Recommended Strategies for Common Negotiations Scenarios - Part I
The initial call with a company and you're asked about your preferred salary.
Scenario: It’s the initial call with a company and they ask you for your preferred salary or salary range
🚫DON'TS:
DO NOT give them your preferred salary.
Why?
Because you may give a lower number than what they’re willing to pay you, and they might agree to your low number, so you would be leaving money on the table.
Or you may give a number that’s higher than what they’re willing to pay you, and they might think they can’t afford you and not move you forward in the interview process.
Or you might give a number that makes them think your research is too off and you misunderstood the role, or you’re too greedy, etc., and not move you forward in the interview process.
DO NOT give them your preferred salary range.
Why?
It’s like a trick math question. When you give a preferred salary range, you’re also implying you’re willing to accept the lowest number in the range. This is very similar to sharing a number and is not recommended (see reasons above).
👍DO’S:
Your goal is to gently defer, deflect, and dance around giving them any information until you get the official written offer.
💬REMEMBER:
Companies and recruiters have better market data than you could possibly have - they have industry compensation data, salary ranges for comparable positions at their company and similar companies, they know their internal budget for the role, etc. Negotiations is like a card game. You can’t win the game if you show your cards.
🏆A bonus of working with me
As a job negotiations expert, I have access to an elite platform of compensation market data that can be filtered by role, seniority, company size/valuation, industry, and location. The data can be broken down into salaries, total cash compensation (salary, sign-on bonus, annual bonus), and equity (stock options). This is one of the top datasets that companies use to inform their decision on the offer they will extend to you.
Importantly, it is company-reported, thus highly accurate unlike the self-reported data on Glassdoor, Levels.fyi, or Blind. My clients and I use this data to formulate their negotiations strategy.