> If you want $200,000, $400,000, whatever, just say so. BEFORE you start any interviews.
Unless the number you give is significantly higher than any of your potential employers are ever going to offer you, you are shortchanging yourself by giving that number--it means that you have now foreclosed potential higher offers that otherwise might have come your way. That is the basis of the advice given in the article.
I get what you're saying about knowing what you're worth, but that in itself doesn't give you very much help in knowing what potential offers might come your way. Unless you have detailed inside information about all of your potential employers (hint: if you do, you should already be leveraging that information to get a job offer without having to go through all the drudgery of interviewing like everyone else), you can't possibly know how the number you give compares to what they could potentially offer you. So you shouldn't give a number at all.
In fact, the more you know what you are worth, the less inclined you should be to give a number instead of just waiting for an actual offer. What knowing what you are worth should do is help you to decide, on your own (i.e, without asking recruiters who have conflicts of interest), which potential employers are worth your time to even look at in the first place. Don't even bother talking to companies that you know can't compensate you enough. But you don't need to, and shouldn't, tell recruiters what your threshold is for "enough". Just tell them company X doesn't look like it would be a good fit. Nuff sed.
> If recruiters are talking to you, they want to place you at the highest comp package they can.
They want to place you at the highest comp package they can as long as it doesn't risk not placing you at all. They never want to walk away altogether. But you might. So your interests and theirs are not quite aligned.
You argument is essentially hanging on the assertion that the first number an employer would offer is also the maximum number it could offer. I know exactly one company that operated like that: they'd make the maximum offer and if you did not like it there was no further negotiation. Most companies don't do that (neither does that one any more, the CEO who had this policy had retired a while ago).
What I've observed in my experience is that most companies will try the minimum offer regardless if you tell them your requirements or not, which makes sense since they do research too and unlike yourself their HR has much more experience and data for that. If you were asking less than the minimum they were willing to pay they will likely still pay the minimum as the sibling suggests, there is no point to save and get to hire again for the same position in a couple of months.
I think it's an illusion people get when they ask for a number and get it without much fuss. It makes them think they asked too little but in reality the hiring manager had the range like 200-250 and you asked for 210. Why would he bother to try to push you down to 200? On the other hand, why would he offer anything other than 200 if you did not ask?
> You argument is essentially hanging on the assertion that the first number an employer would offer is also the maximum number it could offer.
Not at all. You should expect to negotiate once they have made an offer. But your negotiating position will be better if you don't give a number first.
> in reality the hiring manager had the range like 200-250 and you asked for 210. Why would he bother to try to push you down to 200?
Because you've now anchored the negotiation at 210 as the max, and he's going to try to get you for less because this is business. He's not going to just take your first number any more than you would just accept his first offer.
Whereas if you hadn't anchored the negotiation there wouldn't be a ceiling at 210.
> On the other hand, why would he offer anything other than 200 if you did not ask?
He might not. But if he offers 200 and you have not given any number at all, you can negotiate and possibly get more than 210. Whereas if you'd given 210 first you would never get more.
> Because you've now anchored the negotiation at 210 as the max, and he's going to try to get you for less because this is business. He's not going to just take your first number any more than you would just accept his first offer.
But if you're currently making 150, then 210 is a huge jump up!
Sure, you could have asked for 250, and I would've recommended that the candidate ask for 250 (because you would've likely gotten 225 or something like that), but asking for 210 and getting it is extremely ideal IMO.
This is better than "I'm not going to tell them my salary or target so that I can wow the shit out of them during the interviews, and then negotiate up once at the offer stage in hopes that they'll instantly approve it since they're over the moon to have me."
It's not that that doesn't work (it does, sometimes); it's just incredibly risky (what if you get a stump-the-chump interviewer that NO HIRES basically everyone they interview?) and very likely to result in "sorry, but that's not in the range for this role, but you can interview for the Staff role..." and then potentially have to do the already-excruciating interview loop _again_.
>Because you've now anchored the negotiation at 210 as the max, and he's going to try to get you for less because this is business.
Why though? The manager has a budget, you are within the budget, getting into negotiation when the condition is already satisfied can, at most, win 10K per year and lose the whole placement, which will cost much more in the additional search.
>But if he offers 200 and you have not given any number at all, you can negotiate and possibly get more than 210.
