I want to conclude this module by thinking about a specific and very common negotiation context, that's employment negotiations. The salary negotiations or negotiations you might have with a new employer or your manager, I want to think about this specific context because it's so important. Here's some general ideas that I wanted to share. Here's the first thing. We've talked a lot about relationships, and when it comes to employment negotiations, relationships matter a lot. Where one of your goals through the negotiation is to have your manager like you a lot after the negotiation. Yes, you need to be assertive and stick up for yourself, but the relationship really matters. We want to be mindful of that each step of the way. That's the first idea. Second, we got to prepare. How do we prepare in this context? One is through professional networks. What are reasonable salaries? What are reasonable perks for this position? We could also talk with people in the company. Maybe you have fellow alumni from your college or university or from a previous employer that are working at that company now. You can talk to those people to ask them and learn information about the kinds of benefits that people are offered. You can ask people about salary information. Again, you might be surprised at how forthcoming people are in sharing information. Sometimes even if it's not personal, but just general bands or types of salary expectations that you might have. Talk to peers. What do you think someone in this type of role would get paid? Seek out information from professional organizations, from your network. You want to get as much information as you can before you walk in to negotiate. The next thing you want to do is develop alternatives. If you have good alternatives, just what we were talking about before, the strength of your alternatives is the most important determinant of power you have in a negotiation. In fact, in studies that have looked at how successful people are in a negotiation, more than negotiation experience or anything else, the strength of alternatives guides success in a negotiation. Next, we talked about identifying key issues. Here, what are the key issues for you? Is it salary? Is it bonuses? Is it some benchmarks? Is it having an early review? Is it payment for continuing education? What kinds of things matter most? Now, one way to think through the issues that really matter to you and to take perspective is to practice. You can role-play this negotiation. In fact, the stakes are so high, the relational concerns are so important, that role-playing with a colleague or a friend is something I would absolutely advise. This is true for any important negotiation, but for employment negotiations particularly so. That is, practice taking your role and your counterparts' role. That will really help you take perspective. The next thing to do is assess your leverage. Here you want to think about how unique you are. We talked about the negotiation context, how idiosyncratic this is, and we talked about one extreme we have, say, buying 100 shares of stock versus some unusual real estate property. Now let's think about you. Of course, you're unique and special and different, but how unique and special and different is going to depend on both you and the kind of person that's hiring. Are they hiring a whole cohort of people like you to do a very similar job? In which case that cohort in their minds is going to make you seem similar to others. It's also going to change the costs to them because once they change your cost, they increase the salary or the bonus for you, it may set a precedent for many others. That's going to be a costly concession. You want to think about, are you part of a cohort, and how unusual are your skills? Do you have programming skills, or do you have great networks and contacts, or unusual experience that makes you very different from other people that they've hired and particularly valuable in a way that they can't otherwise fill? You want to think about how unusual you are, and that's going to give you a sense of the room and the space for negotiation. Again, as we've talked about with questions, prepare for difficult questions. Prepare to be asked questions like, do you have other offers? How much money did you make in your prior job? Prepare a plan for answering those difficult questions. It could be the idea of deflection by asking, hey, can you tell me how much you pay people? What's the most you've paid somebody in this role in the past, or what's the salary range for this job? But prepare a response, and maybe one or two because your prospective employer might come back and ask you that question more than once. When you're ready to negotiate, when you've done your homework, you've prepared, you've role played, here's my suggestion. If at all possible meet face to face or via video conference, try to demonstrate concern for the relationship by making the trip. If it's across town, if it's up a few flights of stairs, or if it's across the country, making the trip demonstrates concern for the relationship, and doing it in person is so important because you can read cues and react and correct in ways that you can't with other media. I'll show one example, there was a faculty member who was offered a position at Nazareth College, which is primarily a teaching college. Through the negotiation process, this prospective faculty member made a series of demands, asked for a lot of different things through an email, things that involve time for research and writing and ended up getting a response in email. Send us an email and one thing about emails, it's so easy to forward. It had gotten forwarded, other people were upset about the tone and tenor of these asks and ended up getting the offer rescinded where the response was in the email it looks like, this isn't a great fit for you. We decided to withdraw the offer and wish you luck finding a better fit. Here, is it often the case that through the negotiation the offer gets rescinded? It is not often, and mostly when people ask, the employers happy to entertain those asks. But in this case, doing it in email was clearly a mistake. I strongly encourage you to meet face-to-face, express enthusiasm recognize this as a collaboration, take their perspective and part of this is finding the right person. Finding the manager rather than just somebody in HR whose job are you going to make easier, who really wants you there. Also related to this relationship idea, you should only negotiate when you're ready to accept the offer. These dances are very short. The idea is, you've done your preparation, you know what's reasonable and to use phrases like, if you can give me the signing bonus and these rotations, I'm ready to sign today. I'm really excited about this position, I see myself here for a long time. I'm so excited about the learning that I'll do here, the mentorship, the opportunities. I see this is a great place for me to develop my career. But this idea of, if you're willing to make this concession, I'm really willing to sign today, recognizing how short the dances and how soft on the relationship you want to be as you go through this. Now, everyone wants to be fair. We can talk about fair market value, provide justification, and this idea of, here's the fair market value.When really there's a zone of indeterminacy, there's a range of what could be appropriate, but we're looking to justify a specific task. Engage in active listening. Here that means, when they say something's difficult understand why, what makes it difficult and if it's, for example, a cohort recognize, if they give you a bigger salary, that's going to change the costs for a lot of different people and maybe there's a way to be creative. Other start dates, rotations or other benefits that are more flexible for them to be able to give you that is still quite valuable for you. Think about the full package rather than fixating on just a salary. Then closing, you'd like to get things in writing. People change and ideally you get something in writing. But through this process, go through the thought process. Imagine after the negotiation, a group of people get together and say, we're really excited to hire this person. I know that they asked for a couple of changes in their offer. How did that go? You want the response there to be great. I'm really excited to bring this person on board, as opposed to, well, this process it may be a little bit less excited about their coming here. Ultimately, it could be asking for an early review. That could be a way to find an opportunity here that is soft on the relationship, but addresses some of the key concerns that you have. As you go forward, good luck.
