Don't Make These 8 Mistakes When Negotiating Salary

Everyone loves getting a job offer, but few job seekers like negotiating salary. The process is fraught with worries that you'll ask for a number that's too low or too high, that the employer will try to lowball you in their offer or that you won't even know how to evaluate their offer effectively. But salary negotiation doesn't have to be so tricky. Avoid these eight mistakes and you'll be significantly better off than most salary negotiators.

 

1. Being unprepared. At some point, nearly every employer will ask what salary range you're looking for and this could happen as soon as their very first phone call to you. You want to be prepared for this in advance, because if you're caught off-guard, you risk low-balling yourself or otherwise saying something that will harm you in negotiations later. Be sure to do your homework ahead of time so that you're ready with an answer when the question comes up.

 

2. Letting the employer base their offer on your past salary history. Your salary history is no one's business and employers are perfectly capable of figuring out what your work would be worth to them without needing to know what you've been paid previously. To avoid having future offers tied to past ones, consider declining to discuss your previous salary altogether. If you can't do that, try pointing out that you took a lower salary previously because you were working for a mission you cared about, or learning new skills that would make you more marketable in the future or whatever other context you can provide. Instead, keep the focus on what you want to earn now and why you think you're worth that. But if you ignore this piece of advice, don't make the next mistake on our list.

 

3. Lying about your past salary. Job seekers sometimes claim that they're currently earning more than they really are, figuring that will help them get a higher offer from a new employer. But this can backfire because plenty of employers verify salary history, either by asking to see a recent pay stub or W-2, or by checking with the previous employer directly. And even worse, it's common to do this after you've already accepted a job offer, which means that you risk having the offer pulled over the lie, even after you've already accepted it and resigned your previous job.

 

4. Not verifying your research. While online salary sites can seem like the most obvious way to figure out what to ask for, the reality is that these sites are often unreliable, partly because the job titles they list often represent vastly different scopes of responsibility – and besides, salary can vary widely by geography. Professional associations in your industry might do more reliable salary surveys, but an even better option is to talk to people in your field and bounce figures off of them.

 

5. Giving a salary range when you'll be disappointed if you're offered the lowest end of it. If you give a wide range like "$40,000 to $55,000," don't be surprised if you're offered $40,000, because that's what you told the employer you'd accept. Instead, choose your range carefully, realizing that the employer may only focus on the lower end of it. (This isn't too different from candidates who focus only on the high end of a range given by an employer and are then disappointed when they're offered the lower end of it.)

 

6. Playing games. While job search experts used to advise absolutely refusing to name a salary figure first, even if pressed, that advice often doesn't work today and can hurt your chances. If an employer is asking you directly what salary range you're looking for and you categorically refuse to answer, the employer is likely to just move on the next candidate, someone who might be willing to have a more open conversation.

 

7. Worrying that if you negotiate, the employer will pull the offer entirely. As long as you're pleasant and professional and aren't adversarial in your manner, a reasonable employer isn't going to pull your offer just because you try to negotiate. That's not to say that there aren't unreasonable employers out there who do pull offers, but it's rare and the sign of such a dysfunctional employer that you're typically better off not working with them. Sane employers understand that people negotiate.

 

8. Not considering factors other than salary. Obviously everyone has a bottom-line number that they won't go below, but it's a mistake not to factor in things other than salary. A generous retirement or health care contribution might mean that less of your paycheck needs to go to savings or health insurance. Conversely, a job where you'll be miserable might not be worth even a significant bump in salary.

Students find future options at career fair

The college and career fair at Yerington High School last Friday involving students from YHS, Yerington Intermediate School and Smith Valley was bigger than last year and organizers hope to grow it even more, possibly moving it from the practice gym into the main YHS gym.

 

Also going on last week was a College and Career Week for seventh and eighth grade students. The goal was to expose and inspire students about various careers "while giving them tools to be successful in their educational journey," said Jessica Angle, the GEAR-UP coordinator for Yerington and Silver Stage schools.

 

She said an example of this was hosting guest presenters from University of Nevada, Reno, who provided a scholarship workshop for students.

 

Debbie Rife, graduation coach for Yerington and Silver Stage high schools, also was pleased with the expanded college and career fair and hopes to see it grow more. There, the students could interact with the variety of educational/vocational offerings, including cosmetology, and local and out-of-town businesses.

 

The college and career fair featured about 30 booths, encompassing about four colleges at UNR and from other colleges, including from as far away as Grand Canyon University in Phoenix and College of Siskyous in Weed, Calif.

 

Angle said students, to help prepare for College and Career Week, filled out career interest inventory surveys that provided organizers information on career clusters. That information helped them choose the guest career professional speakers/presenters for the career cluster workshop sessions.

