Can a private school principal hire an agent to negotiate her salary?

My wife is principal of the high school in a private K-12 school. She is up for head of the whole school, and is virtually certain to be offered the job.

The problem is that she is petrified by the prospect of negotiating her new salary. Not merely nervous, but nearly paralyzed by fear. Although I have pointed out to her that they want her for the job, she has a great track record in her current position, and that negotiating is an ordinary part of the process, she feels that she has no preparation, experience, or training for the process, and REALLY doesn’t want to have to do it.

Is it ever done to have someone else negotiate a person’s salary in this situation? Ideally, I’d like to hear if it is common, occasional, or never done in private schools, but any comparable experience would be appreciated.

Or can I negotiate on her behalf?

I realize that the real answer is whether the particular hiring official(s) will agree to it, but if it is not unheard of in comparable situations, then we would have some leverage in proposing it here.

Some (possibly relevant) details. Her current salary is just into six figures, and she has recently learned that her predecessor (a man) and one co-worker at a comparable level were being paid $10-20K more that she was, even though she has performed vastly better than either. (Both were essentially fired).

The current holder of the new position (also a man) is paid more than 2.5 times her current salary, and has not been performing at the top of his game for a year or two. She will definitely do much better than him. The hiring officials almost certainly recognize this fact.

For this reason, we feel she shouldn’t have to accept any less than he is making now, but suspect that she will be offered substantially less, since it would be a very big jump, and because she is a woman. (Like many schools, this one has had a pattern of offering women less for equivalent positions.) Hence the importance of having a strong negotiator.

Let me be clear. I am not asking for negotiating tips. We have some books and are well aware of the techniques. She wants someone else to do it for her.

So we want to know if the idea of hiring an “agent” to handle the process is a realistic option. (My wife would be happy to pay 10% of her first year’s salary.) If the answer is yes, how would we find such a person?

Or failing that, can she inform the school that I will handle the negotiation on her behalf?

Thanks.

It’s very unusual in the business world outside the upper echelons, where a lawyer (or several) would negotiate employment terms. If I were running the school, I might reconsider hiring a chief executive who doesn’t want to do something that is part of a chief executive’s job (I am assuming the principal handles day-to-day running of the school, and not just academic matters.) Isn’t she going to have negotiate other people’s salaries when she hires new teachers and the like?

I assume part of her new duties would be handling salary negotiations for people she hires?

If so then I think, she needs to cowboy up here and negotiate. Which isn’t to say she needs to go hard line scorched earth, just be ready to ask for something that they might say no to.

Perhaps that portion doesn’t have to be conducted face to face. Email could be suggested and used for example. I think that would be a reasonable suggestion for something that could take some time and back and forth.

I agree it would be bad to even hint that she wasn’t willing and able to do this part of the hiring process herself.

Exactly.

As a person who would be hired as an school administrator, what message does sending someone else to negotiate for her send?
Especially, if it’s a man, who just happens to be her husband!?

Secondly, offering up 10% of your first year salary with no parameters is just ridiculous.

Finally, usually a job offer comes with a proposed salary or pay scale, then you can decide whether to apply, accept or negotiate.

Thanks for the replies.

It seems that most of you are speaking from experiences in business, not education.

She can, and has, successfully negotiated salaries for the people she hires. Emotionally, that’s a very different thing for her. It’s negotiating on her own behalf that makes her extremely anxious.

Like many women, particularly in the field of education, as opposed to business, she feels that she should be compensated on the basis of her worth, without having (in her mind) to fight for what she feels she deserves. This is a mindset common to teachers and other whose jobs are more nurturing, and is apparently one reason women in education are often paid far less than male counterparts. However, that cooperative, non-competitive personality is usually more valued and successful in education. Her job as head will have far less to do with negotiating salaries than with developing curricula and nurturing teachers and students.

Running a school is not the same as running a business.

This school does not have a set salary scale. She hasn’t formally been offered the job or a salary yet, but we expect they may offer substantially less than the current head earns, even though she has better credentials and clearly shows the potential (from her work in her current position) to do much better than him. We would, of course, be happily surprised if they offer her the same or close to it, and this conversation would be moot.

We have been thinking that conducting the process in writing or e-mail would be another option. Does anyone have experience with that?

And I’m still interested in hearing whether anyone knows if there’s a precedent for using an agent in the field of education, particularly private education.

I have been involved in independent school education for most of my working life, in one way or another.

I would not say using an agent to negotiate “never” happens (that would be assuming waaaaay more knowledge than I have), but I have not ever heard of such a thing, and I doubt the board of trustees would look kindly at it.

A question: Does she officially know the current head of school’s salary, or is this information obtained through unofficial channels? And if through unofficial channels, are we sure the figure is correct? IME schools without formal salary scales, which is to say most of them, tend to be quite secretive about who is making what. For good reason.

