Negotiating Your Salary Offer 

Here are some more details for each of the areas we mentioned above: 

• Are you still in the process of interviewing or waiting for other offers?

• Having other offers for similar positions can help you compare what each company is offering to get a good bargaining range.

• In some cases, leveraging other offers to increase can be helpful but can also be tricky.

• This is discussed in more detail here....

• Do you have any personal circumstances that require you to be employed immediately?

• We all have responsibilities and goals we want to reach. This opportunity and offer may fulfill those ends immediately, and you would rather not risk that. That's okay. If that is the case, we recommend this approach:

• Be thankful and grateful for your offer.

• When you have a meeting with a manager and the timing is right, here are some areas to cover with them.

• When are the review cycles? Brager remarks that an interviewee should "Ask about education opportunities and reimbursement, ask about the review cycle, and ask about performance bonuses and 'merit' raises."

• Is there a rubric or template to describe roles and their progression?

• Ex. Junior Engineer vs Senior Engineer

• How do I monitor my work with you to make sure I am learning and progressing?

• Are there resources in order for me to understand how to progress my career?

• Is your offer within NYC or outside NYC?

• Salaries can vary from state to state for many reasons:

• Cost of living

• Talent pool in that area

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics can provide information on this.

• Does your experience exceed or fall behind the position's requirements?

• If you have less experience than is listed in the job description, it means that your possible future employer really likes you– it's a good sign that they're expecting you to meet the expectations of the role. You will want to evaluate if asking for more (and how much more) is in your best interest.

• If you have more experience than is listed, the employer may be underbidding you. Brager has some advice for this potential scenario: "One useful negotiating tactic if you've managed to get your hiring party to name a number is to comfortably say 'Ok, that sounds like a reasonable base salary, but I'll need to understand how the stock works out to know if this is worth pursuing.'"

• Your experience is what you bring to the table and what you're being valued for. It's what makes you stand out from other candidates and why you are being provided with an offer.

• Checking to see what salaries are offered to other people with similar backgrounds and experience will be helpful. The next two sections help in that regard.

• Have you researched the base salary of the position at the company that provided you the offer? How about the base salary of the same role in a similar company?

• Here are some sites that can help you research what companies generally offer for their roles:

• Bureau of Labor Statistics

• Glassdoor

• LinkedIn
  

• Vault

• Blind

• Salary

• Levels

• Jobsearchintelligence

• Are there any current friends, colleagues or alumni from your college currently working at the company you received an offer from who can tell you about salaries there?

• Reaching out to your network can help you evaluate an offer. Here are some questions to ask people that are connected to the company. You will want to see if anyone is connected via LinkedIn.

• Do you know if your company negotiates offers? If so, how much do people generally ask for?

• Do you know what the starting salary for this position is?

• Based on the aforementioned means of salary research, you can even further prep for your negotiations by setting various potential salaries within reason. According to Brager, "Before applying, I set a stretch salary, the salary I want, and the salary I'll settle for. This gives me three reference points to keep in mind when negotiation time comes. If they don't even blink at my stretch salary, I've low-balled myself and I know I have room to grow."
  
• Additionally, you should make sure your employer commits to the offer they have discussed. Patrick McKenzie, who has helped accelerate startups for years, advises prospective employees to "get offers written...but get it written by them and/or follow-up the discussion with an email recapping the important points and asking if you understood them correctly. Your notes will not convince their HR apparatus to honor the agreement in event of a retroactive miscommunication, but an email from their decision-maker likely will."