Hello world! I hope
you are all doing well. Things are great
here in Iowa. The weather is hot, the
pools are open, and the corn is growing.
I’m proud to say that I successfully completed my first year as a soccer
coach and that I successfully achieved getting each of my five year old a
goal! I rock! Today I wanted to talk about a situation that
recently encountered. I was working with
a candidate that did everything right. They
were up front about their salary needs, they discussed it with the client, they
discussed it with us. They covered all
of their bases and the company still came in way low.
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| A lower salary might make you do this... |
Now – I’ve talked about why a company
sometimes comes in low and what you can do – you can read about this here:
Everything I shared in this past blog is accurate. However, in some cases asking for more money
can be problematic. Why? Because sometimes the company will just walk
away. This is what happened in the
situation I described above. My
candidate was devastated. They needed
the job and would have accepted at the lower level. So what’s the point of this? Do I think that you should just suck it up
and accept a low offer? Definitely
not. Instead, today I want to share other
things you can negotiate on other than money if you are afraid of risking
losing the job. Here are some things you
negotiate on :
Vacation
Vacation is a great thing to negotiate on. Just remember two things. Some companies have a policy about how much
vacation you get and can’t do it. More importantly,
remember that it is only valuable to negotiate for more vacation if you
actually use it.
Schedule
So you are going to take a paycut… would it be worth it if
you left every Friday at noon? What
about if you could drop your kids off at school every morning? The key here is to think of tradeoffs that increase your quality of life. It never hurts to ask!
Future Raises
Alright, there is no guarantee that if a company promises
you a future raise that you will actually get it. However, what you could negotiate is a review
of your work at a predetermined time in the future – something like 90 days or
six months. Work your tail off until
then and be prepared to state your case.
It works!
Variable Income
Often times when people are offered lower salaries it is
accompanied by bonus potential that gives them the opportunity “to be made
whole.” If they are asking you to take a
risk, why not try to push the potential bonus higher. From their perspective it seems more
palatable because they aren’t actually giving you anything today – then when
you work really hard you both win.
So what do you think?
Please remember that I don’t condone taking a salary that is too low
just to get a job. At the end of the day,
the first measuring stick should be if you can pay your bills. However, if you can – you may want to look at
other options when negotiating. Have a
great week! As always I can be reached
at 515-216-5455 or by email at sthompson@csgrecruiting.com
