Phew! After all the blood, sweat and tears; you’ve secured interviews, dazzled them with your personality & professional prowess, and now you’re talking numbers. Negotiating compensation can be one of the most nerve-wrecking conversations in your career. How do you prepare your case? I’ve negotiated a higher salary at every role I’ve accepted, and collected a lot of dos & dont’s along the way. See below:
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Come with industry data – Check out sites like Glassdoor and Payscale. Take into consideration your location, size of the company (Fortune500 will pay more than a startup) and the mean, median & meridian stats.
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Consider all forms of compensation – Maybe they can’t budge on the salary, but can you get more paid time off? Think through what motivates you, and see if you can include that into your package to offset less salary than you were hoping.
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Role play – Start as a friend’s hype woman if she were in your shoes. What would you tell her to ask for? Why is that # justified for her? Then in that mindset, what would you tell yourself? If that doesn’t work, get that friend on the phone and ask her why you deserve what you deserve.
*** Pro tip *** Shoot your shot & ask for your ideal #. All they can say is no. Sometimes, recruiters/hiring managers won’t even ask for justification 🙂
Can you think of others? Have more specific questions? Join our Lunch and Learn on Nov 16th where we will deep dive into this topic.
Cheers!
Ashley, CEO of Prowess Project
