Leadership Training

Every month, Yahoo! HotJobs provides a round table discussion that collects career and job-seeking advice from a group of recruiting experts throughout the country.  The question posed to them this month was the following; “What is the most common mistake candidates make in discussing or negotiating salary, and how can they avoid it?”

Click here for the entire article, but here’s one response care of Jill Davis, a recruiter with Wells Fargo’s operations team:

Look at the Big Picture

Candidates forget about the total compensation package and focus exclusively on base salary as the sole determining factor when deciding to accept or reject an offer. There are many other items to consider, such as benefits, short- and long-term career growth, personal satisfaction, company philosophy, reputation and size of the organization, and work/life balance. Many of these items can’t be quantified, but often they can make or break a team member’s long-term satisfaction with a company.

Here’s my own 2 cents on this question; above all else, an employee should have their reasons and justifications for an salary increase written out and ready to discuss in detail.  Think of it as an extension of your resume.  Outline all the successes and deliverables you accomplished, along with concrete numbers (i.e. - under my management of the customer service team, 95% of all calls were answered within 30 seconds, and 250 out of 300 customers were satisfied with the service they received, an increase of 58%, according to our surveys).

Also, if there were any mistakes or issues that came up during the year, be pro-active and bring them up.  More importantly, talk about how you handled and resolved those issues, and what you learned from the process.

By doing this, you’re showing your supervisor just how much value you add to the company, and how important it is for them to compensate you appropriately.

Salary, Negotiations, Yahoo! HotJobs