Salary Negotiation

How to Negotiate Your Salary

Key points highlighted in this podcast are:

• Understand your industry and the market value of your skills.
• Research the company and its competitors.
• Use data-driven negotiation tactics.
• Focus on total compensation, not just base salary.
• Be prepared and confident in the negotiation process.

Please listen to the podcast below.

Click on the play button to start the interview.

Original Audio Transcript: Quirky HR Podcast with host Dana Dowdell interviewing Sonja Price

Hey there, welcome back to Quirky HR, I am your host Dana, and we are joined by someone that's going to talk to us all about money and the strategy around money and negotiating.

So we are joined by Sonja "Dynamo" Price. She is a top career strategist and salary advisor and leadership coach at Dynamo Careers.

Sonja, welcome to Quirky HR. Hey, Dana. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you for being here. So I'm always excited to talk to people who are on the other side of recruiting where you're coaching candidates. The best practice is how to negotiate because you don't learn that skill in college or in high school. It's not something that comes naturally to us, but I'm really curious. Tell us a little bit about how you landed and what you're doing now.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I kind of became a career coach by accident. However, I realized that this was actually my real calling. So I have over 15 years of work experience working in corporate startups, just a variety of organizational settings, mostly in tech and what I experience myself as an employee. That each and every career move that I made, I was reinventing my career each and every single time. And that meant moving into a totally different role, different title, different organization, different level of leadership, and each and every time that I was making those moves.

I got pretty skilled at also knowing how to negotiate a much higher compensation, so I was making really big jumps in my overall pay. And before too long, I had friends and family who were kind of asking me like, hey, wait for a second, how did you make that jump in your career? And can you show me how to do the same thing? At first, it was just for fun on the side on top of a full-time job. And I did that, you know, just kind of as a hobby for a number of years.

But then I started getting referrals and referrals from referrals. And before I knew it, I had to make a choice point am I going to operate as a business and kind of take this on full time or do I want to continue to pursue the leadership track, you know, internally with the various different organizations that I was working with and I've been you know, pretty skilled and successful at both but.

I ultimately just realized that this is really my true calling, my true passion, and I just love helping employees know how to accelerate their career success and also maximize their income as well.

Fantastic. I don't know if I've told this story on this podcast, but I remember that I was, I had a great college mentor and she was just an amazing person. And she always pushed us to negotiate. You know, as a woman, she's like, make sure you negotiate. Make sure you negotiate. So I had it. I had that record playing in my head and then I factored it up every single time. Because it's, you know, it's not unless you have somebody that's coaching you or advocating for you, it's hard for that to be a natural skill to come naturally to people.

I'm curious, what are you seeing on the candidate side of things in terms of what they're wanting from employers right now?

I think across the board, almost always I see that people want to make more money, but then they don't ask for it or they're not aware of how to ask for it. Or even if like you said, what you just shared with me, that's not uncommon. I hear a lot of people say, well, I attempted to negotiate, but it didn't really work for me. I forgot to ask, or I didn't do it in the right way or whatnot, or I didn't get as much as I asked for.

I think that there are a number of different things that each candidate really needs to be aware of. And first and foremost is just really knowing what is the feasible pay range for the particular job that you are applying and interviewing for, and there are a number of different places that you can go to.

Get that data. There's a ton of information available online. But then also kind of like the best source of truth is during that initial screening interview when the recruiter asks you, hey, what's your desired compensation range? Or, you know, what are your salary expectations? How the candidate answers that question is going to be very telling for how the rest of the whole offer process goes. And I think most people kind of pigeonhole themselves or shoot themselves in the foot right there with that very question.

So the negotiation generally starts much earlier on in the process than most people think. And they don't attempt to negotiate until the end, when mostly the decision has already been made and the offer is on the table. There might still be some room for flexibility at that point in time, but it's usually a much small there's much, much smaller room for negotiation at that point. I remember reading a statistic a couple years ago, so this was pre pandemic that I think 75% of job applicants Google or research the company before applying and so really making sure that your online presence and your reviews on Glassdoor and you know what is communicated outwardly about the candidate.

An employee experience is as positive as you can make it and really having a reference point for that. Are you seeing more and more candidates doing that before they even agree to interview with the job? Absolutely. Maybe on their own doing or maybe because I'm encouraging them to do it as well. But you know, I think, you know, compensation is one key component of accepting a position, but then you also want to ensure that you know you as an employee regardless where you work inside the organization, whether you're.

