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Demystifying Salary Information
Arun Jacob points us to an article in the NYTimes about online tools that can help in salary negotiations. The article concentrates on two websites — Salary.com and Payscale.com — that use different approaches to provide information on standard compensation packages for particular positions and roles. The theory is that, armed with information that was once available only to corporate HR departments, you could have an easier time negotiating your pay using a fact-based rather than a feelings-based approach.
I've never found the IT salaries to be that accurate for my region. A few companies pay the amounts listed, but most of them are around $10k less than all of the salary sites. I don't think that the IT personnel are underpaid either... I think the sites are just inaccurate. It's kind of like those places that claim they can train you for an "exciting career in computers in just 6 months". Most of their ads claim that IT people with 2-3 years of experience are making $70k/year.
While it's important to have some facts when negotiating your salary, it's far more useful to bring in a list of all of the major projects you've worked on as well as some positive review/feedback letters from coworkers (not just IT staff... talk to some other staff that like you). Bringing in a printout from a website isn't going to mean beans to a manager... it's what you actually do for their company/department that matters.
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* You're in a much better position to evaluate my worth to the company than I am. (I *love* this one.)
* I am sure we can come to something mutually satisfactory. What would you suggest?
* I will entertain any offer commesurate with my skills and experience. (I don't like this one -- concentrate on them, not you.)
Ways to counteroffer:
* That figure could be workable with a few minor modifications to the contract. Lets table it for a moment and discuss...
* I have a comparable offer in hand from another firm but would much rather work for $YOU. Does $YOU have any money in the budget to increase that offer so we can make this happen? (Note the phrasing: HR Man has an ego just like you do, and doesn't want to say "Oh no, we're poor" to justify paying you less. He works for a big, strong company for which an extra $X,000 is a drop in the bucket! Hah, take that, applicant who doubted our financial health!)
* I could quite possibly be pleased with that number, depending on the other specifics of the offer. Where does this fit into the big picture?
* I notice you have offered me a $PERK. That is not that important to me. Could we perhaps eliminate $PERK in favor of increasing my base compensation?
* I notice that you have not offered me $PERK. I am rather more interested in it than I am in my base compensation number. What level of $PERK do you think would be appropriate? (listen) That is almost what I had in mind, but keeping in mind that I am accepting a lower base compensation in return for $PERK, perhaps we could do a little better. I know $PERK is cheaper for you than increasing my base compensation because $PERK doesn't cause my total cost of employment, for example taxes, future raises, and overhead, to increase linearly like base compensation does (listen). Sounds great.
These assume that the initial offer was roughly in line with your expectations. I once got offered $30,000 and poor benefits when I was expecting a package in the neighborhood of $55,000. That calls for a firm handshake and a "Thank you for your time, we'll be in touch."
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I've heard this a lot, and I'm genuinely curious: has anyone ever actually done a study to figure out how going first affects negotiations and haggling? It shouldn't be too hard, at a minimum, to set up a small experiment in which person A has something that's worth about $5, person B actually has $5, tell them to trade, and then observe how going first or second affects the average result.
You can't always trust folk wisdom, and such an experiment, or carefully conducting a survey, seems so straightforward that I find it hard to believe no one's done it before.
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