Interview This!

Job candidates sometimes outsmart themselves when discussing compensation with a prospective employer. Forget what you may have learned about negotiating tactics, as you may sabotage the job offer.

Here’s what can happen: if you stretch the truth about how much you currently earn, or provide an inflated “minimum” amount of compensation you are willing to accept, the prospective employer may offer the job to another candidate who has asked for less.

Say, for example, you tell a prospective employer that you wish to earn $100,000, figuring you can then “negotiate” down to $90,000, an amount with which you would be pleased. The other candidate, however, may ask for $90,000, which is the number he or she really wants. Naturally, the employer takes both candidates at their word and proceeds to offer the job to the employee who will cost less (assuming, of course, both candidates have roughly equal skills).

Suppose you give the employer an honest, minimum compensation number and they then make an offer that is lower? This is not a problem; it doesn’t make a bit of difference what amount you ask for, or what amount they offer, since you alone control whether you accept the offer or not. If the offer is too low, turn it down and reiterate that the number you provided earlier–your minimum compensation amount–is truly the minimum offer you will accept.

If the employer is unwilling to come back with an offer at, or above your minimum, then either the employer has another candidate that is not quite as desirable as you, but somewhat less expensive, or the amount the employer offered is simply the most they are able to spend.

In my experience, employers do not typically reduce the amount of compensation they plan to offer when they learn the candidate is willing to accept less. Surprised? Think about it; if the employer decides that, for a variety of reasons, salary “X” is the right amount to pay for a certain quality of employee doing a particular job, then why pay a different amount? If money had been the most important consideration, then the employer could easily have sought out a less expensive employee.

I have also found that it is much better for the employer to find out before the offer is made that the compensation amount is not acceptable to the candidate. It is usually easier for the hiring manager to secure approval for higher compensation during the process of preparing the offer, especially if the request is based on specific information provided by the candidate. Once the offer is made and rejected, though, the manager’s harried effort to secure more money will likely be seen as an attempt to salvage a bungled hire.

Michael G Smith