You know, candidate working in engineering or marketing or you're in HR yourself. You know when you accept a position, you want to make sure that that organization is really going to be a good fit for you. And so going out and reading, reading reviews, maybe doing some networking with some internal employees just to get a really true sense of what is that company culture like. What do you think the you know your coworkers are gonna be like? Well, you enjoy the relationship with your manager and then you know, as far as compensation goes, does that organization pay in alignment with the overall market range?

You know, are they above market range? Are they below market range? Are they right spot on and then as a candidate really knowing. What is your top? What are your top priorities you know, and how do you rank prioritize? What's most important to you? Is IT company values? Is it compensation? Is it your relationship with your manager? Is it the you know how much they match for your 401K contribution? Healthcare.

There's a whole range of other things to be aware of and thinking about. In your decision making criteria and you know, is this really the right job for you? And given the amount of public information that's out there and you mentioned doing some research around appropriate compensation for a particular position, you know, you had mentioned that you have a salary negotiation calculator on your website and I know that there's a lot of other free tools out there.

For job seekers and for employers, so employers who maybe don't have access to a compensation study, there's lots of resources out there. Do you have any thoughts around how much that information should be relied upon to make those compensation decisions? Well, for candidates, what I recommend is that as you're applying for jobs, oftentimes a lot of the job postings actually will say, you know it, it's either in some states, it's now required by law to state with the salary ranges. And I think we're going to see more and more and more states coming online with that.

Even if it's not required by law, you know a lot of a lot of job descriptions. The employer will either put the estimated pay range in there, or Glassdoor or indeed or LinkedIn will say what they think the estimated pay range is. So what I usually recommend for candidates is as you're applying for jobs, create a spreadsheet where you're going to track.

What jobs you've applied for? And if the pay range is stated, what is that pay range? Because then when you're looking down the the you know the the rows of an entire spreadsheet, you should be able to have a pretty good sense of what the market rate is for the particular kinds of roles that you're applying for. Because even, you know you could go on Glassdoor. Or any, you know, any other salary site like salary.com or pay scale, or there's a whole range of them out there. You can go and look to see what is the pay range for a specific title, but it's also going to vary based on industry and the types of organizations that you're applying for. So you want to start to gather data around the exact types of roles that you're applying for.

Keep a running list of what the estimated pay ranges are. That's not going to be the absolute truth though. That should just give you a range. And then when you get on a call with the recruiter or hiring manager and you're doing that first initial screening call, about 90% of the time they're going to ask you what are your salary expectations. You actually want to get that individual to instead of you answering, you want to ask that individual to provide the pay range for that particular role and then mark that, mark that data down and see how does that differ or is it the same from the overall pay range that you've already been collecting across all the roles that you're looking at?

Do you think because of all these pay transparency laws and the fact that these posting sites are now requiring. To disclose a salary or at least posting kind of a data mined salary range that it's a candidate turned off when an employer. Kind of keeps that close to the chest. Um, well, is it a turn off? I don't know if it's a turnoff. I think maybe from the candidate side it can be a little bit frustrating because ultimately, you know, I think there's a little bit of a cat and mouse dance, you know, it's like, Oh well, what are your salary expectations? And then, you know, the candidate is like, well, why don't you tell me what? What are you? What are you going to pay for that exactly? You show me, I'll show you mine. You know, it's kind of like that.

I think it can be a bit frustrating on the candidate side because it's like, why are you asking me what I want to be paid? Like, you're the one who's going to pay for my skill set and you should already know what you're paying candidates, right? And and. When employers kind of keep that information secret, I think sometimes it can kind of breed mistrust in the organization because it's like, well, you're asking me what I want to be paid, but I'm a female minority. What are you paying white males at your organization?

And as a candidate, you can't really come out and ask that question. And you know there is no transparency about that and it would be lovely if there was more transparency about that because then we could all know that we're being paid based on our skill set or being paid based on our looks, you know, and the perceived value of what we have to offer the company. So I do wish that there was more transparency around it.

Um, you know, myself, when I was interviewing with organizations, when a recruiter or hiring manager would just tell me what the pay range was, even if it was a broad range. You know, even if it was like 20 thirty, $40,000 range, I'm still much more likely to trust that organization because then I can start to place myself. In that bracket because you know, I can kind of say, well, you know, I have this many years of experience, maybe I should be on this end of that, of that pay range or if I'm a more senior level candidate, I'm going to say, well, I should definitely be on the higher end of that.

