“As to Telly’s comment:
I’ve yet to hear of someone rescind an offer because a candidate tried to negotiate salary.

I’ve done this before, in fact did it just a couple of months ago, even though we needed the body. Paying him the salary he wanted was going to be a money-losing venture, so we just turned him down.”

So, you made someone an official offer, they countered with something a bit higher and YOU withdrew the offer?

All I can add is get everything in writing The person hiring might not have passed it through HR even if it doesn’t go under the salary column

I like this quote:
The employer is helping the employee with his need for money, and the employee is helping the business with their need for labour.

Though the way I look at it is that the company is paying you a risk-adjusted % of the income that you generate.

What I really like about these suggestions is that they attack non-salary budgetary items. Medium and Large businesses typically assign budgets to “other things”, like training and equipment.

In this case the dollars they spend are not “fungible”. Training and equipment dollars are taxed differently than salary dollars. These dollars also “look” different to investors b/c training dollars are just par for the course in many industries and most companies aren’t actually meeting their training needs anyways.

So basically all of these suggestions work quite well b/c they’re asking for money from a “different bin”, typically one that’s monitored less closely. Good idea!

As to Telly‘s comment:
I’ve yet to hear of someone rescind an offer because a candidate tried to negotiate salary.

I’ve done this before, in fact did it just a couple of months ago, even though we needed the body. Paying him the salary he wanted was going to be a money-losing venture, so we just turned him down.

On a bigger scale, “salary caps” (e.g.: we can’t do better, board won’t approve more, etc.) are actually warning signs to me. As a rookie these may be acceptable limitations, but once you have some experience and success, you should have a little “pull”.

Here’s my take: unless I’m grossly overpaid, I’m going to want a pay increase next year, at the very least I want to keep up with inflation. Being grossly overpaid isn’t really sustainable long-term, but staying at the same salary for 5 years is no less sustainable. So when I talk salary increases, I don’t actually talk about my numbers, I talk about their numbers: How much money do we need to make to hit the next pay scale? What type of billable hours, what rate of billable hours will help me achieve the next pay scale?

Yes I’m talking about my own money, but I’m also talking about theirs. If I’m billing $5/hour more, then what % of that is mine? If I generate leads on new projects or do the extra legwork to get follow-up projects or collect outstanding payments or find new resources or save the company development costs, then what’s my cut?

There are two classes of employees, the 20% and the 80% and if you’re part of the 20% (or want to be), then you also have to leave room for growth and developmen. If the company can’t offer you more money and won’t tell you what you can do to earn more money, then they’re likely just going to treat you as a grunt and stifle your abilities to drive your own future with that company.

My company offers a profit-sharing program for senior staff and preset, automatic pay increases over the first 2 years for Junior staff. I wouldn’t do it any other way.

Of course, YMMV.

A great number of employees at his company are ex-pats so they put a policy in place to allow employees to take unpaid vacation. I’m not sure what the limitations are but it’s been very useful to many people that go “home” for a month or so.

I also agree that often “the salary isn’t negotiable” isn’t entirely true (and I love the line that they have to pay everyone the same… riiiigggghhht).

Telly – good point about getting a good salary – at most companies it’s really hard to get a good raise except by leaving the company.

Mike

Over the past couple weeks I’ve been giving my sister some tips in salary negotiations as she was accepting her first out-of-school engineering position. Like you told your friend, I reminded her that they want & need her just as much as she wants and needs the job. Ok, so maybe she needed the job a little more.

To me, salary is extremely important. I’m not in it for the perks. The reason I say this is because I was one of those kids out of university that took the 1st offer that came to me. Well, it turns out to have been a great job and 8 years later I’m still here.

However, I’ve had to kick and scream (and thankfully I have a very supportive boss), to bring myself to a more ‘acceptable’ salary over the years. Because of this, I reminded my sister that…
your starting salary is what your raises and promotions will be based on from here on in. Get what you can now!

In her case, they used a similar tactic (“we’ve just hired 4 entry level engineers and everyone is being paid the same salary. In this environment, we can’t go any higher in terms of salary”). Well, she asked for 12% more anyway and got 2%. But hey, it’s 2% more than she would have had and with yearly raises, that will be compounded.

Sorry for the diatribe. Basically, my advice is, no matter what they tell you, it doesn’t hurt to ask for more. I’ve yet to hear of someone rescind an offer because a candidate tried to negotiate salary.

Salary is definitely not the only factor!