Salary Negotiation Mastery: Counter Offer with Confidence

4 Dec 2023 · 2 min

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2:00

A short how-to from TJ Walker advising job candidates to counteroffer when an initial salary is lower than desired. He recommends stating a justified higher salary (e.g., asking $80,000 if offered $40,000) by demonstrating market range, superior experience, and high-value skills, and being prepared to walk away if the employer retracts the offer.

Chapters

What do you do if you're offered a good position from a great company, but the starting salary they want to give you is significantly less than what you wanted? My advice is to counter offer. Come up with a number that you're confident you can justify. If you're offered $40,000 a year and you really think you're worth $80,000 a year, there's nothing wrong with asking for $80,000 a year. But two things have to be certain. Number one, you have to be able to make a credible case as to why you deserve $80,000. Make the case that there's a range of salaries for this position, 40,000 to 100,000. And you have more experience, significantly more experience than the average person or someone just starting off or someone with even five years. Make the case that you have significant high value skills that are going to make you more valuable in this position for the organization. The main thing is you can't just say, well, I want more money because I just bought a new car, I just bought a new house. No prospective employer cares about you at that level. They care about what's good for the organization. But if you can make the case that it's fair, it's a part of the market, it's standard for what someone of your level of experience, then no one's offended. Now, second condition is you have to be willing to accept the fact that they may say, oh, well, I'm sorry, we can't do that, then we retract the offer. You have to be willing to walk away from the offer. So make sure that you're comfortable. You've got another offer, an existing job, or the ability to wait for your ideal offer at your ideal salary.