Reason I ask is that if the salary is known, your wife may be able to reframe the process so it is not a negotiation, but rather a statement: “Thank you. I would be delighted to take the job, but my salary requirement is $x, the same as what you are paying Mr. Q.” (Or, $5k less than what Mr. Q gets, or $2.5K more than he gets, or whatever.) Repeat as many times as necessary. She is not bargaining, simply stating what she is worth and putting it into terms that make it clear she is valuing herself as on a par with the previous head of school. I did that kind of thing once, and for me it did feel different from a negotiation (I don’t like to negotiate either). Of course, YWMMV.

If she knows Mr. Q’s salary but the board hasn’t made it public, that’s a little more difficult. “But Mr. Q doesn’t make $x, he makes $40k less than that!” It’s hard to say “liar, liar, pants on fire” in that context…

Anyway, just a thought. Hope it is helpful. And sorry I don’t know of any agent attempts in the independent school world.

Well, there is a National Association of Secondary School Principals as well as an American Federation of School Administrators, so perhaps she could get some assistance from one of them.

But presumably, this isn’t going to be much of a negotiation. Your wife apparently knows what her predecessor makes, and that number is her target. Assuming she’s correct, the only question is whether the board is going to accept that number.

If you think about it for a minute, it’s almost exactly the same as negotiating with someone who wants more than she’s willing to pay. How does she handle being in that position?

Parenthetically, I have to say that if she’s making “just into six figures” and her predecessor was making more than 2.5X that amount, he would be making more than almost every public school district superintendent in the entire state of Missouri. So, good for him, I guess. I guess fundraising is a bigger part of the job in private schools.

On preview, it looks like Ulf and I are thinking along the same line.

I work in education, and have been involved in hiring processes for high-level positions. I’m sorry your wife is feeling so stressed. Is there any chance of her getting some counseling? CBT might help her face this demon.

I agree with the posters upthread - you can’t do this for her, and she can’t hire someone to do this.

IME, salary negotiation usually happens face to face, BUT it might be possible for your wife to switch the conversation to email, maybe by asking for an official offer to be emailed to her and copied to the hiring manager/whoever has decision-making power over the salary offer. It really depends on the organizational culture.

I do feel like attempting to do this over email is handing some of the power back to the hiring manager; they already have the status quo - the salary offer. IMHO, the most powerful tool in a salary negotiation is the ability to ask for what you want, and then STOP TALKING, harder to accomplish over email.

Thanks, Ulf and kunilou.

We don’t know the head’s current salary, but last year’s was in the school’s (public) tax filing. We assume he made more this year, but don’t know exactly how much.

It occurs to me that asking for what we know he made last year would (presumably) allow them to offer less than this year’s salary, while still getting her what she feels is an appropriate amount.

Ulf, your idea of simply stating her desired salary, instead of negotiating, is pretty much what a consultant working for the school, who strongly supports my wife’s candidacy, suggested she do. Perhaps the best tactic would be for her to propose that in an e-mail as soon as the job offer is made. (And I think she will appreciate hearing that it didn’t feel like a negotiation to you.)

araminty: we’re not sure how the process will work, or when or how the job offer will be made, which makes this all the more stressful. It will almost certainly come from the board, which has complete authority in the matter (no other hiring manager). But we don’t know if it will be from the outgoing chair or the incoming one or the whole board in a meeting.

Thanks, all.

I do think conducting any negotiations in e-mail form is best, regardless of her nervousness. Takes away the “he said, she said” worries until the first check shows up.

I actually don’t like stating your desired salary up front. There’s a chance, albeit perhaps a small one in this case, that you’re actually short changing yourself.

Is the consultant you mentioned consulting on this particular hire? And is he or she aware that your wife is seeking no less than her predecessor’s salary?

Just in case what I wrote was ambiguous, I am not suggesting that she start the “negotiation” by stating her desired salary. Instead, she should allow the hiring officials – the chair or president of the board I assume – to make an offer. If the offer is lower than she wants, that is when she says, “thank you. However the salary I am looking for is $240,000, the same as my predecessor Mr. Q received.” And then: As someone put it above, she shuts up.

On a somewhat different note, I am also a little bit confused about the consultant and what the consultants role in this process is. If the consultant is actually working for the school, it is problematic For the consultant to be offering your wife advice on how to get more money out of the school. That is especially true if the consultants work is specifically around the question of finding the next head of the school. In my experience, having done a fair amount of consulting on curriculum issues for both public and private schools, it is very clear to me and to the people who hire me that my responsibility is to them.

Not sure that last part came out just right. I am not suggesting that your wife disregard what the consultant says, or that the consultant is somehow behaving unethically. However, this seems like an odd situation, and I am curious about what the consultant’s role actually is. It doesn’t seem to fit in with the kind of consulting I am familiar with either as a consultant or as a consultee.