 

She said there also were grade-specific presentations about college preparation from college representatives given in the YIS gym on Friday.

 

Wild West Chevrolet was on hand to introduce its apprenticeship program to junior and senior students, Rife noted.

 

Angle said a financial education day was provided, giving students a fictitious career, salary, spouse and debt.

 

Some of those comments, she said, included "I don't want to be an adult, it's tough" and "Now I understand why my parents are stressed out."

 

A mock legislative session also was conducted last week in which Assemblyman Tom Grady of Yerington and State Sen. James Settelmeyer of Minden helped students understand the legislative process. Angle said students wrote and presented bills on topics such as the Affordable Care Act, cell phone usage in schools, immigration reform and gun control laws.

10 High-Paying Flexible Jobs

At the top of the heap we have senior IT project managers, who bring in about $99,100 a year, on average. Exactly half (50%) of these professionals (those with at least a bachelor's and 5 to 8 years experience) say they're able to do their job from home all or most of the time. The average across all jobs and industries for workers with at least a bachelor's is 9.4%.

 

A senior project manager in IT is responsible for developing a detailed project plan for IT services and products, and identifying critical paths, Bardaro says. "They must match detailed customer requirements with constraints and assumptions of the IT team in order to establish project deliverables," she says. And they can easily do the job remotely.

 

"The IT industry pays well and typically grants the ability to work from home to its seasoned workers," she says. "Many of the tasks completed by these jobs can be done via technology (phone, computer, e-mail, web chats, etc.) and require a sharp focus and sometimes odd hours, all three of which sum up to a perfect job for telecommuting."

 

Business development directors hold the No. 2 spot on our list of high-paying flexible jobs. Payscale data shows they make $96,700 a year, on average, and 50% say they're able to telecommute most or all the time.

 

"Schedule flexibility is important to employees as they are comforted by the knowledge that they can easily change their schedule and time-off," Bardaro says. "This knowledge will incent workers to be productive as they know they have some level of control in their schedule. This is especially key for families who might need to take time off to align with school breaks or stay home with a sick child."

 

Third we have field sales engineers. Fourty percent of them, who rake in about $79,500 a year, on average, say they're always or mostly able to telecommute.

 

Rounding out the top five are IT network engineers and management consultants, who make $68,600 a year and $91,300 a year, respectively. Both of these jobs are considered highly flexible by Payscale, because of the percentage of workers who said they can do their job from home. One-third (33.3%) of IT network engineers and 30.4% of management consultants say they can telecommute most or all the time.

 

"Overall, the top job family for telecommuting opportunities is IT," Bardaro notes. "Jobs in this field have two main wins that make telecommuting work: First, they require very little person-to-person contact and second, much of what they need to do is heads down technology work with limited distractions and thus telecommuting is very efficient for them. Besides IT, the other jobs where telecommuting is relatively more common are inside sales jobs due to the fact that the bulk of their work is done over the phone."

 

The highest-paying job on the list is software architect. Professionals in this field with at least a bachelor's degree and 5 to 8 years of experience earn $100,500 a year, on average. A quarter of them (25%) say they can work from home all or most of the time.

 

"A software architect is a higher level developer responsible for designing and often implementing code that deals with the underlying architecture of the technology platform," Bardaro explains. "Oftentimes they are more of a decision maker about design choices and deal with higher level designs and plans, rather than lower level technical bug fixes. Similar to standard software developers, their work requires limited in-person contact and often requires them to be heavily immersed in code. However, since they often play a leadership-type role, they will regularly need to meet with stakeholders and thus they tend to work from home less."  Additionally, she says, some software architects are responsible for hardware architecture in addition to code architecture and will have to travel to office sites, data centers and disaster recovery sites to work on the hardware. Due to the training and responsibilities they have, they are compensated quite well. "In a sense, without an effective architecture the technical product could crash down."

 

Bardaro says professionals value flexibility for two main reasons. "One, it offers better work-life balance and two, it is a benefit many companies offer in lieu of salary increases in today's tight-fisted world. Given that wages are fairly stagnant, offering the ability to telecommute is a way that firms can reward top employees without dipping into budgets. Additionally, today's technology makes it easier to stay virtually connected.

 

She says employers often benefit from this perk, too. "Flexible schedule tend to make workers more productive," she says. "An office environment can be distracting–and working from home shuts out all office chatter, drama and distractions, and provides workers with the ability to hunker down and focus solely on their work tasks."

 

One key thing to mention, however, is that the ability to work from home "is a privilege and often only granted to experienced or seasoned workers," she adds. "This is driven by the fact that a worker will need to prove themselves trustworthy in a work environment before they are trusted to work well with no supervision. Often times, the best way to convince employers that you can work from home is to be an all-star at the office and show you have the ability to succeed with limited supervision."