http://www.forbes.com/sites/lizryan/2016/02/11/ten-bargaining-chips-to-use-in-your-job-offer-negotiation/#55e07abd5ad8
Ten 'Bargaining Chips' To Use In Your Job-Offer Negotiation
Liz Ryan
- I write about bringing life to work and bringing work to life. -
A lot of very talented people don’t realize that they have leverage in the job-offer process. By the time a department manager has decided to hire you, he or she has a stake in your arrival on the team. It would not be a trivial thing to cue up another candidate at that stage, after the entire hiring process has played out. By all means, if you like the job offer, I encourage you to take it! I don’t want you to negotiate just for the sake of negotiating.
At the same time, if the offer comes in low, it is important to say so. This is the exact moment when you have power in the tango between you and your next boss. If your boss were to say “Take the offer or leave it!” that would be a chilling sign. If the offer were quite low — say, more than ten percent off your target and what you know you are worth — I would hate for you to take the job. The statement or suggestion “Take it or leave it — you’re not the only fish in the sea” speaks volumes about the culture of the organization.
If they don’t show you the love now, when they’re trying to get you on board, don’t expect them to value you at any future point!
Your first step in negotiating a job offer is to ask for a higher salary. Sometimes your boss can sweeten your job offer to make it more appealing. Sometimes he or she can’t bridge the entire gap between the job offer amount and your target starting salary. Here are ten other good things, apart from a higher starting salary, that you can ask for in that case.
Often, these non-base-salary elements are easier for your department manager to approve than an increase in your starting pay level, because managers have different budgets for different line items. Choose a few of these ‘bargaining chips’ and bring them into the conversation the next time you negotiate a job offer. You will learn a lot about your hiring manager’s personality, priorities and creativity as you and he or he brainstorm together!
Extra Vacation Time
If you can’t get the starting salary you want, you can negotiate for extra vacation time, which is virtually free to your employer.
Sign-on Bonus
A sign-on bonus is a bonus that you receive with your first paycheck. What’s fantastic about a sign-on bonus is that it’s separate from your salary, meaning that your department manager may be able to pull the dollars for your sign-on bonus from a different pool and give you the sign-on bonus without disrupting the company’s schedule of recommended starting salaries.
You’ll have the cash and your manager may be able to avoid having to push your request for an extra few thousand dollars through many layers of red tape.
Guaranteed first-year bonus and/or salary increase
You can negotiate for your first-year bonus to be guaranteed to you if you can’t reach the base salary number you’ve set as your target. I have included this element in many offer letters and gotten sharp candidates to feel comfortable accepting our job offer that way. This approach makes sense because if someone is taking a job with a $20K bonus potential, they are likely to ask “Can I really rely on getting that $20K?”
If the company is young or the bonus plan is untested, guaranteeing the first year’s bonus can surmount that hurdle. The same process can work with your first-year salary increase, too. You can negotiate a guaranteed percentage increase at your first-year anniversary in lieu of a starting salary number that your hiring manager can’t reach right now.
Flexibility
If your lifestyle could benefit from flexibility in your schedule or the ability to work from home sometimes, keep in mind that you can negotiate for more flexibility while you are dancing the offer-letter tango with your hiring manager!
Professional Development
Professional development funding goes up and down with the economy and your employer’s fortunes, but you can negotiate to have a budgeted amount of professional development funding made available to you. You might get your manager to agree to send you to your industry’s most important conference or to send you to an executive training program that you wouldn’t be able to attend otherwise.
Like many of these ‘bargaining chips,’ your manager can potentially pull the professional development money from a different pool and account for it on a different line item than your base salary, and that can make all the difference in a stodgy corporate structure.
Tuition Reimbursement
At one time tuition-reimbursement funds flowed like water. I spoke with the Director of an Executive MBA program who told me that fifteen years ago, eighty percent of his university’s executive MBA students had their full tuition paid by their employers. Today, only twenty percent of the executive MBA candidates in his program are so lucky. The other eighty percent pay their hefty tuition bills on their own. You can try negotiating for tuition reimbursement, a wonderful benefit that will not only increase your knowledge base but grow your network and your mojo, too!
Performance Bonus Potential
If your starting salary offer is unexciting, think about negotiating for a performance bonus that will only be paid if you hit certain agreed-upon milestones after a time period like six months or a year. That should give your hiring manager confidence because he or she won’t be on the hook for that expense unless you do a terrific job. There’s no doubt about that happening!
Travel Perks
If you’re going to be traveling quite a bit in your new job, negotiate for travel perks like airport club membership and Business Class or First Class travel. Those little comforts are indescribably important when you’re hurried and harried and trying to get home or stuck in a crowded airport during a snowstorm.
Car Allowance
A car allowance is a monthly fee paid to you by your employer for the use of your private vehicle on company business. Your monthly car allowance should pay you more than the IRS mileage rate and make it easier for you to lease or buy a nicer car (if you’d earn more via the designated per-mile IRS allowance, take that instead!). If you will be visiting customer or vendor sites or carrying customers or vendors around in your car, research car-allowance rates in your area and add this perk to your “bargaining chip” list! Since your car allowance may be taxable, make sure that the amount you agree upon is still a good deal for you after taxes.
Long-term Incentives
Last on our list, don’t forget long-term incentives like a company contribution to your retirement plan, stock options or other long-term rewards. There are many forms of long-term compensation and if you are pursuing jobs at a Senior Manager or Director level or higher, you owe it to yourself to understanding them and to bring them into your negotiation conversation. The good thing about long-term incentives for your employer is that they tend to vest over time, so your employer won’t owe you unless you stick around for a number of years.
It’s a new day. We are all learning to advocate for ourselves. Make sure that any special arrangements you make with your hiring manager are confirmed in writing in your revised offer letter. Try some of these “bargaining chips” in your next job-offer negotiation and grow your muscles and mojo as you step into your new assignment!
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