Salary Negotiation Skills

I often wonder why so many software developers don't want to raise their salaries through wage negotiation, even if some have thought about it.

Wage Negotiation is very important. It is not just because the salary can be accumulated slowly, but you will be given more deposits when you leave. Moreover, your evaluation of yourself and your performance in wage negotiation will greatly affect your understanding of your service provider.

When you become a part of the company, it is difficult for the company to change your first impression. Therefore, if you euphemistically report your salary expectations during the salary negotiation, you will respect the boss of the company, it is very likely that your future in this company will be bright.

Salary Negotiation started before you applied for the job.

The initiative in salary negotiation depends largely on your reputation. Imagine whether a famous athlete or movie star pays for advertising depends on their fame or their expertise? This is obvious. This is the same for the software development industry or other industries. The higher your reputation is, the more initiative you take during the negotiation, and the higher your salary.

So what should you do to improve your awareness in the software development industry?

For a small number of friends, they are successful by chance. But for most coders, some special tips are needed. If you have listened to this blog, you may have learned that I strongly recommended personal branding and self-marketing.

One of the most basic tips is to use as many media as possible to increase your awareness. Writing blog posts, writing books or articles, speaking in certain meetings or groups, doing some video tutorials, joining some open-source projects, and other methods can greatly improve your popularity.

Because self-marketing is not the focus of this article, I don't want to talk too much about it. However, if you are interested in how to conduct self-marketing, you can read my course "how to sell yourself as a software developer".

Remember, the more you work on self-marketing and visibility improvement, the more initiative you have in salary negotiation. This is the most important point. I have worked with some coders who have repeatedly doubled their wages. Their gains are due to their personal brand and a reputation in the software development field.

It is also very important to obtain the path to work.

Your Way to get a job is the second important factor that affects your initiative in wage negotiation. There are many ways to find a job, each of which is different. Let's look at some ways you should look for a job.

First, you will see an advertisement for job recruitment, then immediately submit your resume, and then wait to receive a reply with expectation. Indeed, many people think that this is a good way to find a job. But in fact, this approach is the worst. If you are looking for a job in this way, it is difficult for you to take the initiative in the salary negotiation, because you are currently in a weak position relative to the boss. In the end, it is because you are looking for the job.

Code rural enterprises with high market demands often make mistakes during salary negotiation. Have you mastered the initiative in salary negotiation? Or, if you don't need your boss to discuss salary, can you take the initiative by discovering their weaknesses? How can we do this?

Another way to find a job is to recommend it by the recommender. You know that a person who works in a company personally recommends you and eventually gets the job. This is a better way than running to apply for a job. Indeed, when you are eager to find a job, you should try to find someone to recommend you. In this case, the boss may not know at all that you are in a hurry to find a job. So what you need to do is to register fewer recruitment websites and follow the above steps. Because you are recommended, your credibility will be relatively high. This is equivalent to borrowing the credibility of the recommender. You can also see that if you find someone with higher credibility as the recommender, your credibility will be higher. This credibility will also greatly affect your initiative in salary negotiation.

Are there other ways to find a job? Which one is the best way? For example, if a boss takes the initiative to come to work with you or asks you to go to him for a try. Different situations mean that you have different levels of initiative in negotiation. Obviously, it is best for a company to know you and then let you go to work without a trial. In this case, you can directly report your salary requirements. For any boss who takes the initiative to find the door, you will have a good initiative in salary negotiation.

Now, you may be thinking, right, no boss has come to me directly, or even has no chance to go to work without trial. Now I am giving a suggestion. What I just mentioned is only a special case. However, although it was rare, it did happen again. In short, the best way to get these good opportunities is to build a personal brand for yourself and sell you well, as I said in Part 1.

Open your mouth and you will lose.

Okay, we have already said something about our opening remarks. Now let's have a practical drill.

You must understand that bidding first is always at a disadvantage. Therefore, in any type of negotiation, you should not bid first. Let me explain why.

Suppose you have a job, and your current salary is expected to be $70000. When the boss plans to offer you an offer, the first question you ask is your salary expectation. You answered your expectation about $70000. If you are a little smart, it may be said that it is between $70000 and $80000. Then the HR staff immediately opened $75000 for you. Then you shook your hand with him and took the offer. Isn't it a little excited. There is a big problem here: if you have budget for your employee, your salary will be between $80000 and $100000. Because you made a price first, you spent $25000 every year for your sentence. Oh, it's really miserable!

You may think this is an extreme example, but this is not the case. Because you don't know how much salary your HR budget will give you unless he tells you. First, give your salary expectations and turn you into a disadvantage in salary negotiation. You won't be able to get a higher salary than you expected, and the last thing you can get is definitely a little lower. Therefore, when you give the expected value, unfortunately, you can only do that.

Oh, but if you are smarter than you are, you can give a very high and impractical number. At this moment, your face is slightly fluctuating. The trouble is coming again. You may not even have a chance to bargain in the negotiation, or you may have a very low number in the human resources. Therefore, it is necessary for employers to bid first.

The only exception is when the employer is willing to accept you. This is rare, but if you are confident that this exception will happen to you, you can first make a price and set this number. Why? Because if you give a reserve price, you have set this number. It is hard for employers to write too much about the price. Of course, in this case, you may not succeed, no matter what you do.

But what should you do when you are asked to get your expected salary first?

Don't do this stupid thing, just say "no "!

Yes, this suggestion is unfriendly. Next I will teach you how to deal with all kinds of prepaid situations.