If you say 210, are you going to absolutely refuse any offer that's less than that? If you would, then you picked a bad number: you should have said 220. Or 230. Or 250. You've already hypothesized that the manager's actual range is 200-250; given that hypothesis, you should be targeting at least the top of that range, not the bottom 20%, if you're going to give a number at all. And if your objection to that is that you don't know the manager's range, yes, that's the point! That's why you shouldn't be risking anchoring the conversation in the wrong place.
If you wouldn't refuse an offer less than 210, then the manager is not going to lose the placement by negotiating with you for less. Yes, 210 is "within budget", but that doesn't mean negotiating for less has no benefit. That's still budget he could now use for something else.
In my experience any number you give is not going to be interpreted as your absolute minimum. It's going to be interpreted as the first step in a negotiation--one in which you should have waited for the company to take the first step, but you didn't and the company will feel no compunction in taking advantage of that.
But in any case, even if you get 210, you have, as I said, foreclosed any chance of getting more. See below.
> You also might get less.
But you're not going to get more, and that's what you should be thinking about.
You've already said the manager's actual range is 200-250. If you say 210, then, as noted above, you're restricting yourself to just the bottom 20% of that range no matter what.
If you give no number and the manager offers 200, when his range is 200-250, that probably means he views you as a baseline hire and you wouldn't have gotten 210 anyway if you'd given that number first. In any case you're no worse off not giving a number; the key point is that the manager views you as a baseline hire.
If you give no number and you're a good enough hire that the manager would give you at least 210, he'll probably offer 210. And then you can negotiate from there.
>If you say 210, are you going to absolutely refuse any offer that's less than that?
I, for one, tell the number, which if was given to me during negotiation would result in acceptance on my part.
> You've already hypothesized that the manager's actual range is 200-250
And I have not hypothesized the range, in my example I speculate why people believe they would have been offered more than they asked for if they did not ask first, this is the hypothesis, not the actual range.
>But you're not going to get more, and that's what you should be thinking about
It's trivial to raise it if you suddenly decided you can get more, just say you have another offer for $X+10K, but you like the company so much you are willing forfeit 10K. More so if you can actually secure such an offer. This is why negotiating down from already satisfactory for both sides comp is a bad strategy for the HM.
> I, for one, tell the number, which if was given to me during negotiation would result in acceptance on my part.
That's not the same as saying you would refuse any offer for less. So you haven't answered the question I actually asked.
> I have not hypothesized the range
Yes, you did. In the scenario we're discussing, you said the manager's range is 200-250.
> this is the hypothesis, not the actual range
In other words, you're moving the goalposts. Sorry, not playing that game. Of course you can make up any numbers you like, but at the end of the day my argument is still the same: it's to your disadvantage to anchor the conversation on a number first. And you don't have to: as I've pointed out in another subthread in this discussion, if the company genuinely wants to hire you, at some point they have to commit to an offer. You don't; you can always go away and talk to someone else. (If you object that you might not be able to, my response is that you're already assuming you might get a better offer, which means you're assuming you can go away and talk to someone else. See further comments below.)
> It's trivial to raise it if you suddenly decided you can get more
I don't see how. You've told them you'd accept an offer from them for 210, but now you're reneging. The fact that you might get another offer for more than 210 is a reason not to tell them the 210 number at all. It's not a reason to go back and revise the 210 number afterwards if you get a better offer.
> This is why negotiating down from already satisfactory for both sides comp is a bad strategy for the HM.
You're assuming that the company will interpret your giving them the 210 number up front as a sign that your negotiating position is strong. I think they will assume the opposite: that your negotiating position is weak. Someone who already has good offers on the table, or expects to get them soon, doesn't have to commit to a number up front. They can just say "Give me an offer you think is competitive and I'll consider it in the light of my other options".
>That's not the same as saying you would refuse any offer for less. So you haven't answered the question I actually asked.
The question is ambiguous, in some cases I stood on my number and would not take anything less, in other cases I renegotiated for other compensation e.g. less base, for much higher sign up bonus. Don't see how is this relevant though.
Essentially, after each side called a number, no matter the order, you are either in agreement or with the employer's number lower than yours. The final outcome in the latter case will be either rejection, or a number between these two. You claim that if the employer calls the number first, the final number will magically be higher than if the candidate called the number first. I don't see how is this feasible unless the employer always calls the maximum possible number or close to it.