I would love to see more transparency around this and I think we're going to see it in the coming years. I think that there's a huge demand for it, not just from the candidate side, but we also have the law on our side now too. Yeah, I mean legislation as you mentioned it's we're, I'm in Connecticut, we have pay transparency and. Ryland has it as well. And you know, I look at it, yeah, I look at it. Colorado, I think, why waste someone's time?

If from a budgetary perspective, if you can't pay what they're asking for. And you're not willing to look more critically at your wages and adjust them for the market. Why? It's almost like dating. Like, why string someone along that you don't necessarily see a future with, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I mean, you bring up. Uh, a fair point, you know, especially when. Um, you know, when we have seen talent wars and whatnot?

It makes good sense to be much more transparent from the beginning, because I've seen a lot of cases where both the organization and the candidate get all the way to the end. And then once they, once they, you know, get clarity on what the final offer actually is, then you know that candidate may have two or three other offers on the table. And yet they've, you know, they've interviewed with four or five, six companies and they've spent how many hours interviewing with each of those organizations.

Same thing from the employer side. How many candidates did they interview? How many offers have they extended? And then, you know, how much time and effort does that take for all of the internal employees to interview? A variety of candidates and if you find your top candidate but then they don't accept because there wasn't much transparency about the pay along the way. That can be really frustrating for everybody involved.

I am always in a unique position because I'm a woman in an HR role and I'm also a business owner, so I have this underlying. Need and desire to create a safe space for other women to negotiate, which is a really interesting dynamic. I love it. I talked to Claudia Miller, who was another one of our guests who works in tech and helps people negotiate like you know it. It's. If someone's going to ask for something, you know I want I want to know why. But I I often get a lot of women who will say well, you know, I I think this would be what I would be looking for and I don't want to overextend myself.

And so you know, I really try to create a safe space for people to negotiate because, and I guess not. Was met not just women but men as well. Like I think that it's a natural part of the job searching process. Absolutely. I don't know that all HR professionals and that all business leaders view it that way.

So what is some considerations that a business owner or leader or manager, president should really take into consideration when someone is trying to negotiate. Yeah, I mean, I think it should always go back to the candidates skill set, their experience, you know, what's the unique value that they're bringing to the table. You know, I think it should also be looking across the board to understand how equitable is the pay across all the other people who are in that same position. Because, you know, to throw another topic on the table here, what I oftentimes see happen is that the new higher rate outpaces the existing employee rate. And then I get existing employees who come to me and their PO because they're like the last five people who got hired onto my team are now making more money than I am. And I've been here for 10 years.

And so you know that the employee loyalty doesn't necessarily equate to equitable or higher pay. And so, you know, I think companies across the board, and I think this is oftentimes where HR comes in, is actually doing those salary studies to understand what are our people currently making inside of the organization, what is the new hire rate, do we need to do a leveling exercise for all of the existing employees so that everybody feels fairly compensated.

And then for new candidates, you know, you kind of have to pay attention to what's available within the budget, what else, what, what is the industry, what's the market rate pay, are we on par with that? And then what else can we do to make this offer more appealing and more enticing?

You know, a lot of my. Clients, I always think that they're going to come to me and say I want to make more money. And usually people do want to make more money. But that's not always the, the driving factor. The driving factor is always, you know, either I want to do something that has more meaning, more impact is more in alignment with my values, or I want better work life balance. You know, so there's things like that that can also be a huge component of the offer of like letting people know, hey, we have really good work life balance here, if that actually is true because sometimes companies say that and it's actually not true and people are working 60 to 80 hour work weeks.

So, but I mean, work life balance is a huge, huge thing that I hear a lot. And people come to me and they say, you know, I actually, you know, I'm, I'm pretty comfortable with the amount of money that I make. So, you know, as long as I could make this amount, sometimes people are even willing to take a little bit of a pay cut if they know that they can actually have a life outside of work.

You know, and then I think there's plenty of other benefits that can also, you know, add up and be really valuable as well if a company offers stock options or equity or umm, you know, bigger contribution to a 401K or paid professional development or you know, other things like that that I think can also. Um, really help showcase that the organization actually cares about the employee and anything that they can do to showcase that they also have a. You know, high value leadership culture or learning culture, or you know good harmony inside of the culture and that they actively create.

