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• Classic-Fiction

For example, a subjective clause in a contract might read, “Increase sales.” An objective statement would read, “Increase sales by 15 percent in 12 months.” Only the second clause can be measured.

If during the interview process you agree to shoulder more responsibility than the employer originally envisioned, document it at the time, so that when you negotiate compensation, you can both make an apples-to-apples comparison. By supersizing the responsibilities of the job (do you want fries with that?), you push compensation upward. The easiest way to negotiate the salary you want is to increase the responsibilities of the job. You must document the following:

• Title

• Reporting structure

• Authority

• Accountability

• Number of direct staff

• Specific performance standards

• Committee responsibilities if any

Any increase in authority or responsibility that you can document will amplify your compensation package. If the increase in responsibility is not documented and the “job description” stays the same, there’s no justification to raise your salary. You and the employer need to have the same view of the position’s scope before the offer is made. Your initial strategy is to increase the compensation package in light of the increased responsibility. That way, the employer’s first offer is already inflated and probably closer to an acceptable level, requiring only minimum negotiation.

Once you have the details of the job finalized, it’s up to the employer to come back to you with a reasonable offer. You have 2 choices here. You can either tell the employer exactly what it will take to close the deal or you can let him make an offer. After investing this much time in interviewing and negotiating, most employers will come back with a reasonable offer because they don’t want to repeat the process with someone else. By the time it gets to this point, the employer already has a pretty good idea of what the market is paying for this position and what the company can afford. As a headhunter, my strategy is to aim for the absolute top dollar and settle a few bucks below. It’s in your best interest to let employers think they’ve won. This shows that you are flexible.

➤ Establishing Your Bottom Line

Do you know what your bottom-line salary must be? “More” isn’t a number. Most people have an idea of what they would “kinda like to make,” but rarely do people know exactly what they need. Fewer still know what they want prior to the offer. Failure to establish your bottom line may place your current lifestyle at risk or at the very least leave money on the table. It’s important to know those details but it’s even more important not to tell the employer. Ideally, you want to start negotiating well above your minimum amount and if all goes well, never approach it. Guerrillas won’t wait until the last possible moment; they’ll tally up the cost of their lifestyle well in advance of the employer’s first offer.

All employers think about salaries in ranges of high and low. Many subscribe to salary surveys. You can find out the inside skinny on thousands of companies—free—by going to Glassdoor.com. Your future employer’s industry association will likely have a salary survey, too; pick up the phone and ask. If you can’t get access to it, then do your own. Call their competitors. You’d be surprised how much information you can get from a human resources department if you tell them you are a researcher—which you are. Appendix 3 provides a detailed list for researching compensation requirements.

➤ Negotiating Benefits

Compensation is more than just your base salary, but employers will be focused primarily on the base salary because it’s a fixed cost and in some cases, such as insurance, it determines the cost of other benefits. From your viewpoint, though, almost everything you don’t have to pay for directly is money in your pocket.

Maybe you noticed that I did not list a cell phone as a benefit in Appendix 3. Companies will try to tell you