Tips For Effective Salary Negotiation

TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE SALARY NEGOTIATION:

It is always recommended not to mention your Salary History. Don't reveal the details of your previous salary to your prospective employer.

While filling the form for the interview, you would come across the question regarding your salary expectation. Prefer writing "Negotiable" as the answer. This would indicate to the organization that you are not adamant on salary issue.

The figure of your previous Salary should not become a hurdle in asking for a higher package. You should be able to convince the interviewers that the salary should be decided according to your value and experience that you will bring to the organization.

In the interview, you may be told by the interviewer that the company can offer you some specific salary figure. Now, if that salary figure is lower than your expectations, you should try to convince the interviewer regarding your current and future requirements, and make them feel that you are asking for what you deserve as per your talent, and experience.

It is recommended that you should not be the first one to bring the issue of salary. Let the interviewer begin with that, and let it be one of the last things in the interview. Never state your current salary falsely to get a higher salary.

SALARY NEGOTIATION

In many cases, salary negotiation takes a centre stage during interview process. Therefore, it is desirable to understand negotiation mechanism before engaging in salary negotiation. Negotiation is a process in which two or more parties attempt to reach agreement on the issues on which they have differences.

In the case of salary negotiation, there are two parties- panel of interviewers and interviewee. The issue on which difference exists is that the interviewers want to offer as low salary as possible while the interviewee wants as high salary as possible.

During the negotiation process, each party has a target point which defines what it would like to achieve. Each party also has a resistance point which marks the lowest outcome that is acceptable – the point below which the parties would like to break off negotiation rather than accepting a less – favorable statement. The area between these two points makes up each party’s aspiration range. During the negotiation process, each party’s tactics is to get its opponent to agree to one’s target point or to get as close to it as possible.

Depending upon the bargaining power of each party, settlement is arrived at between target and resistance points. If settlement is unlikely to be arrived between these two points, the parties prefer to terminate the negotiation process. In the context of salary negotiation, it has been observed that in many cases, interviewees used to fix their target and resistance points much higher than organisation’s resistance point and settlement could not be arrived at. Therefore there is a need for adopting highly rational approach during salary negotiation.

Before you think of salary negotiation, evaluate whether the position for which you have been interviewed falls within the preview of salary negotiation because there are many positions for which there is no scope for salary negotiation, for example, entry level positions in government services where salary grades are highly structured and additional increment is not allowed to any candidate at entry level.

Similarly, there are some other organizations which adopt this policy. However, most of the progressive business organizations prefer to have flexible salary grades where the scope for salary negotiation exists even for freshers. Experienced candidates have much wider scope of salary negotiation even in government or semi-government organizations. Therefore, it is better to evaluate whether you have chance to go for salary negotiation. If yes, proceed further. For making your salary negotiation effective, divide it into phases

Preparation for salary negotiation and effective salary negotiation.

Preparation for salary negotiation

Before engaging in salary negotiation, it is better that you do some homework. This type of homework can be done before attending the interview as well as during the interview process itself. Activities involved in preparing for salary negotiation consist of the following:

Research Salary Package of the Sector:

Research Salary Package of the Organisation:

Assess Bargaining Power of Organization:

Assess Bargaining Power of Yourself:

Salary Negotiation Process: