It Pays to be a Little Odd One of the seminar topics that we offer at Community Employment Choices, which usually prompts lively discussion, is salary negotiation. If you are someone who feels comfortable negotiating salary, you are a relatively rare breed. Research indicates that 87% of working folk report feeling anxious about tackling this task – and, in the end, only 46% of men and 30% of women routinely negotiate at job offer time. Further, a survey of Human Resource professionals revealed that, other than for entry-level jobs, just over 80% fully expected that a prospective candidate would engage in salary negotiation. Given that the lack of confidence to negotiate potentially carries a huge cost to an employee (estimated at close to half a million dollars over a typical career timeline) and HR consultants are waiting for applicants to demonstrate this skill as part of the process, I would say that the need to develop confidence in exercising this skill is high. So, you may be wondering, since we’ve titled this, “It Pays to be a Little Odd,” where does the “odd” part come in? Well, some recent research provides new information on salary requests. Conventional wisdom generally tells us to research salary for a given role, and then convert that labour market information into an amount or range expressed in nice round numbers. But new research from Columbia Business School encourages us to rethink those figures. Apparently, round numbers suggest we don’t really know the exact “going rate” and final offers often come out substantially lower. To secure a better offer, responding with an odd but ‘precise’ figure works better. Let me give an example: to cite a scenario from the study: a job candidate asking for $65,000 was most likely to receive a counteroffer of around $60,000, because the hiring manager assumed the candidate had thrown out a broad ballpark estimate. However, candidates asking for $63,500 were more apt to receive a counteroffer of $62,000. Who would guess that removing just one zero could actually gain you extra dollars? It’s an interesting concept (the link below outlines the research in more detail) – and one that we’ll be adding to our seminar to ensure those lively debates continue to happen (I’m sure it will stir up conversation). And hopefully, in the process, we’ll encourage a few more candidates to apply negotiating principles when a job offer is up for grabs. www4.gsb.columbia.edu/ideasatwork/researchbriefs/7329879/Precise+Offers+Are+Potent+Anchors%3A+Conciliatory+Counteroffers+and+Attributions+of+Knowledge+in+Negotiations
Posted on: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 18:08:08 +0000