>In other words, you're moving the goalposts.
Not really, I did not edit my message, just read it again, the goalposts are still there.
>I don't see how. You've told them you'd accept an offer from them for 210, but now you're reneging
I just wrote how, say you've got another offer. In your model, if employer said 200 first and you, using your strategy responded with 250, and while the employer is thinking or negotiating further, you've got an offer for 260 from another company, how is this different? Are you going to take 250 if offered even though you have 260 on hand?
>You're assuming that the company will interpret your giving them the 210 number up front as a sign that your negotiating position is strong. I think they will assume the opposite: that your negotiating position is weak.
I think you are personalizing things too much, nobody really cares. The HM has a vacancy that needs to be closed ASAP, not a need to demonstrate who is strong and who is weak.
> You claim that if the employer calls the number first, the final number will magically be higher than if the candidate called the number first.
No, I claim that, on net, you will end up with a better final deal if you do not give any number until after you have an offer and you are ready to respond to it. See further comments below.
> In your model, if employer said 200 first and you, using your strategy responded with 250, and while the employer is thinking or negotiating further, you've got an offer for 260 from another company
My strategy would be to not respond with a number to any offer until I have all of the offers I expect to get on the table (either that or those companies have told me definitely that they are not interested in going any further, so I can cross them off my list of possibles). My only response to an offer before that point would be to say "Ok, thanks very much for your offer, let me do some thinking about it and get back to you".
> I think you are personalizing things too much, nobody really cares.
It's not a matter of "personalizing", it's a matter of recognizing that, just like you, the company is trying to get the best deal they can. I'm not saying they will always try to negotiate you down if you give them a number before they've made you an offer. They might, as you say, decide it's not worth it to do that and just write you an offer at that number. But if they do do that, you are almost certainly leaving money on the table that you could have gotten if you had not given them a number and waited for them to make an offer.
And if, in that scenario, you then come back and tell them you want more because someone else made you a higher offer, you're, as I said before, reneging on what you already told them, and you're now saddling them with additional work they didn't even think they would need to do--they thought it was just a matter of writing you an offer at the number you said and you accepting it, boom, done. If you expected that you might get a higher offer, you shouldn't have given them the lower number in the first place.
> The HM has a vacancy that needs to be closed ASAP
Yes, but "ASAP" doesn't have to mean "as soon as you give them a number that's within their range". They might prefer that, but that doesn't mean you should. If they are genuinely interested in hiring you, they will be willing to negotiate if they have to. And it will be to your advantage to make them have to by not giving them a number up front.
> It's not a matter of "personalizing", it's a matter of recognizing that, just like you, the company is trying to get the best deal they can
This is kind of untrue. The company may "want" to get the best deal possible, but you aren't dealing with the company. You're dealing with one or more individuals at the company that have incentives that do not align perfectly with what the company "wants".
In most cases, the hiring manager has a budget for the role and they do not care if you come in at the bottom of budget or near the top. They don't make extra money for getting you as cheaply as possible. Sometimes they even have incentive to pay you more, to close you quickly or even just prestige.
>My strategy would be to not respond with a number to any offer until I have all of the offers I expect to get on the table (either that or those companies have told me definitely that they are not interested in going any further, so I can cross them off my list of possibles). My only response to an offer before that point would be to say "Ok, thanks very much for your offer, let me do some thinking about it and get back to you".
Okay, so you don't respond with a number at all, do I understand correctly? I think you overestimating your negotiation skills a bit but if it works for you, best of luck.
> so you don't respond with a number at all, do I understand correctly?
No. What you quoted from me doesn't say that. It says I don't respond with a number to any offer until I have all the offers I expect on the table (or those leads have otherwise been crossed off). It doesn't say I don't respond with a number after that point.
Once I have all the offers I expect on the table, I respond in whatever way seems best. If one of the offers is good enough, I might just accept it and be done with it. Or I might decide to negotiate with one or more of the companies who have made offers, in which case I will be responding to them with some kind of counter that might include a number. The point is that I'm not making any substantive response until I have all of the information I need to weigh my options.
> if it works for you, best of luck
I have used the process I've been describing every time I've had to do a job search. It has worked out reasonably well.
