By | Lisa Rabasca Roepe | www.themuse.com
Let’s say you’re conducting a job search and aiming for an annual salary of $100,000, but a company you’ve interviewed with offers you $87,000. You could grudgingly accept it, walk away, or try to negotiate.
You decide to negotiate and tell the hiring manager you’re looking for $100,000 to start, but the hiring manager clearly states that’s out of reach based on their pay range. Again, you could grudgingly accept it, walk away, or continue to negotiate.
You decide to continue to negotiate but instead of repeating your original request, you change your tactic and ask the hiring manager if they could go up to $95,000 plus give you an extra week of vacation. This time the hiring manager comes back with a yes. While the salary isn’t exactly what you’d hoped for, you’ve still successfully put more money in your pocket—just in a different way.
Strong negotiation skills are critical to your success—not just during a job search but also on the job. And there are actually several different skills you need to draw on to negotiate successfully. With practice you can strengthen them—and make them work for you.
People are often intimidated by negotiation and wrongly believe that negotiating is akin to being confrontational. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Rather than going into a negotiation determined to win, it’s important to focus on finding a resolution that benefits both sides. That’s truly what negotiation is.
