Salary Negotiation, bit of help please
- Thread starter dl8860
- Start date
Don
I would put in a conditional "acceptance" on the salary offered with a clause that if after 6 months you meet certain MBO or KPI a mandatory pay rise of X is required on that date.
You could even push for it to be backdated, but that would be pushing quite hard I would say
You could even push for it to be backdated, but that would be pushing quite hard I would say
Caporegime
Had the second interview today. I have to say that I think I'd enjoy the work so much more than where I am now that I'm not hung up much at all over salary.
If they do offer me something, chances are I'll try and squeeze out another couple of K, but I'm not going to reject on principle - The alternative is that I stay where I am and get no pay rise this year anyway as current company is on pay freeze.
If they do offer me something, chances are I'll try and squeeze out another couple of K, but I'm not going to reject on principle - The alternative is that I stay where I am and get no pay rise this year anyway as current company is on pay freeze.
are there not many employers offering roles doing what you do?
I mean if this place doesn't take you on is that it, you're stuck at your current place?
it just isn't a good sign if they're not willing to give you a raise in order to move, I'd get your CV out to a few other places while you're at it... if they stick to their guns and only offer you your current rate then some other job pops up get ready to move again in a month or two...
I mean if this place doesn't take you on is that it, you're stuck at your current place?
it just isn't a good sign if they're not willing to give you a raise in order to move, I'd get your CV out to a few other places while you're at it... if they stick to their guns and only offer you your current rate then some other job pops up get ready to move again in a month or two...
This ^ that'll learn em
Make sure it's just long enough to be outside of any rebate period from the recruiter too
a friend of mine basically did something along those lines a couple of years ago... he was adamant he was underpaid where he was and wanted an additional 20-25k, obviously he wasn't going to get it internally... applying externally for jobs in the range he wanted he got low balled based on his existing salary, despite the initial promises from the recruiter who acknowledged he was underpaid - in the end he moved for a circa 10k raise but since he'd been spamming his CV everywhere he carried on attending interviews... another place offered him a job for a further 10k and he ended up leaving his new role within 2 weeks.... the recruiter for the first role was really really ****ed off - they'd spent some time battling over salary for the first role... was their fault in the end, my friend knew the market rates and they tried to low ball him
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Soldato
Sounds like they have you in the bitchnerd zone.
Soldato
That is not to say you can't get a 25k rise, I have.
Caporegime
Don't trust recruiters. They work for the employers not for you and their best interests are served by getting you a job quickly and satisfying their real clients rather than getting you the best job they can.
I would simply say that £x is the minimum you're willing to accept and be comfortable in the knowledge that if you can get one job offer like this you can get another.
I didn't say otherwise, and it depends on lots of things - your current base can certainly be a factor, skill set and demand for those skills etc..
he basically did get one in the end - whether the second employer would have offered it to him had he not already just got an extra 10k by moving is unknown
some employers don't like paying more than they feel they have to and so are reluctant to hand out a 50% hike in base salary
If they really want you, they should be willing to pay £x or something very close to it. The fact that - according to the agent who has admitted to lying to you since day 1 - there is some mystery candidate with less experience who is allegedly willing to work for £x-10 shouldn't really come into it. They have £x set aside, it is not like you are still asking for more than £x. You are presumably the preferred candidate, otherwise you wouldn't be having these conversations with them.
If you are confident that you could find another job somewhere else paying more money (i.e. this is not a rare opportunity), I would tell them that you cannot move for £x-3.2. Look at travel costs/time, benefits you get in your current job, working hours etc etc and basically put forward that you need a pay rise just to break even, assuming that is believable.
I had a similar scenario in the past, whereby a job was advertised at "up to £x". I wanted £x, the agent later said the range was really £x-10 to £x-5. I said I really wouldn't be comfortable at £x-5 because of the gigantic increase in travel costs which would have swallowed the majority of my pay rise and that I felt my qualification, skills and experience warranted more than that in the given sector. In the end we settled on £x-2; supposedly that took some persuasion because it was above the original range but they'd struggled to find the right candidate so did it to get it over the line, but it could have just been agent speak. Either way, the point is that the negotiation is a two-way street and despite the fact that personal circumstance should be irrelevant to how suitable you are for a given job/wage, if you can give a convincing argument as to why you should not take a low salary it may shift their mindset a bit.
Soldato
No, IME recruiters do not act remotely on the employers side, their default t&cs usually have inverse tiered rates, e.g. 15% of first year salary upto £40k, then 20% between 40 and 50, with 25% from 60 upwards, that is based on 20 agencies I've dealt with. They will deliberately pitch the candidates at their highest tier despite it being over industry standards. Since we insist on largely dealing with candidates directly, we've found they screw over both sides, we've turned average people down purely on inflated expectations that came from the recruiters, the candidate was asking for much less, and when we found out, and aproached them directly, we offered them a fair salary, and of the 4 offers they had, we where still the highest, despite being £5k under the recruiters stated expectation.
It possibly depends on the sector, but engineering and IT most certainly work like this.