So, if you actually respond with a number at some point and get an unexpected offer, then what happens? Don't you end in the same situation as somebody who just called the number first and got another offer afterwards? Do you set a hard cut off time for offers and just say "thanks, your offer arrived too late, try being faster the next time"?
Because if you were an important hire you'd be impressed more when the comp was eventually pushed all the way to 250 from 200 than to 250 from 230. There is no advantage in offering you 225 or 230 at all.
If I was an important hire I probably have a handful of 230s in my hand already. It’s easy for me to not bother with a company who may or may not push from 200 to 250.
If you had a handful of 230s you would not negotiate? That's quite rare, most companies optimize hiring for the most probable case, not for the outliers.
Because you could use your offers against each other as a leverage, dropping any of the offers decreases your leverage. Most people want more leverage when negotiating, not less.
> 60% of jobs will tell you a salary range either on the ad or via the recruiter.
This is common in the US as well and makes your filtering job easier when it happens.
> The rest wont play the “you tell me first” game and just pass on you.
Are those employers you would want to work for? My heuristic is, probably not. In which case it costs you nothing to pass on them as well. But see further comment below.
> more offers is more leverage
Not necessarily. They're only leverage if you are actually interested in them. Otherwise they're not an actual alternative.
If there is an employer you really want to work for who literally won't give you an offer unless you tell them a number first, then you're in a buyer's market. But for anyone who has good tech skills it is rarely a buyer's market; you are a scarce resource and should value yourself accordingly.
Leverage is not defined as something you're interested in. That would be more like a BATNA.
Leverage is what someone else believes you're interested in.
In the US many jobs post a salary range, which can be not accurate or updated and apply to several levels of roles, "based on your experience" which puts you back at the negotiation table.
I've always found it odd american culture does not always embrace negotiating despite many of our core actions being based on it. Jobs, home purchases, following "rules" and "policies" are in many cases left to the personal discretion of the enforcer. Yet we dont teach people how to effectively negotiate. In the midwest especially the cultural coding is to view it as distasteful. The disservice is usually to the person with the lease leverage and the least information aka the little guy.
> Leverage is what someone else believes you're interested in.
If you're good enough at dissimulation to make a recruiter (who has a lot more experience at this than you do) believe you're interested in another offer when you're actually not, you probably don't need any of the advice in either the article or this discussion thread.
But if you're not that good at dissimulation, attempting it is shooting yourself in the foot. You're much better off being honest and only talking about other offers you have if you actually are interested in them.
> In the US many jobs post a salary range, which can be not accurate or updated and apply to several levels of roles, "based on your experience" which puts you back at the negotiation table.
Yes, posted salary ranges should not be taken as absolute. But they give you an idea of whether a company is worth your time to look at.
> I've always found it odd american culture does not always embrace negotiating despite many of our core actions being based on it.
I don't think it's "American culture" in general that doesn't embrace negotiating. It's more a certain segment of American middle class culture. I agree that it's both odd and a disadvantage to those who grow up in that culture.
I can't argue against "if you're that good at it". I do know most people lie and they lie a lot. Often at work.
If you've ever called in sick, pretended to be thrilled at someone's birthday gift (not family), told your boss you were stoked about a project that you certainly were not and felt believed -- tap into it!
> most people lie and they lie a lot. Often at work.
Yes, in situations which are nothing like job negotiations. Sure, people tell little white lies all the time, because the stakes are low and nobody has any real incentive to call them on it. (Calling in sick might be different if you do it often enough that your boss starts wondering what's going on.) Neither of those things are the case in job negotiations.
I've found either they tell you up front, or you have to go through the entire process and then at the end they fit you into their predefined bands and give you an offer somewhere in the middle of the band. The bands are not always about how well you interviewed, but can be about how good a story you make based on your previous experience (which probably won't be verified, so go for gold).
> Since more offers is more leverage
Also my experience. You get a number of offers, then go back to the company you like best and tell them what the market is paying.
Either they like you and will bump it up, or they're indifferent and will hold.
Just give a wide range that sets the floor and gives room for growth.
When I was interviewing last time I told people I was hoping for somewhere in the range of 100K-200K (I'm not in the U.S.)
The lowest offer I got was 115K which I then negotiated up to 135K (the most they could pay).
Several companies bowed out because they weren't even able to offer 100K, and I was glad to have saved us both the time.
If you want 240K, say you want 200K-400K.
