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The truth is that negotiating salary can be one of the most uncomfortable parts of the job search process. But if you don’t negotiate, you’re leaving money on the table. How to negotiate salary with boss depends on you and your specific situation, because every business (and human) is different in regards to what they value and what they need from their employees.
Negotiating salary with your boss can be a nerve-wracking experience. After all, you’re asking for a lot of money—and probably not getting paid what you think you deserve.
If you want to make sure that your boss doesn’t take advantage of you, here are some tips for how to negotiate salary with your boss so that both of you walk away feeling like winners.
- Know your worth. Before you go into the negotiation, be sure that you know what the going rate is for someone with your skills and experience level in your industry. You can get this information from sites like Glassdoor or Payscale, or from talking to people who are in similar positions at other companies.
- Start with a low number for yourself—and then go lower than that! When you first meet with your boss about negotiating salary, start by offering a low number—something like 10% higher than what they were originally thinking about paying you—and then negotiate up from there based on their response (more on this later). A low number shows confidence in yourself and makes it more likely that they’ll accept it as an opening offer rather than reject it immediately out of hand
How to negotiate salary with boss
Introduction
Negotiating salary can be a difficult, anxiety-inducing process. It’s hard to know what to say, when to ask for more, and even whom to ask at all. The following guidelines will help you learn how to negotiate salary with your boss with confidence and ease:
Do your research.
Before you approach your boss about a raise or to negotiate your salary, there are a few steps you can take to ensure that you’re well prepared. If you’re new to the job market or haven’t negotiated with a manager before, it’s important that your research is as thorough as possible:
- Look at the market rate for your position. You may have heard this advice before and dismissed it as unhelpful because “everyone knows” what they’re worth—but while that might be true among friends who know each other well enough that they don’t have any secrets from one another (and maybe not even then), in the professional world of work with its many layers of bureaucracy and hierarchy, knowing exactly what someone else makes can be difficult if not impossible. Fortunately, there are plenty of resources available to help guide you through this process. Salary surveys can provide an overview of average salaries by industry and location; sites like Glassdoor allow employees to anonymously review companies they’ve worked for in order to share their experiences; LinkedIn offers free tools such as its salary calculator (which lets users enter their own skillset along with their current role) so users can get an idea how much their skillset should be valued on the market today based on how those skillsets were trending historically over time (and thus which roles are currently experiencing demand).
Calculate how much you should ask for.
Before you even start negotiating, it’s important to do your research. You can do this by:
- Researching the average salary for your role. Take a look at job websites like Glassdoor and Payscale to find out what people in your industry are earning in similar roles.
- Finding out what others in the company are being paid. Check if there are any other employees who have done similar jobs and see how much they earn—this will help you make sure you’re not undervaluing yourself because of preconceived ideas about what your skillset is worth.
- Checking out salaries for similar roles at other companies as well as government departments or institutions that might be able to give an indication of how much someone with your qualifications should be earning (e.g., NASA).
Get your boss to bring up the conversation.
The best time to bring up salary is during the hiring process. A company that is hiring you—or a recruiter on their behalf—is more likely to bring up the topic of compensation than if you were already working at the company, as they’ll want to make sure that there’s mutual interest in employment before getting into any details about pay. If your boss has been looking for someone with certain skills for months and finally finds someone who meets those criteria, she will be much more willing to talk about salary than if she were just filling an empty position in a department where everyone has been doing their jobs well enough without additional help.
Present your case.
- Present your case and facts.
- Don’t forget to be polite and friendly.
Be prepared if they offer something that isn’t what you wanted.
If they offer you something that’s not what you wanted, don’t immediately reject it. Instead, propose a different solution. For example, if your boss offers a $50K salary but you were hoping for $54K, ask for more time to consider their offer and come back with your counteroffer in a week or so.
If your boss doesn’t budge and insists on only offering one number (for example, they want to pay you $45K per year), ask them what exactly makes up that dollar amount—is it an annual salary or monthly? How will those dollars be calculated? You might even suggest splitting the difference: say that the best number would be $47K per year (or whatever). If at all possible, try to get them talking about smaller amounts than just one big number like “what do I need this month?” or “how much do I earn each day?”.
Negotiation is a skill, and like any skill it can be taught and practiced and improved.
Negotiation is a skill, and like any skill it can be taught and practiced and improved. If you want to improve your negotiation skills, it’s important to recognize that preparation is key: your preparation will determine how well you do during the actual negotiations.
You should prepare in two ways:
- Prepare yourself so that you feel confident (and not stressed) when talking with your boss.
- Prepare a list of things to discuss with him or her so that you know what issues are important to both sides, which ones can be worked out between the two parties, and which ones are non-negotiable for one side or another.
Preparing yourself includes doing things like learning about salary ranges for similar jobs in similar markets; making sure your resume is up-to-date; knowing what sort of benefits package might be attractive from a financial perspective (including health insurance coverage); thinking about whether there are other benefits besides salary alone—such as flex time—that would be appealing; thinking about whether there are other factors such as commute distance or commute time that may affect how much an increase covers (or doesn’t cover). Preparing yourself also means thinking about how much money really matters to you; sometimes people need more than they think they do! A company might offer less than what we think would make us happy because they know that some combination of less money + better benefits + shorter commute would make us happier than just taking whatever amount they offer without considering these other factors at all.”
Conclusion
You may have a strong case for why you deserve more money than you’re currently making, but it’s important to approach this conversation with your boss carefully. Many employees want to know how to negotiate salary with their employer, but they aren’t sure how to go about it. We’ve put together some tips that can help ensure a good outcome when you’re trying to get more money at work.
Section: Be prepared
Section: Negotiating salary isn’t like haggling over the price of a car—it can be a difficult conversation, and one that you should be careful going into.
Section: You’ll need evidence of your value at the company and an idea of what other people in similar roles are being paid.
Takeaway: Before starting any negotiation, take time to consider why you deserve more money, and make sure your reasons are well founded .