It's funny to see both sides of agencies, they are ridiculously off the wall and act against both parties best interests, their greed and dodgy tactics is almost second to none from first hand experience and catching them out. there are one or two good ones, and its no surprise that we tend to stick with those that act fairly and above board, but when you are trying to recruit and there are less candidates than jobs, you really do need to suffer the pain of managing agencies.
In the OP's situation, it's tough, it sounds like standard Agency practices of building false expectations probably on both sides. I could be wrong, and often am, but from direct experience, this is how I've had about 10 candidates pitched to me in the last year.
- Recruiter told candidate they could get £10K over their current salary which they said was low for the industry.
- Recruiter obviously knows the employers salary range but still puts the candidate forward to the employer with high salary expectation, employer says no, but recruiter tries to say how special they are etc, and definitely worth interviewing.
- (I stop at this point normally after I'd been stung twice)
- Interview occurs, candidate is good, but in the 'normal' range
- Employer realises that whilst the candidate is not worth the £10K over their salary band, they are worth a fair market offer
- Recruiter now has to go back to candidate with what seems a low ball offer
Of course, some companies don't move with the times, and have built up a department of people who are below market value, and their expectations can be out, but thats all part of it, look around and see what salaries are being advertised, take off approx 5-10% of the advertised value and that is usually around the actual going minimum rate.
/rant
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Thanks Hangtime and Demon, very helpful.
Caporegime
Some interesting points there.
Working in IT myself at one of the largest IT companies in the world, we typically only recruit directly with candidates. In the particular engineering department i work within we do sub-contract a lot of work to another company who do in effect act like our recruitment agency. So every year we internally recruit their best employees, and the cycle starts again.
So had a call this morning from my friend the recruiter and I didn't get it. They made an offer to the guy with one year's experience for £[X-6]k, almost 3k below my current salary.
Fair enough if they didn't want to pay anything over that and I wouldn't have taken that low, but a little annoyed I wasn't able to demonstrate my value above the guy for another few k. No idea what he's like or how tight their budget restriction really is though. Does so happen that he was Scottish, and both guys I was interviewed by were also Scottish, but I'm sure that's neither here nor there
I also don't know how much of a bad effect my first salary pitch (under misinformation from the recruiter) of £[X+12]k had, despite agreeing to some flexibility on that after the first interview.
What he did say is that they did like me but just wanted to go with the cheaper option, and that come April when they get the new annual budget if a role comes up then they'll definitely be in touch, but I guess that's a pretty slim chance given the dire oil price.
At least I learned a few things about the whole recruitment situation, time to do some fresh applications! Just don't know how I'll be able to pull the wool over current work's eyes for time off for interviews, was tricky enough just the two so far as it was right in the city and during working hours and my work is in Slough
Fair enough if they didn't want to pay anything over that and I wouldn't have taken that low, but a little annoyed I wasn't able to demonstrate my value above the guy for another few k. No idea what he's like or how tight their budget restriction really is though. Does so happen that he was Scottish, and both guys I was interviewed by were also Scottish, but I'm sure that's neither here nor there
I also don't know how much of a bad effect my first salary pitch (under misinformation from the recruiter) of £[X+12]k had, despite agreeing to some flexibility on that after the first interview.What he did say is that they did like me but just wanted to go with the cheaper option, and that come April when they get the new annual budget if a role comes up then they'll definitely be in touch, but I guess that's a pretty slim chance given the dire oil price.
At least I learned a few things about the whole recruitment situation, time to do some fresh applications! Just don't know how I'll be able to pull the wool over current work's eyes for time off for interviews, was tricky enough just the two so far as it was right in the city and during working hours and my work is in Slough
Soldato
It may have been for the best, I'd always be wary of a company so hung up on a few k. You probably would have got frustrated with the lack of salary growth after a few years anyway.
Either that or the oil price is biting them very hard.
Either that or the oil price is biting them very hard.
Caporegime
So had a call this morning from my friend the recruiter and I didn't get it. They made an offer to the guy with one year's experience for £[X-6]k, almost 3k below my current salary.
Fair enough if they didn't want to pay anything over that and I wouldn't have taken that low, but a little annoyed I wasn't able to demonstrate my value above the guy for another few k. No idea what he's like or how tight their budget restriction really is though. Does so happen that he was Scottish, and both guys I was interviewed by were also Scottish, but I'm sure that's neither here nor there
What he did say is that they did like me but just wanted to go with the cheaper option, and that come April when they get the new annual budget if a role comes up then they'll definitely be in touch, but I guess that's a pretty slim chance given the dire oil price.
At least I learned a few things about the whole recruitment situation, time to do some fresh applications! Just don't know how I'll be able to pull the wool over current work's eyes for time off for interviews, was tricky enough just the two so far as it was right in the city and during working hours and my work is in Slough
To be honest when I worked in the public sector I just put in a leave request, stated I was going for an interview, they paid me for the time off.....
Well I agree on your first point, but my current company is on a total salary freeze anyway so it couldn't get much worse as it is.