If you're looking beyond 300K, say your range is between 300K-600K.
I realize that, yes, you're putting an upper limit on that range and in theory you might get offered less (but you can mitigate this by adjusting that upper bound to be the top of the range for the next level beyond the position you're interviewing for)
E.g. when I interviewed at facebook I told them 150K - 300K
> Unless the number you give is significantly higher than any of your potential employers are ever going to offer you, you are shortchanging yourself by giving that number--it means that you have now foreclosed potential higher offers that otherwise might have come your way. That is the basis of the advice given in the article.
That's why I said to give the number you _want_ up front.
This way, you don't have to worry about haggling up to get to a number you're happy with or getting FOMO over offers for more that might have been.
Otherwise, you're going to enter a negotiation with a recruiter who has way more information and access than you do, and you'll still feel FOMO anyway at the end result _while_ potentially losing out on getting what you wanted (which might have been achievable, had you stated your asking up front).
> What knowing what you are worth should do is help you to decide, on your own (i.e, without asking recruiters who have conflicts of interest), which potential employers are worth your time to even look at in the first place.
I've interviewed, and have worked at, several places whose comp ranges really surprised me.
I've also worked at Google, which is where I got paid the _least_ in my career thus far. (Note to readers: unless you really really really don't care about the money, don't EVER take a pay cut at face value!)
You really can't judge a book by its cover, and, again, recruiters know more than you about what their clients can (or would be willing to) afford.
Also, at the end of the day, recruiters are salespeople. If they think a candidate is a perfect fit for a client's needs, they (the good ones, at least) will absolutely go to bat to negotiate with the hiring managers for the highest comp package they can. Of course, it would be way more efficient to have a direct connection with the hiring manager, but that's not always possible.
> Unless the number you give is significantly higher than any of your potential employers are ever going to offer you, you are shortchanging yourself by giving that number
Then do better research before going into the meeting instead of playing games after multiple interviews rounds.
Also companies don't have a lot of incentive to pay too much under market rate anyway, especially for higher end jobs where they provide some training, or churn from people getting pushed constantly for a dollar more will kill their business.
> do better research before going into the meeting
Research in the sense of information you can find without having detailed inside information about the company will tell you general salary ranges, which, as I said, will tell you whether it's worth your while to be talking to this company at all. But it won't give you a solid enough number that it's worth risking shooting yourself in the foot by giving it.
> companies don't have a lot of incentive to pay too much under market rate anyway
This means you are likely to get an offer that's at least market rate (so, as above, you know whether it's worth your while to talk to this company at all). It doesn't mean you should tell them first what you think "market rate" is, instead of them telling you what they are willing to pay in the form of an offer.
if you don't know your worth, you're entering the job market in a position of relative weakness, and no amount of third grade negotiation tricks like "not telling the first number" will make up for it.
what do you think, that by witholding that number, they'll start negotiating from the upper half of their budget range? that's wishful thinking, at best. no, they will offer whatever they think they'll get away with, and it will pin your salary discussion to a number they decided
I have no idea how people think that that is a good outcome.
Unless the number you give is significantly higher than any of your potential employers are ever going to offer you, you are shortchanging yourself by giving that number--it means that you have now foreclosed potential higher offers that otherwise might have come your way. That is the basis of the advice given in the article.
I get what you're saying about knowing what you're worth, but that in itself doesn't give you very much help in knowing what potential offers might come your way. Unless you have detailed inside information about all of your potential employers (hint: if you do, you should already be leveraging that information to get a job offer without having to go through all the drudgery of interviewing like everyone else), you can't possibly know how the number you give compares to what they could potentially offer you. So you shouldn't give a number at all.
In fact, the more you know what you are worth, the less inclined you should be to give a number instead of just waiting for an actual offer. What knowing what you are worth should do is help you to decide, on your own (i.e, without asking recruiters who have conflicts of interest), which potential employers are worth your time to even look at in the first place. Don't even bother talking to companies that you know can't compensate you enough. But you don't need to, and shouldn't, tell recruiters what your threshold is for "enough". Just tell them company X doesn't look like it would be a good fit. Nuff sed.
> If recruiters are talking to you, they want to place you at the highest comp package they can.
They want to place you at the highest comp package they can as long as it doesn't risk not placing you at all. They never want to walk away altogether. But you might. So your interests and theirs are not quite aligned.