Can You Lose a Job Offer by Negotiating Salary?

Think ahead and shape the negotiation course and speed

The most critical point in your negotiation for a job will come before you ever focus on salary. Your guideposts are your goals. What are you looking for, in addition to salary? What is your alternative, such as staying in your current job?

Perhaps work flexibility is important to you, or commuting distance. Few of us ever get in a car without considering our destination.

The other step before departing on your negotiation is considering how the company sees its situation. What problem could they be trying to solve? What other people and skills might address their needs, other than you?

Find a perspective that combines your view with theirs. (Indeed, come up with a couple!) How you describe the mutual vantage point is as important as the objective view.

Skillful bargainers think about goals and pathways well in advance because they shape the negotiation course and speed. There are many routes and many destinations, each with its plusses and minuses.

Ask more questions than make statements

Negotiating with a company can seem oversized, rather like David vs. Goliath. But negotiation is between people, not things. And with uniquely familiar ease, people talk.

Engage with the company representative as a person with all sorts of exciting ideas. Imagine them as distant relatives, unknown but due respect. Ask more questions than making statements. Listen.

Confident, respectful discussions with listening build social trust. You will need rapport to learn the company’s hidden interests underneath their visible positions (like a salary offer).

Before delving into the win-lose tradeoffs of salary, understand what motivates that distant relative. Seek out and look for surprising connections between you.

Partnership is better than compromise

So do your homework and talk like you would with a professional colleague. If you lose a job offer over salary, that might be the best outcome. Success is often not in winning the highest starting salary. It is in creating a valuable, long-lasting partnership.

excerpted from Up Journey, 19 April 2021 https://upjourney.com/can-you-lose-a-job-offer-by-negotiating-salary