How to Negotiate Your First Job: 8 Steps That Will Create Value for You and Your New Employer

How to Negotiate

Your First Job

8 Steps that will create value

for you and your new employer

Paul F. Levy & Farzana S. Mohamed

Copyright © 2014 by Paul F. Levy and Farzana S. Mohamed

All Rights Reserved.

Cover Design by Zahra Kanji

Layout Design by Moicher Sforim

eBook Formatting by Maureen Cutajar

ISBN: 978-0-9912714-1-2

ISBN: (Digital): 978-0-9912-742-9

Process Improvement, LLC

negotiateyourjob.com

For our families, and the young people who inspire us.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Step 1: Decide to Negotiate

Step 2: Building a Trusting Relationship

Step 3: Know your BATNA, and Theirs

Step 4: Influence Their Perception of the ZOPA

Step 5: Know Your Interests, and Theirs

Step 6: Trade on Differences

Step 7: Sharpen Your Tactics

Step 8: Practice

On the Issue of Gender

Final Words

INTRODUCTION

Karim, soon to be a college graduate, was stunned into inaction, paralyzed by an unforeseen opportunity. In the midst of a recession, with an unemployment rate topping 9 percent, he had been offered a job.

The e-commerce company at which he had just spent the summer as a software design intern wanted to hire him. The rub? He thought he should be paid ten percent more than the offer.

With a semester of college left, he had several months to decide whether to accept the position, but he didn’t know what to do next. Would they be insulted if he asked for more money? Would it sour his relationship with the person who made the offer? Was he allowed to talk with another company in which he was interested? Should he tell this company that he had another offer?

Karim is not alone in being inexperienced in the ways of the world when it comes to negotiating the terms of his first job. Many graduating college students have no idea what to do or say as they approach an employer. In fact, neither do many people who are already in the workforce.

This book is for the Karims of the world. You have spent most of your childhood and young adult life going to school—primary school, secondary school, and college—preparing to enter the work force. You have gotten pretty good at science, mathematics, computer programming, accounting, or whatever. You have applied for jobs or, like Karim, you have been offered a job out of the blue. Now, it is time to sit down face to face with your potential employer, and you don’t know what to say and you don’t know what to ask.

We are going to give you the tools to get through this stage of your life. Sure, we are going to help you get what you want and deserve. But, here’s the little secret. We’re going to help you get what you want and deserve in a way that will make your new employer even more pleased to hire you. What? you say, I will end up with more money and better working conditions and my new employer will be happy? That’s right.

The principles on which this book is based are tried and true methods of expert negotiators. Even though you are not an expert negotiator, you can use them.

You have to be strategic in your approach and realize that the real negotiation begins well before you sit down face to face with your potential new employer. You also have to be mindful, aware of the process of the negotiation as it proceeds. As Bill Ury, one of the world’s experts in negotiation likes to say: You must learn to stand on a balcony watching the negotiation and evaluating its progress, even as you participate in it.

And, believe it or not, we’ll even show you how to take pleasure in the negotiation. While we cannot promise that it will be stress free, we can promise that you will learn from the experience and find joy in it. We can also promise that you will be a better and more valuable employee for your new firm as a result of the experience.

The approach set forth in this book is based on a few fundamental concepts of negotiation that we will explore in depth. As you gain an understanding of them, you will be able to use them to your advantage.

As an outline of what to expect in this book, we will introduce these negotiation concepts now, in shortened version. Later, we will explain them more fully and give examples, and we will teach you how to employ them.

Negotiation is a means of advancing the full set of your interests by jointly decided action. This is fundamental. If negotiating is a means to an end, we must consider alternatives to it. Talking about interests means that you have to give thought to and understand your interests. By jointly decided action, we mean that both sides must agree. Therefore a negotiation is an exercise in solving a simultaneous equation.

BATNA—The best alternative to a negotiated agreement. Simply stated, this is your other option. It serves as a benchmark during the negotiations to help you evaluate the offers and counteroffers made by a potential employer. That person also has a BATNA. This is the threshold value that any acceptable agreement must exceed. How do you evaluate your BATNA? How do you estimate theirs? What can you do to enhance your BATNA? What can you do to degrade theirs?

Interest-based negotiation—Positions and interests are two distinctly different concepts in a negotiation. How do you learn to distinguish between the two? How do you tease out their underlying interests, as opposed to the positions they put forth? How do you avoid locking yourself into a position that does not reflect your true interests?

Trading on differences—There are attributes of a negotiated agreement that have different values for the two parties. The difference in valuation offers the potential for an agreement that can add value for both parties. A good negotiation is not only about splitting the pie—it’s about expanding the pie, with benefits to both parties. In negotiation parlance, this is called creating value.

Tactics—In addition to thinking strategically about the negotiation before you get to the table, there are tactical approaches that can help the conversation move