You know diversity and inclusion, or you know that they care about ensuring that the employee voice is heard. And sometimes it's hard to pick up that on an in an interview, especially when the candidate doesn't have that many opportunities to ask questions. So sometimes if the employer can be more proactive about kind of showcasing and selling. Some of the key points of the culture, I think that's really important too.

How do we approach those conversations as HR, you know, if a candidate asks for. Compensation range that is outside of what we're able to provide. You know I usually say what else is important to you in terms of structure title because sometimes it to your point it can be the littlest thing.

I just had a candidate who, you know, comp wise we were comparable, but he's like I. Absolutely cannot commute into the office for five days a week. And you know, unless I had asked specifically like what else, like what else is important to you, I wouldn't. I wouldn't have known that that would have been the sticking point.

So any tips on on how we can approach those conversations if compensation is not something that we can? Make any movement on. Sure thing, you know. I think just being really honest and transparent about it of, you know, saying. You know, hey, oh gosh, I really appreciate you asking for more. I can totally understand why you might be doing that. I want you to know, I've already talked to the hiring manager. I've talked to senior leadership. This truly is the best offer that we can create for you from a monetary perspective.

However, you know here the other things included in the offer. And I'd like to, you know, understand from your point, what do you think about this software like tell me just straight up honest, what do you think about this offer and what else could we do you know if there was anything else that we could do aside from salary, you know is there anything else that we could do to make this offer more appealing or just come forward and say these are the areas that.

They can negotiate, you know, you know, inside of these areas, is there anything that we could do to make this, this offer be more appealing to you? And I think that transparency is the really important component because I think there's often this point of view that, you know, the company is out to save as much money as they can.

And that the client, you know, the candidate is out to, you know, get as much as they can and so it can feel a little bit like it's, you know, butting heads. But I think, you know, approaching it from a very friendly and collaborative type of perspective can definitely tell help disarm that conversation and help show like what the company culture is actually like as well. Like if that is true, you know, I always say pay attention to everything.

Like when you're interviewing with an organization, pay attention to how they treat you. And you, you will see, is it a collaborative environment, you know, is it an inclusive environment? Is it something that they really want to help you learn and grow? And that's one other thing. Let me add this real quick, because this is a huge component that clients come to me for, is that they want to grow and accelerate their career.

So yes, they're interested in making more money, but they're also tired of being put into dead end jobs where there's no promotion available. So I think if there is a path to growth. You know, path to promotion then oftentimes that can be a huge selling point for candidates as well is that if they know, OK, hey, we're going to bring you in as a program manager, but within one year's time frame, you know, if you accomplish these specific things, you should achieve senior program manager or we're, you know, this is a huge growing team and there will be management spots opening up.

So if you have an interest in management, we'd like to work with you on that to help help you move into that type of position. I think that can be a huge, huge selling point that can be very enticing to a lot of people, even if the even if the pay potential is not there yet. Yeah, we keep seeing a lot of more organizations doing that kind of career tracking and being very transparent about what is the development track within that organization.

Our local grocery store here in Connecticut has they have a career track, so you can start as a cashier or bagging clerk. And then here's how you get to be an assistant manager. And you, you know, if you're shopping in their store, you can walk by their job board and see it and they are fully transparent and Full disclosure about it, which is really cool to see a grocery store take that much pride in career tracking their staff.

Absolutely. And those are the kinds of stores that when you show up. Can you ask someone how long have you worked here? And they're like, yeah, I've worked here 12 years, right. You're like, well, you've been, you've worked, of course, for 12 years. That's awesome. You know, like maybe not my job. So you, I know you have a career assessment. It's called does your job? Does your job work? It does your work work for you.

And so it's funny someone else mentioned to me today about the, you know, the quote, UN quote great resignation that employees are just looking for much more out of the candidate experience and much more from their employers. You know, where do things stand on that topic in terms of What people are really looking for from their employers. Yeah, I mean, I think what we were just talking about is a huge component of it because most people like to have an element of challenge in their job.

They don't want to be, you know, in it, you know, swimming over their head, over their head, the water over their head, right? You never want to take on a challenge that's too big for you. But there is a lot of research and study that shows that a healthy amount of stress is actually good for us as people.

