Host: How do I discuss the salary question?
Louise Kursmark: Salary and compensation is a such a sensitive issues, most people don’t like to talk about it, they are not good at negotiating it and they are concern that that discussion is going to be a real negative during the interview or during a negotiating process. So mentally preparing for is important but its also important that you understand how essential it is for your career to negotiate the very best salary that you can get because every time that you get a raise it’s based on your salary so percentage of you salary to place what you raise is given. So you first salary really impacts every raise and the entire salary that you about your career, so learning to do good in the negotiation then the salary negotiation then is really an essential career skill and I do suggest that you practice that and learn it as best that you can.
So I like to describe it as a comparable to a shopping expedition. In the early stages of the process the employer were shopping for a new employee has specific qualification in mind, looking for certain things and generally has a budget in mind. Great! Let's say you're out for shopping for a new pair of shoes and you're going to spend a $100.00 on a new pair of shoes. You go out and you see a pair of shoes that you absolutely love, they fit your purpose, they are just delight you every time you put them on your fit, you know they're going to be a valuable addition to your wardrobe for a long time to come. But there $120.00 I bet that most of you are going to buy the shoes the same thing issue with the employer they have found someone you who meets their criteria who adds a lot of value is going to be a continuously profitable and productive employee delivering value to the company over the long term and they don’t want to lose you by under pricing you, neither do they want to pay too much of course they have physical responsibility.
But once they have decided they really want you the chance of offering a higher salary are much, much better. And that’s the reason you don’t want to disclose your discussed salary to early in the process because they haven’t committed to you yet, they haven’t been willing to buy you they still shopping. So learn how to defer and deflect and not discuss salary as much as you can during the interview process.
For example, if the interview were says, “How much do you looking to make or what it would take to bring you on board?” You need to learn how to gracefully to say something like, “I'm really not that concern about salary, I'm sure that if you decide I'm the right person for the job it won’t be an issue” or “I'm sure your company pays competitive salary it’s not the most important concern I have I really rather determine if I'm the right person for the job.” So defer and deflect and bring the discussion back to whether you are that right person for the job.
Now, sometimes people will be concern that are going to antagonize the interviewer and they don’t want to get into a struggle match with the interviewer that they really can't win because if you turn that person off and anger that person you're not probably going to be invited back for another interview. So at some point you might feel compelled to reveal some information. Instead of saying I'm looking for $65,000.00 a year you want to come up with the response that is a little bit more beneficial to you. You could say something like, “My research shows that salary for position to this kind are in the $60,000.00 to $90,000.00 range is that were your expecting?”
So once again, you're establishing a certain expectation but you're not being really fine that about it and your chance of negotiating the higher level salary are much better that if you came in with a single lower number. Now, all of this requires that you do some homework, do some preparation and that you're actually able to do this during the stress of an interview. Don’t be too hard on yourself if you’ve blow out a number and you can't fallow the recommendation that I've just given you its extremely natural relax, move on and go on with the interview to see if you are the right person and worry about negotiating because that’s salary once an offer has been extended.
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