank you for drawing attention to that. It makes complete sense, and as readers we all benefit from the support you are getting :) It's also great to hear you're happy to share content through to folks who might not be subscribers. Again, thanks for the reply!
Great insights. Can't agree more that preparation is the key. Reflecting my own experience and mistake, when something needs negotiation, it tends to suggest that there is a lot on the stake here, but people just walk in and "wing it".
One thing however I am doing now as the hiring manager, is when it comes to offer negotiation, I put my best offer forward for the candidates and make it clearly, this is the best offer we can offer as a company. It works for where we are, an early stage startup, but certainly not applicable in most other organizations where both parties expect this "tango".
It is good you are clear with candidates up front.
Most companies like to leave a little room to "give" during the negotiation, but I know some companies do have a fixed final offer. This is especially true of groups of people who come in as a class (e.g. internships, consulting firm, rotational training programs). Even then, I have seen sometimes things like relocation or a signing bonus being employed for particular circumstances.
Negotiation is painful, and sometimes so painful that business students would rather pay more money than go through the experience again! Nonetheless, by far the biggest bang for buck that you can do with your time is negotiating a compensation package for a new job.
The one thing I learned from negotiating was the value it creates. I coached someone on how to negotiate their new hire comp, and the massive increase was lifechanging.
Is there an article that you published on the specific tactics. Would love to learn more about the specific tactics that are employed
Love this article Deb. Incredibly important to remember that few things are rigid and seeking to understand first can make the process collaborative. Thanks for the great read!
can you talk about the scripts you used to respond to "final" and best offers? Do you find multiple rounds of negotiation risky? Ie. just go back to them with all you want once, and then work around that, rather than keep asking for new things as the rounds progress? how do you deal with negotiating with the hiring manager and not offending him or her
I will use your question as a seed for my new advice column I am testing out where I answer things which are more tactical, and less of a larger article.
Will put it on the list for one of our first posts.
From a recruiters perspective I feel there are different ways of approaching it. Every recruiter has there own way of making an offer and how much money they hold back on and how much they offer.
Talking about myself after spending 15 years in the industry and 5.5 years at Meta doing executive hiring, I would say it’s the expectations you set with every candidate and the trust you build with them that you are their advocate and doing your best to bring them in. Holding back on say 10k signon will not make a big difference to companies like Meta but that 10k is significant for a candidate. So as a recruiter if I have the approval from the comp team I would rather give that 10k and make the candidate happy about the offer than use that in doing back and forth negotiations.
On the flip side I know of many recruiters who go back and forth with candidates and give them little by little even though they have the approval from the compensation teams to go all in.
Different perspectives and ways to work. Ultimately it all depends on the trust and relationship between the candidate and recruiter.
Thanks for the inside look from the perspective of a recruiter. I have always been the behind the scenes (hiring manager or company rep for comp), and only rarely the person speaking to candidates on the actual negotiation. I have much more experience coaching candidates, so this point of view is really interesting.
What do your new hire negotiation scripts look like?
I will write one up and share it in a future post.
Hi Deb!
First off great post and love the content generally. Thank you.
I’ve got a general question for you, but hopefully it’s in the spirit of this particular post :)
Why do you paywall some of your content?
I ask because the obvious answer for most newsletter writers — to generate income — wouldn’t seem to apply to you particularly (based on what I understand of your professional circumstances, which isn’t a complete picture I know).
And I think the topics you write about are most valuable to those of us early in our career, who might not be willing or able to spend to unlock content.
I’m genuinely interested in your thought process here. While I personally think you’d have more of an impact making your perspective as broadly available as possible, perhaps there are specific reasons you think gating is the best approach to releasing your product.
Again, thanks for all the great insights!
If you ask for any of my content (reply to the newsletter email for any paid post), I will send it to you. Starting in 2022, I doubled the content (one of which is behind a paywall) because I had to hire someone to run the blog. I love writing, but the admin functions of managing a blog this size started to take a lot of time. 100% of the money from the blog goes to the admin and my editor actually. Both are amazing and have enabled me to continue this effort.
Hi Deb! appreciate the response. I don't think I properly think about the administrative burden of publishing this much stuff, so thank you for drawing attention to that. It makes complete sense, and as readers we all benefit from the support you are getting :) It's also great to hear you're happy to share content through to folks who might not be subscribers. Again, thanks for the reply!
Will those negotiating scripts be in your book? Salary and benefit negotiations are very difficult for me.
I will work on a script and share it in a future post.
Great insights. Can't agree more that preparation is the key. Reflecting my own experience and mistake, when something needs negotiation, it tends to suggest that there is a lot on the stake here, but people just walk in and "wing it".
One thing however I am doing now as the hiring manager, is when it comes to offer negotiation, I put my best offer forward for the candidates and make it clearly, this is the best offer we can offer as a company. It works for where we are, an early stage startup, but certainly not applicable in most other organizations where both parties expect this "tango".
It is good you are clear with candidates up front.
Most companies like to leave a little room to "give" during the negotiation, but I know some companies do have a fixed final offer. This is especially true of groups of people who come in as a class (e.g. internships, consulting firm, rotational training programs). Even then, I have seen sometimes things like relocation or a signing bonus being employed for particular circumstances.