So if we're in a job where we have, you know, some sort of challenge to our skill set, maybe taking on something at a higher, you know, more strategic level, or leading a project if you've never led one, or owning a budget bigger than you've ever owned before. Managing more people like whatever it might be.

And so, you know, I think if we give people an adequate amount of challenge and we know where they want to be growing their skills and we're actively having those conversations of hey, where do you, where do you want to grow your career? What, what would be interesting? What would be engaging to you this year? And I think that we've just gotten so busy in the workplace and there's so many competing priorities that oftentimes managers don't have the capability to do that that they're managing projects but not necessarily the people.

And then you know those growth based conversations only happen once a year during performance review and at that point in time it just feels like it's like. Actina box, because uh, this has to be done by the end of the year. Get your goals in, you know, get your results in, get your goals in and then we have a 10 minute conversation about it. If you get a raise, you get a raise. Great, good, we're done. But I think actually having more proactive conversations throughout the year to understand, you know, where does that particular employee you want to grow.

And giving them feedback around how they're doing too is like a lot of employees just say, I don't get any feedback. I don't know if I'm doing a. Good job. I don't know if I'm doing a bad job. And then sometimes there's big surprises when performance review comes because they're like you should have been working harder and it's like, how? How should I have known that? I should have been, you know, do I thought I was doing a great job and now it's news to me. I'm not doing that great of a job and now I'm below expectations.

Great, you know? And so, umm. I think that those are a lot of the things that are contributing to the great resignation, quiet quitting, you know, people are kind of coasting. But I think when people are given the challenge, we oftentimes actually enjoy rising to the challenge if it's the right challenge for us at an individual level.

Someone once someone asked me recently what I thought about the trend of quiet quitting, and I said it's literally people getting paid to do their job that they're paid to do. That's literally what it is, and it has been packaged, I think, to try to grasp some power back by employers is like this horrible thing, but it's it's you pay someone to do a job and they're they're doing the job that you pay them to do. It's not right. That's literally what it is.

So. So what is one thing that you wish HR? Would do differently in the negotiation process. Oh, well, we already talked about more transparency. So that would probably be my number one, would be more transparency. Close second would be you know more clear communication throughout the process, because you know from the candidate side what I hear, and what I've experienced myself is that you apply for a job.

Maybe you hear back with an automatic rejection or or, you know, it takes weeks and weeks and weeks to hear back and you're like, well, I, you know, I tried to look at the job posting. It's closed. I don't know. Does that mean they accepted a candidate? Does that? Are they interested in me or are they not interested in me?

Should I try to find somebody? Should I contact somebody? And there's, you know, a lot of confusion on the candidate side. And so, you know, creating more clear communication I think can create that a much higher sense of trustworthiness right from the beginning. And so, you know, even if it is automated updates, it's still helpful to know, hey, you know, we're still reviewing candidates for this role.

You should expect to hear from us within the next two weeks. Or, you know, something like that I think would be really helpful. Um, because otherwise, you know, Canadians are just operating in a vacuum and they apply for the hundred jobs and then they hear back from very few of them and then it starts to get really, you know, it.

It can become a really disheartening process when you apply to so many jobs and you don't hear back from them and then you think. God, I have so much to offer. I've got all these great skills. You know, it doesn't take a lot of effort to just reach out and say we're still, you know, we're still considering you.

You should hear back from us by this point in time, or, hey, we've decided to move on with another candidate we built. Then everybody knows what's going on and, you know, we. Not wasting energy, just kind of hoping and waiting and praying. God, I hope they I hope they contact me. Yeah, I mean, it goes back to that transparency. The transfer I always look at, you know, recruiting as like it's the hospitality of job searching.

So when you're on the employer side of things, how can you give the candidate a really warm, welcoming experience if that is what your culture is? It sets the tone for the entire experience. So yeah, absolutely yeah. Where can where can people find you?

People can find me at DynamoCareers.com and I have a ton of free tools there.

You know, Dana mentioned the Dynamo Salary calculator is a very cool tool. I also have a free career assessment. Does your work work for you? Lots of blogs, lots of podcasts, episodes, lots of different things that you can check out. So would love to have you come and can sign up for my mailing list so we can stay in touch that way.

If you're a job seeker or an HR person that's wanting to understand the candidate experience a little bit better, check out everything in the show notes. And thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. And thank you for listening to the quirky hour.

Thank you. This has been a really fun episode.