Negotiating salary remains one of the most awkward processes in the entire workforce structure –often resulting in people quietly accepting what they are offered, rather than what they deserve. In this article we discuss how to negotiate higher salary job offer. One of the most crucial fallouts of the Great Recession of 2007-2008, was that prized and skilled personnel signing on to jobs that paid peanuts. In the subsequent three years that the world took to gradually pull itself out of this mess, human resource recruiters had a field day, as hundreds of talents were enrolled for just pennies of their true dollar worth.

The process by which salaries are decided and negotiated is mostly through spit-balling, hunch work, and a lot of haggling. What starts as a passionate drive to do one’s best assuming that the money would follow, often ends with someone’s hard work getting exploited. Had they only been comfortable enough discussing salary and insisting on higher pay, the scenario would have been much amicable.

Once a prospective recruit is shortlisted, the onus for negotiating on the lowest salary for the company is on the recruiter’s head, while the burden to negotiate the highest salary is upon the applicant. Studies have shown that people who attempt to negotiate at all usually receive an average of 7% hike to their original offer. Now, this may not sound a lot, but if you and a few colleagues, who negotiated and you didn’t, joined a company and worked there for forty years, you would need to work for almost a whole decade longer to get as rich as them.

While money is unquestionably critical, it is often just a means to an end. Keeping that in mind, remember that the salary negotiation process is conclusively a game. And not to mention, if you come across as too money-minded and ravenous, some firms will reject you outright, or worse, try to leverage that to get you to accept a lower offer.

Do Your Groundwork

You need to know exactly what you are dealing with in terms of compensation for a similar job. There are a lot of reference websites like glassdoor that can help you with this. If you know of other people who have similar education and experience, you can reach out to them and use their compensation data to prepare your own salary range.

Assemble your Number

While research of comparative data is essential, you also need to get a clear design of your own acceptable number.  The most crucial this is to remain emotionally detached from this number. Ask for more than what you actually want. Also carefully analyze the complete deal like salary, bonus, stocks, growth opportunities, training and education.

Increase your Value

Before you attempt to negotiate a hike in your salary, make sure that you have enhanced as much as possible between now and the last assessment by your superiors and equals. For instance, if you are a programmer who is awesome at Java, but never needed to excel at Golang because the need never arose- get yourself into Golang classes on your own time. Your capital value would automatically be upgraded.

Set the Stage

The time preceding your negotiation attempt needs to be the very nest you have ever churned out. Garner as much awards or acknowledgments as you can in this period. Improve your working relationships with underlings, peers, and superiors as well. The best time, however, to initiate all of these efforts is a short time after the last appraisal or just before the middle of the year. These are all useful, especially if you are already part of a company with which you are negotiating.

Being Confident during a negotiation

The worst that can happen is a ‘No’. So remember that once you stepped into the negotiation ring there is no stepping back. If you are scared of losing your job because of negotiating you might as well not take it or quit it, as you are in the absolutely wrong organization then. Walk into the room, confident powerful, prepared, and smiling. You need to dictate the pace of the negotiation. You need to proactively ask questions rather than meekly sit and answer. Meekly sitting and answering is the attitude of followers, not a leader, and a follower has no right to dictate terms of employment or even question them.

Remember you are Negotiating with Professionals

Always remember that the person interviewing you has been through this process hundreds of times. You are at a natural disadvantage in this habitat, and if you are scared or passive, the interviewers will simple perform their job to the letter and secure the best possible deal for their bosses. Always bear in mind that the art of negotiation is best chronicled as two parties getting together to achieve a common acceptable middle ground so that both can walk away satisfied to some degree.

Ask questions

Seek answers to questions about the work environment and the scope of advancement present in the job. Try to derive a pattern. When the role of questioning is reversed, you are putting the other negotiator constantly on the reactionary foot, and this could be to your advantage. Gain as much knowledge as possible about what is expected of you, and use this information to gauge the pay scale you should aim for.

Formalizing the offer

Once the process of negotiation comes to a close, the usual scenario is that you are presented with a counter-suggestion and an offer if they try to retain or sign you. If you accept the offer, never leave any important matters to simple verbal understanding alone. Do not respond with a Yes or a No immediately and instead thank for the offer and propose that you will get back to them. This gives you space and time to think about all the small details that might have eluded you in your excitement.
If your salary negotiations were successful, congratulations. But in case, the method doesn’t work out for you, do not make the mistake of speaking about personal problems and issues that initiated the process or get emotional. Simply get up, thank everyone for the opportunity and walk out.

In the end, a successful salary negotiation comes down to confidence, composure, belief in oneself, and research. Negotiating a salary is like tackling other major life events. Regardless of how your first negotiation goes, you can only go up from there – since you have embraced the idea that can influence your salary. Even if you were never the best employee in the world, you have nothing to worry about unless you were the absolute worst employee.