Making It a Reality #7: Providing salary requirements and tips for salary negotiations
Today we’re going to talk about salary requirements and talk about some tips for salary negotiations. When employers ask you to state your salary requirements, it’s usually during the application stage or during interviews. Usually what they’re looking to do is just eliminate candidates who are out of their salary range or who are being unrealistic about the going-rate for that type of a position. What you really want to do here is give a range and not a specific number. Put your minimum price at the low end and to do this you have to think about what your bare minimum is. What is the lowest salary you could and would accept for this role? You have to factor in your experience and the cost of living in a geographic area – those type of things. So let’s say $44,000 is the lowest number you would take for a position. Based on your experience and your location, what you want to do is state mid-to-upper 40’s as your desired salary. So 44 is really low 40’s and you kind of want to bump things up a little bit so shoot higher than your bare-minimum price. And you don’t have to give numbers that are really specific like I said, you could say “mid to upper 40,000’s.”
Be less concerned with low-balling here. While you certainly don’t want to grossly under-sell yourself, asking for less than what they’re considering to pay isn’t really a reflection of you being poor quality. They’ve already budgeted for this amount of money, they have an idea of how much they want to pay. So even if you say a price that’s slightly lower than that, they’re not going to go, “Oh great! We’re just going to pay you that.” Usually there’s already a bare minimum that they’re going to pay you, so I wouldn’t worry about that low balling it’s really a myth. What you can do is you could say something like, “As for salary requirements, I’m looking for something mid-to-upper 40’s.” Or whatever is appropriate for your field, your position, the geographic area and the size of the company that you’re applying to.
To know what range to give though, you have to do a little bit of reconnaissance before you head into your interview or even before your application if they’re asking for it there. The best way to really find salary ranges is through networking. Here’s where networking is, once again, a crucial tool in your job search. You’re obviously not going to ask people out right what they’re making, but you want to find out if you’re in the right ballpark. So, for instance, you can ask a contact in the field, somebody who is working at that company if you’ve developed a relationship with that’s appropriate, or someone at a similar company who would be familiar with that kind of work in that geographic area. What you can say is something along the lines of, “Hey, I’m going to get that inevitable salary question. Am I out of line if I’m asking for mid-to-upper 40’s for this type of a position?” So again, you’re not asking what the person makes or what they even started out making or if they had that role before what they were making. That would be crossing a line. But what you’re doing is asking if a range is appropriate – that’s a big difference there. Professional organizations will also do salary surveys but you have to usually be a member to get that information. There are websites out there that can help you with salary ranges as well. Two that seem to be pretty big right now would be salary.com, which I tend to find for communications roles that it skews a little high, and the second is glassdoor.com. I like Glassdoor personally just a little bit better because I’ve been solicited by the sight to give information on past employers so I know they’re actually going out and asking people about their salary. I put value in that. If you do use one of these salary surveys though, like I said, they can skew a little high so take it down several notches. And again, the best way to find reliable and realistic salary information is really through networking.
One thing I should bring up though is that nonprofit work can be a bit different. We do have a good number of alumni who go into the nonprofit field. So when it comes to salary and nonprofits, you have to remember that a lot is based on the budget and size of the organization. So your larger nonprofit organizations will have better pay and more competitive benefits, but then the smaller nonprofits, with maybe a budget of less than $10 million, that is probably going to be paying a bit lower. The same goes for charities where money is coming from a lot of contributions, salaries are probably going to be a little bit smaller. For nonprofit research, you’re probably want to check out guidestar.com. That’s a website that has the 10-99 tax forms that are submitted by nonprofits and that will also include information on top salaries and budgeting. That gives you a little bit of a benchmark and there is an option to upgrade there but you don’t have to pay the upgrade fee. Pretty much what is available on that free report is enough – it will give you a little bit of an idea about what their budget picture looks like. Another thing you can do for nonprofit research is look in the Association’s Yellow Book. That’s actually the name of the book but you can find that in any big library. That publication includes the budget size for the organization. Another thing you can do is get a copy of the organization’s publication if they have one. If you see a lot of ads in the back, that’s different than contributions and that means they have sales money and that’s usually a good sign that you can get a little bit more because the publication is bringing in some revenue. I think overall, you can play it a little coy when it comes to salary range. You can say it’s negotiable, as I said earlier in “State a Range.” When it comes to nonprofits, my experience has been if they’re asking about salary range in the beginning, it’s one of the first things they ask you, the job probably doesn’t pay very much because they don’t want to spend time talking to a lot of candidates and getting their hopes up to find that their salary is going to be a little too low for you. If they have a small budget, they don’t have a lot of flexibility in that so they won’t be able to offer you the position or at least they know you won’t accept it if they did.
Regardless of the type of company, when you are made an offer, I do recommend sleeping on it. Don’t take something right away. And what you want to do to be able to sleep on it is employ what I call a “sandwich technique.” Basically what we’re doing is we’re bookending a request for a little bit more time with some real positivity. I would start it out by expressing excitement, enthusiasm and flattery, you know, “thank you so much. I’m so excited to be offered such a great opportunity.” Then you want to ask for more time. You can blame it on your family or something else personal with, “I just promised my family that I would run this by them before I make any official decisions.” And then ask, “When do you need to hear back from me?” If you’re juggling multiple offers, have a quick listen to our short podcast on the list about juggling multiple offers because that list would come in handy here.
If you are made an offer and it seems to low, you are going to have to keep in mind that you are going to have to qualify why you believe you’re worth more. This has to be skills or experience based. I realize that you also have to consider your own personal cost of living, your student loans, your car payments and any of those other expenses aren’t going to be a good basis to ask for more money. You can’t say, “I really need $2,000 more because I have my car payment.” That’s not going to fly. What you have to do is look at your experience and see you know do you have experience doing a certain kind of work that would be valuable in this new position, or do you have a certain proficiency and especially a technical ability with a certain program or anything that technically oriented that you could use to say that this warrants more pay.
The last thing that really comes up is relocation. Some companies, especially really big ones, will offer relocation but it’s usually not at entry-level and it’s usually in major markets. So, big cities for big companies. Relocation is sort of its own issue. Companies usually have a pretty firm policy on it: either they do it or they don’t. There’s really no middle ground. This is something you can talk about when discussing salary. You can ask if relocation is included or if it’s a benefit, and they will probably let you know loud and clear if that’s a possibility. If they do and they’re curious to know what you’re looking for amount-wise, and this is rare since they usually have a fixed or ballpark amount but it doesn’t hurt to prepare, you can do your own preliminary research on what it would cost you to get there in terms of a moving truck, getting a moving company or gas prices. But know that most companies, especially smaller ones or places that were hit in the economic downturn like magazines or nonprofits, they usually won’t pay relocation. If they do, they probably won’t pay for the whole thing. But, it’s always good to ask and it certainly can’t hurt.
