Are you afraid to negotiate your salary in a job interview setting? Many are so worried about losing the job they have been working hard to secure, that they refuse to negotiate for the salary they not only deserve but need to live their lives.
The average job search prior to Covid was on average 6.5 months in the USA. Now the data with Covid has extended the average search length to as much as a 12-month plus time frame. Because of the extended length of time, it takes to find a job, it is understandable that many would be timid in negotiating salary. Any income can be seen as a blessing over the prospects of continued unemployment after a prolonged job search.
The truth is that those who are afraid to negotiate for their salary are more likely to be job searching in the short term, even if they land the job than those who pass on a low-paying opportunity, to find a position with a company that will pay them what they need to live and keep up with inflation.
In life, it helps, especially when you are nervous to have a solid strategy in hand. The goal of this article is to help prepare you to negotiate with confidence in three easy-to-follow steps.
Step 1: Informational Interview
What is an informational interview? This is a formal conversation one holds with a professional, that they normally do not know very well about a specific role in their industry. In short, they are looking for guidance and advice. Informational interviews can be very beneficial because you get insider knowledge from someone who has more experience and insight. One of the main things to discuss in an informational interview is compensation.
Step one is to identify someone or perhaps more than one person in your desired vertical market who has previously held or currently holds the type of position you are seeking, at any company outside of the one you are applying to. Note, that it is not recommended to hold the informational interview with someone inside the company that you’re applying to, so they are not forced into any kind of awkward situation or conflict of interests. In this interview, you want to ask them for their advice on salary and get their insight as to what is common in their marketplace for how salaries, promotions, and raises are handled. Also, ask for tips and things to be on the lookout for. If you play your cards right, a professional whom you hold an informational interview with can become a mentor or help you with referrals to others they know in the industry.
Step 2: Figure Out Your Cost of Living
Not to belabor the point, but if you do not know what your cost of living is, you need to stop everything and figure it out. Why? How could you possibly know what to ask for, if you do not know what your actual living expenses are?
Here are some of the basics you need to account for:
| Expense Type | Expense Total |
| Rent/Mortgage | |
| Power | |
| Utilities | |
| Vehicle Payment | |
| Vehicle Gas | |
| Vehicle Maintenance | |
| Phone-Cable-Internet | |
| Insurance | |
| Food | |
| Healthcare | |
| Credit Card | |
| Other Debt | |
| Eating Out | |
| Entertainment | |
| Tithe-Charity | |
| Savings | |
| Grand Total: |
Now that you know how much your monthly expenses are to live your life month in and month out, you can go in and confidently ask for a salary that will not cramp your style. One thing beyond this current cost of living to think about is inflation. What I suggest is adding ten percent per year to your current expenses. We’ll address the raise in the next section, however, if you need $3,000 per month to pay for your expenses, try asking for at least $3,300 per month to make sure I can afford any cost of living increases in the first year that might spring up.
Step 3: Look up and Print Out Salary Information
Wouldn’t it be nice if job listings included the salary they are offering with the position? Job seekers are looking to make as much as they can, but many employers are looking to hire for value, meaning getting labor at a discount when they can. For that reason, it behooves the job seeker to find out as much as possible about the normal pay scale range
Thankfully there are many resources online that can help people find out what industries pay for specific roles, in specific geographical areas. From Glass Door to Salary to many other websites, a simple Google search will help you get the information you need to help you negotiate with confidence. Find a few different services, type in the job information and region you are looking at and print up the results to take with you. That way when you’re discussing salary in the interview, you can point to data that helps justify the salary you are looking for. Make sure you adjust your salary expectations to match your experience level. In other words, if the range is $15,000 per year between the bottom and top of the pay scale spread, but you are new to this type of work, your pay demands would best fit the lower end of that range.
Putting Everything Together
Once you have held your informational interview, calculated your expenses, and looked up the average pay range for the jobs you are interviewing for, you are ready to negotiate in the interview for salary.
Where do you start? Most will want to start with a figure but instead, start with a question. When the person interviewing you gets to the conversation about money, which is a good sign, normally they will ask something like, “what are you looking to earn?” or “what kind of salary are you hoping for?” However, they phrase it, and say thank you for asking, but before I can answer that question fairly, I need to ask you a question.
Here’s the question you should always ask before giving any salary range to an interviewer: “How do you handle raises and promotions here?”
You want to know specifically how long is it before you are eligible for a raise and how long is it before it is likely you will receive a raise/promotion.
Why is that so important? Because far too many people are assuming if they come in and do a good job, that the company that hired them will automatically give them a quick performance bonus. In reality, most companies do not offer fast raises. Instead, they look at new employees doing a good job as a reflection of their well-designed hiring process. In other words, they look at the recruiter, interviewers, and overall human resources department as doing their job to find top candidates who perform well at good labor costs.
Once you know how the company handles raises and promotions you can use the information you’ve collected to negotiate a fair salary that reflects how long it takes for that specific company to normally give out a raise.
Example of Negotiation Calculations
Hypothetical Scenario: Let’s say a job salary is normally $60,000-72,000 per year a role in an area like Las Vegas, NV, our applicant has 4 years of experience making them mid-level experience. Let us assume a cost of living of $5,500 per month.
Scenario One: Company normally offers a raise after 12 months of employment. With a 10% cost of inflation increase, our strategy would be to ask for at least $72,600. Why? We took our cost of living $5500 x 10% = $550, added them together and came up with $6,050 per month. $6,050 x 12 months = $72,600. Now the company might counter with a lower number, but the least the employee should accept based on the cost of living is $66,000 as that falls in the middle of the acceptable pay range and would allow them to live for the year, as long as they experienced no unexpected emergencies.
Scenario Two: Company normally offers a raise after 24 months of employment. With a 10% cost of inflation increase, our strategy would be to ask for at least $79,200. This number is 120% of the $5,500 monthly cost of living by the job seeker. Now the company might counter with a lower number, but the least the employee should accept based on the cost of living is $72,600 because the inflation rate that hovers about 10% is going to be needed for the employee to keep up with inflation while they wait for the 2nd year raise to come to fruition.
Any way you slice it, going in prepared with the information you garner from following the advice here in this article will allow you to negotiate with confidence and likely will help you get the compensation you deserve as you are not just asking for numbers off the top of your head, but using real-world data to substantiate your salary request.
Do not go in hoping to get what you need based on the goodwill of your future employer. Help ensure you get what you deserve and that you can afford to stay gainfully employed with them for the long haul by putting in the effort described herein. Best of luck