While they are not meant to comprehensively detail how to conduct a salary negotiation, I offer you these hints and tips to ensure you conduct successful salary negotiations.
Know what your salary negotiation limits are. Base your limits on your internal salary ranges, the salary paid employees in similar positions, the economic climate and Job searching market, and the profitability of your company.
Recognize that, if your salary is not negotiable, and even if it is, superior candidates will negotiate with you in other areas that may be negotiable. These include benefits, eligibility for benefits or paid COBRA, tuition assistance, paid time off, a signing bonus, stock options, variable bonus pay, commissions, car allowance, paid cell phone, severance packages, and relocation expenses. In fact, sophisticated candidates will negotiate in all of these areas and more.
Even if you are convinced of the candidate’s potential positive impact within your organization, and a negotiating candidate is likely to keep reminding you, most organizations have limits. You will regret violating your limits; even if you have to start your recruitment over, you will save yourself years of headaches and prohibitive costs
In one company, a candidate tried to negotiate a severance package that provided six months of his base salary plus an additional one month for each year he worked for the company. Plus, he wanted all of this money in a lump sum upon dismissal. At $5769.00 per pay, the organization would have had to come up with approximately $116,000.00 upon his dismissal after only three years of employment. I don’t know too many small and medium-sized companies that can afford to negotiate salary in this arena or come up with a lump sum such as this.
If your initial offer is not negotiable, or barely negotiable, try to indicate that to the candidate when you make the offer. Recently, I made an offer to a special candidate whom an organization had been trying to hire. (They waited to make an offer until the right position opened up.)
I said, "We are offering you $60,000 in base salary plus the potential to earn up to $20,000 in bonuses during your first year. Others who have been with us for up to nine years are within a couple thousand dollars of that base. So, you can see how much we value you. Additionally, as you build your accounts, some of our business developers are making well over $100,000.00." I was trying to tell her that the base was firm and that the upside potential in bonus was high.
I'll add more tips as time goes by. If you have a tip you'd like to share from the employer's point of view about salary negotiation, please send the Guide an email or post the tip in the Community Connection Forum.
Interested in the job searcher's perspective on salary negotiation? Take a look at Job Searching Guide Alison Doyle's piece about How to Negotiate a Compensation Package.