Summary of Special Situations

From: Jack Chapman

How do you determine your value if you think you’re inexperienced?

The first such people who come to mind are recent college graduates.  I recently read a survey of Harvard M.B.A. graduates whose biggest worry was that they didn’t have any experience that would attract an employer.

Other “I don’t have any experience” people are career changers, foreign immigrants, high-school students, even mainframe programmers switching to client-server networks.

Please be careful.  Your tendency is to be so glad that someone is offering you a job that you accept with a beggar’s nod and smile at whatever is offered. 

Evidently you have the ability to do the work or the company wouldn’t be making you an offer.

The company’s hiring decision is based 95 percent on your personality, enthusiasm, and transferable skills.  Only 5 percent has to do with your specialized knowledge.  Since the company can’t teach manners and common sense, the company hires it.  Since it can teach its subject, it trains you.  Therefore, 95 percent of you is experience worth bargaining about.

This is it!  This is the only time you’ll be at the starting line.  Here’s your chance to begin the virtuous cycle of Ms. Worth.

What do you have to lose?

I’ve also written about several other negotiations topics and situations on my website.  Use BoughtTheBook as a password and you’ll be able to get access to these articles, (and more).

»        Are Bonuses Refundable?

»        Be Willing to Walk Away

»        Can My Employer Find Out How Much I am Making?

»        Catching Up After Starting at a Low Salary

»        Countering an Aggressive Employer

»        Declining a Counter-Offer

»        Deferred Compensation: Why wait?

»        Does a Title Matter? Should I Negotiate it?

»        Fixing Negotiation Mistakes

»        Full time vs. Part time—Change in Pay?

»        More About When to Get It In Writing

»        More Work—Same Pay. Now What?

»        Negotiating Health Benefits & Other Perks

»        Negotiating Telecommuting

»        Negotiations: Be Willing to Walk Away.

»        Promotion or a Lateral Move?

»        Salary Negotiations in a Slow Economy

»        Squeezing Money Out of Hard Work and Good Luck

»        Three Reasons to Decline a Counter-Offer

»        Took a Low offer--Now what?

»        Underpaid? Women & Salary Negotiations

»        Using Internal Information About Salary

»        Why Men Earn More & What To Do About It

Summary of Special-Situation Rules

»        When discussing salary expectations outside job interviews, focus on a researched level of responsibility and concomitant pay.

»        With recruiters and employment agents, even when you’re discussing a specific job, you might go first, but if you can avoid it and still get the opportunity to interview, it could be to your advantage.  Stress your researched expectations, not your present salary, and give a wide range.

»        Use a researched range, too, when confronted with rigid salary structures.  See whether you can get a new salary, based on your market value, within that structure.

»        If you get “overqualified” feedback or hesitancy in bringing up salary, check on the status of the job offer and initiate salary discussions.

»        When you think you haven’t any experience, choose to start Ms. Worth’s virtuous cycle.

»        If you’ve been let go, don’t go yet!  Negotiate a severance.

»        Better yet—negotiate severance in the hiring interview.

»        BTW, IMHO, you should avoid negotiations by e-mail; HAND.

»        Check with a Lawyer when it’s complicated or risky.

»        Go to www.SalaryNegotiations.com for more information

»        [If you can get stock options or grants to own a piece of the rock, go for it! …which brings us to the next chapter, “Stock Options Package.”

Jack Chapman is a nationally know job coach and seminar speaker specializing for the last 20 years in salary negotiations and job interviews.

For more information on Salary Negotiations, please visit: http://www.breakthrough-salaries.com/

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