How to Negotiate Your Pay With A Prospective Employer

One of the hardest things to calculate is how much you think you are worth with the current experience that you have. Obviously no two people are a like and HR specialist must have some type of way to determine how much to offer a candidate for an open position that they are trying to fill. There is no one way to get the information but the truth is that in order to negotiate your pay you must have the data to substantiate your request.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. BASELINE PAY
   
   Depending on your chosen profession you need to first find what the baseline pay scale is across the nation. One way to do this is to look for salary scales in your career path. There are tons of websites on the Internet that can populate this information for you. Sites like Jobstar.com or Salary.com can prove to be invaluable resources for this type of information.

2. WHEN TO NEGOTIATE
   
   How to negotiate is almost as important as when to negotiate. I recommend that once you determine what your baseline is then you should work on how much you are willing to accept before walking away. This price obviously should be what is fair to you and the employer that is potentially hiring you.
   If they do not bring up the salary expectations wait until they offer you the position before attempting to negotiate pay. The reason for this is because once they offer you the position it is more difficult for them to recant the offer of proposal.

3. USE PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE TO ASK FOR A HIGHER SALARY
   
   If you have received additional training or taken on higher responsibilities at your previous job that caused you to work outside of your job scope, you can always use this experience to request for a higher base salary.

4. KNOW WHEN TO WALK AWAY
   
   Sometimes walking away from an offer is difficult to do however knowing when to walk a way gives you vital insight on what a company is willing to pay you and teaches you how to negotiate your way to success. If you’ve done the research and the prospective employer is not willing to at least meet the national average pay scale for your position the company might not be the right fit for you and declining the offer might be more beneficial for you in the long run.