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How To Negotiate Your First Job: 8 Steps that will create value for you and your new employer, by Paul F Levy and Farzana Mohamed
You (or your child, family member or friend) will graduate soon.
You will finally be in a position to apply for full-time employment. Unless you have a very rare skill, there will be a queue of other people in line for the position. If you have a rare skill and make it to the offer of employment, you might well be offered a disappointing package.
There is a queue of anxious candidates behind you all willing to work under the conditions the employer offered you. With your rare skill, you do not wish to start your career by being perceived as greedy or pushy. What do you do?
The best advice I can offer is to read Levy and Mohamed’s very accessible book on how to negotiate your first job. (Equally applicable to your second and third.)
The key word is “negotiate”. Chapter One of this book is entitled: Decide to Negotiate. It is a decision. (As my colleague at Gateways Dave Hendrie always teaches, you do not get the life you deserve - you get the life you negotiate.)
Under circumstances of high competition for entry-level jobs, with unemployment at catastrophic levels in the country and not believing you have anything to negotiate, this may sound absurd. Beside which, you may not be the sort of person who has the inner strength to negotiate when the odds are stacked against you.
Your career success starts with a decision: I am going to negotiate to get the offer I believe I deserve. This book will show you how.
Two experienced professionals wrote this book. Levy ran a world class teaching hospital, managed a multi-billion dollar city project, and currently advises corporations on negotiation in countries around the world.
Mohamed, after a career in change management, now heads a consulting practice.
To heighten the need to negotiate, consider an offer lower than what you had expected. At the end of three years, if you had accepted a monthly nett salary of R15 000 as opposed to R18 000, you would be some R72 000 poorer three years later (not factoring in any increments you might be awarded).
Additionally, you will forever be growing off a lower base. If you do not get what you believe you should, or you know others already have, you will be a dissatisfied employee wondering if you did the right thing by accepting less than you deserve.
Good negotiators are not aggressive verbal fighters. That is a poor negotiator. Negotiation is arriving at a position you are satisfied with, through a “jointly decided action” between you and the other party.
Drawing heavily on Fisher and Ury’s 1981 classic work on negotiation, Levy and Mohamed have adapted the model to fit employment negotiation.
Do your homework
The fundamental rule in employment negotiation, as in any negotiation, is to do your homework. Thinking “on your feet” in the interview room will be too late and will cost you heavily. The book explains many concepts, tactics and the necessary pre-work, in a thoroughly readable and memorable format. I will share just three.
The first piece of advice is to find the BATNA, the “best alternative to a negotiated agreement”. In the case of an employment agreement, what are the conditions under which you must decline the offer? If you were offered R15 000 and your transport, housing, very basic needs, family commitments and study-loan repayments are R17 000, you simply cannot accept the offer. Your BATNA would be R17 000.
Knowing only your BATNA would put you at a disadvantage; you will need to get, at very least, the best estimate of the company’s BATNA. If the going rate for the position is between R17 000 to R18 500, and the company is iconic, their BATNA would be market-related and might be R18 500.
This illustrates a second point about BATNAs: they do not have to be monetary. Your BATNA may include your inability to work beyond 17:30. Any later would make it impossible for you to attend to your child’s needs and that is a non-negotiable.
As carefully as you would need to calculate your own BATNA, so should you research that of the company.
A second concept is the “interest-based negotiation”. This requires that you understand both your and their interests thoroughly. If the company is on an expansion path, having an employee happy to relocate to another city would be in their interest. If your interest is to gain experience, being able to work under a mature, knowledgeable manager would be in your interest. Ensuring that your needs - monetary and others - are satisfied as best as possible would be the best outcome you can expect.
The authors relate the situation of a candidate who would have had to accept a salary lower than she expected to close the offer. She proposed that as the position required travel to India from America, she be allowed to stay over in England each time to visit her family. This was easy for the company to accept as it did not cost them anything, and saved her paying to visit her family.
The third concept that the authors emphasise consistently is to be courteous and respectful of the company and all its people. This critical point is a non-negotiable.
Your job interview will be most successful if you start with the decision: I am going to negotiate for the best deal the company is capable of and willing to accept.
This book is a very easy read. It presents relevant and important ideas simply and clearly. Going for a job interview without reading it would be a mistake.
Readability: Light --+-- Serious
Insights: High --+-- Low
Practical: High ---+- Low
- Fin24
*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of Strategy that Works. Views expressed are his own.
