How to Handle Salary Negotiations

Negotiating salary, whether during the interview process or when asking for a raise, is often one of the most agonized over events throughout a person’s professional career. There is an abundance of advice out there, and it is hard to know who to listen to or believe. I came across an article this morning on LinkedIn that provides some EXCELLENT insight on one of the most oft repeated pieces of advice in any negotiations:

“Don’t be the first to throw out a number!”

You are Most Certainly Starting Your Salary Negotiations Wrong, an article from Quartz, a digitally native news outlet for business people in the new global economy, gives compelling evidence against just that advice.

I have always operated under the assumption that being the first to throw out a number usually leads to not getting the final outcome that you really wanted. This may be true for negotiating the price of furniture on Craigslist, but apparently it doesn’t stand true for salary negotiations. According to the article, being the first to throw out a number can work in your favor – if you handle it the right way! If you use a salary range, research suggests that you can wind up settling on a higher number than if you just started out with one number.

Conventional wisdom says that when negotiating salary, you should start with a number higher than what you really want, in order to leave room for further negotiations. The same is true for your range. While most people would tend to give a bracketing range (one in which the low end is below your target number and the high end is above it), this article suggests that the low end of your range should start at your target number and then go up from there to your high end – this is called a bolstering range. By utilizing a bolstering range, you are nearly guaranteed to settle on a number at or above your target salary.

There are several reasons for this and studies behind the logic, which are discussed further in the article. I highly recommend you click the link above and check it out!

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