5 Rules For Negotiating A Job Offer
There’s plenty of bad advice about negotiating a job offer, but there’s at least one strategy that is relatively straightforward and won’t ruin your reputation with the company if it doesn’t work.
The easiest and most effective way to negotiate a job offer is by aligning your interview timelines so that you are receiving offers from several companies at the same time. This way, you can disclose your highest offer to the lower offers. Then the lower offers have an opportunity to match or beat your best offer.
1. Align your interview timelines.
In order to make this strategy for negotiating a job offer possible in the first place, you need to pace your interviews so that you receive all of your offers around the same time.
This is because some companies will set a time limit on how long you have to accept the offer before it’s no longer available, a.k.a., an “exploding” offer.
The timeframe is typically 24 or 48 hours. It’s possible to ask for an extension, but waiting for another offer usually isn’t an acceptable excuse.
Pacing your interview processes to run concurrently helps avoid a situation where you receive an exploding offer and don’t have enough time to finish your other interview processes. In this case, you’re forced to make a decision between accepting the offer or continuing your search and letting the offer explode.
But even if you send out all your applications together, companies will respond at different times, which makes your interview processes non-concurrent from the start. To fix this, simply request scheduled times that align with your other interviews.
For example, if one company asks to schedule your final round interview, but you still haven’t completed your phone interviews with 3-4 other companies, then schedule that final round at least a week in advance to give yourself time to complete the phone interviews. Then you can schedule any additional final rounds at the same time as the one you already have scheduled.
2. Frame your proposal carefully.
It should not sound like an ultimatum: “Give me a better offer or I’m going to accept this other offer.” That’s a lose-lose. Even if you get a better offer (which is highly unlikely with an ultimatum), you’re starting off on the wrong foot with the company you’re going to work for.
Instead, it should sound like you want to work together to reach a solution that makes both sides happy. It should also seem like an objectively reasonable request. In other words, anyone in your shoes would do the same thing.
Preferably, you want to have this conversation in person or over the phone. Try to avoid sending something like this in an email.
Here’s a script for starting the negotiation:
“I really want to work for Company A. It’s truly my number one choice, but Company B offered me X salary Y equity and I’m having a hard time turning that down.”
This might be enough. You’ve stated the specifics of the offer you have elsewhere, now the burden of response is on the employer.
3. Be prepared to accept the other offer that you’re using as leverage.
If you’re going to use this strategy, you should be prepared to accept the offer from Company B. This is just in case Company A tells you that they can’t budge on their offer and you’ll probably be better off accepting your offer from Company B.
Because then if you come back and try to accept Company A’s offer, you’ll look sheepish, at best, and at worst it might seem like you were lying about the other offer.
4. See the bigger picture.
First, have an awareness of who you’re speaking with. Is it the recruiter or your future boss?
A recruiter is likely working with salary caps and other protocols. This person might be reluctant to negotiate because they just can’t break the protocols. It’s not really up to them.
Your future boss, on the other hand, may be better positioned to discuss your request with company leadership.
Also, consider the constraints of the company.
At a larger company, if you’re being hired with the same title as various other members of the team in the same office, it may be difficult to give you a better deal than everyone else.
At a startup, cash might be limited right before another funding round. You may need to adjust your proposal for more equity and a salary raise after the funding round.
5. Don’t negotiate a job offer just because.
Some people say you should always negotiate your job offers, but this isn’t necessarily true.
In some cases, a job offer is an amazing opportunity as it is. Even if another company is offering you a better salary, but it’s a worse overall offer for other reasons (toxic culture, less equity), then it might not be worth the risk to use that other offer to get 5-10% more from the offer you’re already planning to accept.