First, salary expectations are asked before the interview or in the written examination. If this is a space in the written test, you can leave it blank, or write "negotiable, looking at the overall salary and welfare level ". If this parameter is required, enter 0 and then explain the cause.

If you are asked about your salary requirements directly during the screening interview, or you are asked about similar things. It depends on the overall salary and benefits. At this time, you may be asked what the benefits are, or they just give you a specific number. You need to euphemistically bypass these questions by asking questions similar to the following:

"Before giving salary expectations, I 'd like to know more about your company and the job I will take over. However, it seems that you just want me to get an expected range, so don't waste time on each other. Right ?"

In most cases, the other party will give you an instant response. Then the following questions are raised.

"You should have an expected price for the job now, right ?"

Of course, you should answer "yes ". If you are confident, stop here and leave nothing to say. You asked them to give the price first. However, if you are not confident enough or do not want to reveal your questions, you can raise the following questions:

"Okay, if you give me this price, even if I don't know how to express my salary expectations, I will answer whether the price you have given can meet my requirements ."

Now, it is obvious that this is not easy to do, but if an employer tries to ask you a price, why cannot he make a quotation first? Do your best to make them quote first.

If they refuse, you can do the same.

If you have to pay a price, give a relatively high price range based on the overall salary and welfare level, but make sure that the minimum value of this range is higher than your expected salary.

For example. You can say: "Before learning about the overall salary, it is difficult for me to give a salary expectation, but I am looking for a job that costs $70000 to $100000. At the same time, we must first consider the overall salary and welfare level (overall compensation package )".

What should I do if I am asked about my current salary?

This is a very rude question. Obviously, it has nothing to do with them. However, you cannot say that. Instead, you can bypass the problem like this. Although there are various methods to achieve this goal, we recommend that you do this:

"Sorry, I cannot tell you my current salary, because if this salary is higher than your expectation, I will not rule out the possibility of giving up the job. Although it is possible that I will accept the job with a lower salary. Also, if the salary is lower than the current employee's salary, I may not take over the job immediately. I believe you should understand ."

This is an honest answer. This effectively avoids conflicts. You can also state that you do not want to answer this question because you signed a wage confidentiality agreement with your boss.

If you have to answer the question, try to give an uncertain number, for example, it may affect the overall salary level, such as bonuses and benefits. Or, if the overall benefit value is X yuan, add other things that can increase your value.

When can you accept an offer?

If you can avoid the problem and win an offer, you have to give the employee a price. You cannot do a job with uncertain salary, because in this case, this is not an offer. However, even if you accept this offer, the salary negotiation is not terminated. Unless you give a price first and the employer agrees with you. Ah! It's miserable!

Once you have an offer, you always want to get a higher salary. How high you want depends on you, but I strongly recommend that you offer a high price (the price can be high but reasonable ). You can propose a number close to their price. You may be certain, but this method will usually be counterproductive. Respond to a high price and fight back!

You may be careful that this will cause you to lose the offer. However, as long as you perform well, this offer should be able to win. In general, the worst case is that they stick to their prices and let you accept or give up the offer. If this offer is really blown up, you can also say that you have just made a mistake. After measuring it, you realize that their offer has already exceeded the average. (This is not good, but if you really need this job, you can take this path .)

The truth is that once you are given an offer, you do not want to take this offer to a large extent. It is recommended that if an employer spends enough time interviewing you and then giving you an offer, you should be brave enough to talk to him.

Many times, you return a very high offer and you will return to another slightly higher offer. You can take this offer. But in many cases, I suggest you pay as many times as possible. At this time, you should pay attention to it, because you may be angry. But in a euphemism, for example, this will be much better:

"I am willing to work for your company. This job looks good, and I look forward to working with your team. However, I still have some questions about the price value. But if you can get the price for XXX, I'm sure I can come to work today ."

If you do well, the price is not too high, which is generally acceptable. Many employers prefer to pay you more instead of losing you. The worst plan is that they cannot offer you a higher price.

I really don't recommend that you make negotiations that way. If you are confident enough, you can try it. However, after two rounds of bargaining, your loss may have some negative effects. You should be smart, not greedy! No one will be happy when they realize that they are being used.

Final suggestions

Know your quote clearly. Measure the test taker's knowledge about the salary level of the company you are applying for and the price to be referenced. Some websites can help you understand the company's salary level information, although this information is not very credible. The more clearly you know your price, the more you can take the initiative in salary negotiation. Because, you can give an exact price range and why you are worth it. To do this, what you say makes sense, and he does not have to say anything.

The reason you want to get the salary at this price is not because you "need" that much money. No one cares what you need. Instead, let's talk about why you value this price or what value you bring. Let's talk about what you did for past employers and why it is worthwhile to invest in you.

At any time, you must have enough offers in your hands, but you must be careful when dealing with the relationship between multiple offers. In this way, one obvious advantage of any negotiation is that if you don't want to do it, you can leave directly. In order to achieve this effect, you may need several more offers for reference, so you may need to apply for more work at the same time. However, you must be careful when dealing with the relationship between multiple offers. You can euphemistically express that you have several offers in your hand, and you are considering which one to choose now. Remember not to show arrogance. After all, self-confidence is good, but arrogance is wrong.

Become a simple programmer!

Translation: Chen haihong !)
Original article name: how to negotiate your salary
Original article John sonmez
Address: http://simpleprogrammer.com/2014/08/11/negotiate-salary/

Salary Negotiation Skills