Basic Salary Negotiation Tips for Job Seekers
How New Employees Can Get Better Salaries from Employers
May 20, 2009
Being flexible in salary requirements may be thought of as one of best strategies for securing a new job. While this may be true, Dice TV’s Cat Miller advises in her article “Negotiation Tips for IT Boomerangs”, published on career website Dice.com, that job seekers do not have to sell themselves cheap.
Getting the right pay through negotiations requires that a job seeker or employee equip himself or herself with some negotiation skills as well as knowledge on what have to be done in order to attract better offers from employers. The following are helpful tips for job seekers on how to get good salary from employers.
Get Multiple Job Offers
To improve one’s leverage to demand a good salary, one must always seek multiple job offers through effective job search campaigns. South Korean online recruitment firm, South Korean Jobs.com notes that having more job offers enables job seekers to sometimes have the advantage of practicing their negotiation strategy with companies they may not be very keen to work with. Multiple offers also give one the leverage to negotiate for a deserving salary from multiple firms and finally settling on a company that agrees to offer the highest package.
Be a "Must Have" or Good Job Candidate
One of the ways by which job candidates can have a high negotiating power is for them to position themselves as valuable and indispensable candidates that any prospective employer will not like to lose. Right from the resume to interview responses, to dressing style and every other process in the job search, candidates have to do their best to demonstrate their exceptional value to employers. It is when a company appreciates the value of a candidate that he or she can have better chances of succeeding with a better salary negotiation.
Do a Market Research to Have a Salary Range
To be able to negotiate for an appropriate pay, a candidate must do a thorough research to know how much people with similar experience and education in the same industry are earning. Such a research will equip prospective employees with what the lowest and highest salaries are, for them to be able to quote an appropriate salary range during negotiations.
US-based compensation management company Salary.com advises that the main goal for this research should be to match one’s job to a benchmark job in similarly sized company that is in the same industry and within the same geographical area. According to Salary.com, larger companies generally pay more, and the industry and geography in which you work will also influence your pay. The key indicators for doing the job and salary comparison are: job description, type of industry, company size, geographical location, educational background and work experience. The comparison enables one to make appropriate quotations during a salary bargain.
Have a Good Negotiation Strategy
In order to do a good negotiation, a candidate should have the necessary negotiation materials in place including what South Korea Jobs.com describes as a draft negotiation script that responds to different possible scenarios that may come up during the bargain. Such scripts should respond to hypothetical questions like: “What do I do if the employer finds my request to be too high or too low?” Prior preparation is therefore necessary.
Negotiation Courses, Workshops and Seminars
To be able to make good use of the necessary negotiation tactics and strategies, job seekers and workers may require some form of training. Job candidates and employees may therefore need to take up negotiation courses or improve their negotiating skills through workshops and seminars.
In order to bargain for a better salary, job seekers and candidates need to try and secure multiple offers, position themselves as "must have" job candidates, do thorough market research about their industry standards, have a good negotiation strategy in place and train themselves through courses, workshops and seminars.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
