Well, they countered at $58k. I’ve accepted. I was hoping for a better offer but hey, at the end of the day, it’s a job with a steady income. 
Thanks everyone for your help and good advice.
Congrats!
Well, that’s better than a kick in the pants with a frozen mukluk. Good for you!
Congratulations Glad to see another gainfully employed Doper!
There you go. You “worked” for maybe 5 minutes, and earned $1,000 for it. Good job!
I’m apparently a bit late, but maybe these tips might help in the future or for someone else in a similar situation.
In negotiation theory, there is a concept of what they (and by they I mean “Getting To Yes” reading business school types) call a BATNA or Best Alternative To a Negotiatated Agreement. Which is basically just a dumb acronym for the minimum offer you would accept. For example, you wouldn’t take a job for $50.00 a year, right? In the case of a salary negotiation, your minimum acceptable offer essentially weighs the value of the offer in hand against the opportunity costs of finding a job for more money.
For example, if you walk away from a job that pays $57,000 a year, and it takes you 2 months to find another job, it’s only worth it if that job pays $68,400 over the same one year period. Instead of making $57k over 12 months (starting now), you would only have 10 months (starting in 2) to make the same amount.
So pretty much as long as the offer is in the ballpark, it always makes sense to take it unless you have a better offer in hand.
So the question is what should be your negotiation strategy? How much bargaining power do you actually have? Not really that much. It’s a down economy and jobs are scarce and the offer is pretty much middle of the bell curve.
Who are you really negotiating with? The hiring manager or someone from HR?
It helps if you have some data to back you up. If you go to salary.com or glassdoor.com or bls.gov and you feel you are being paid less than what is standard for your level and position, ask why.
Typically your boss doesn’t just want to hire you. He wants you to feel good about taking a job with him. So some appeal to emotion or fairness might get you something. He probably doesn’t want to bring on someone who feels they are being lowballed because that person will jet as soon as the market picks up.
There may be several reasons why the company has handed you this low ball offer. One reason, believe it or not, is that the company may have assigned an inapproprite rate for this job. Second, the offer may appear as a low ball to someone who has a larger skill set and experience than this employer is looking for - can you say over qualidied? Finally, the employer may be playing hard ball in a hard economy.
Regardless of the reason, here are your options. It’s a two step approach:
[ol]Establish the dimenions of the job and determine your fit. This establishes that you and the emplyer are both talking about the same deliverables and there is no mismatch between your skills and experience and what the employer is looking for.
[LIST=2] If there is a fit, ask the employer for thier rationale behind the number. Then you should know if you really want this job and how to make a legitimate counter offer.
[/ol]
Hope this helps. If you want more go here: www.salarynegotiations.com
I think though that as your agents in this matter it’s perfectly reasonable for us to take 15% of the gross, so that should be roughly $7000 sent to me by PayPal and I’ll distribute it as I see fit. But with the extra $1000 you’re only out $6000, and it’s thanks to us.
Thread already over, but I think it’s good to ask, even if they hadn’t countered with an increase. A good counter to that (or whatever they countered with) would just be to ask for an appraisal after six months; it’s putting it out there that you intend to be demonstrating above-average performance.
It does happen. This week, a corporation rescinded my job offer because I asked if the salary was negotiatable. The hr manager said it didn’t hurt to ask and asked me what I was thinking. My counteroffer was $10,000 higher than their offer. I was called by the hr manager yesterday and told that not only the counteroffer was rejected but also the original offer. I guess it DID hurt to to ask. Thank god I have a job and I didn’t jump on board with these folks. Either beware of all the articles that say “negotiating is expected” OR beware of the companies that think negotiating means you are inflexible and ones who think you should be ecstatic that they offered you the job, period, no questions asked.
Sounds like a company you wouldn’t have wanted to work for anyway.
Eltc - you probably didn’t want to work there anyway. Seriously.
Now you do have to pitch the negotiation in the correct way so as to not put someone off. And someone can just have a bad hair day and say “fuck it, I have 3 other decent candidates.” But almost always you should be able to negotiate something. An early salary review, a little extra vacation, something even if it isn’t increased salary. And usually the salary can be improved at least a little, like the $1k the OP got.
And keep in mind, that the offer may be a test. if you’re just going to take the offer without any negotiation, then the company may not actually want to hire you. Especially true if the position is related to sales in any way.
You are too late. You don’t have a bargaining chip left. You can ask for a little more, you might get it. Someone mentioned asking for a 6 month review, that might work. You can also try to stretch the benefits by asking for more vacation, or getting a guarantee that you can work from home some percentage of the time if that’s feasible for the job. You can also go for a better title, parking spot, or almost anything besides money. The trouble is you have to be able to say I want this much more money, and turn down the job if you don’t get at least half of that. And it doesn’t sound like you can afford to turn it down. If you ask for more, and aren’t offered anything, you’ve made yourself look weak, and that could affect your future with that job.
There’s a lot of information missing from your OP. What did you ask for initially? Did you inquire about the average increase in pay? Do you know enough about the company and the work environment that you can judge the relative value if your pay?
Also, when did you tell them you’d get back to them? If you can keep them on hold for a while, they might start to fret a little. But right now it sounds like they know you will take the job for the salary offered.