What comes after the job offer? Negotiation

By Liz Zack, special for Gannett News Service

Congratulations, you got a job offer. Breathe a sigh of relief, and pop some champagne. But don't walk away from the bargaining table just yet; there's still work to be done.

You've nurtured that job possibility for weeks now — taking a few more days to make sure it's as lucrative as possible won't hurt. With an offer in your lap, it's time to take control of the situation.

By giving you some hard numbers and a benefits package, your future employer has let you know they want you. You may want them too, but there's a lot you can do to sweeten the deal before you accept it. Now is your best chance to get more money and benefits. Once you've accepted a job, your renegotiation opportunities are usually limited to standardized yearly reviews and rare merit-based bonuses.

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Take a long, hard look at your offer

Run the numbers. Figure out your living expenses. Know what other people in your industry have gotten from similar employers (try doing some research on our salary wizard-link). Do you have competing offers? How do they compare?

Based on your estimation of your worth, decide which areas of your package you'd like to augment. Though salary negotiation is tougher than it was when the economy was stronger a few years ago, it never hurts to try.

Don't be embarrassed or feel greedy. Know that your employer is not going to offer additional money unless you ask for it. You're not the first person to have brought these things to their attention — perhaps not even the first person that day.

Think beyond salary

In many cases there isn't much wiggle room when it comes to salary. The pay structure for entire companies is often based on what entry-level employees make, so major fluctuations in that number can upset the whole system. But even notoriously competitive industries will bend a little.

Michelle Daly, vice president of human resources at Hachette Filipacchi Magazines in New York City, says exceptional entry-level employees can augment their salaries by $1,000-$2,000 through negotiation.

Other industries tend to be less flexible about basic pay.

"When we extend an offer, it's based on that person's market value," says Grover Wray, managing director for people at Andersen. "With entry-level positions we're able to benchmark those jobs against similar ones in the market. We have a pretty good idea about what we have to pay to be attractive to somebody."

Instead of focusing exclusively on that big paycheck, look at the rest of your offer. You may have more success negotiating fringe benefits.

Wray suggests talking about signing bonuses if your industry typically offers them. Discuss your employer's ability to extend one or to increase what they've already offered.

If you need to move cities to accept a new job, discuss the moving costs you'll incur, and see if there's anything they can do to help you with relocation. Tuition is another potential bartering area. If you plan to pursue additional education, find out if your future employer will foot the bill.

Lay your cards on the table

When you begin negotiation, go about it in the same way you've been conducting the interview process all along. Be courteous, direct and honest.

Daly says she's most moved by the plain truth. "When that young 22-year-old adds up their rent, their college loans and their living expenses in New York City and comes to me to ask for a little more, I'll often go to the line manager on their behalf. I'll ask them if there's any flexibility."

Never ask for more without having thought clearly about your reasons. "The first thing we'd like to discuss is the justification," says Margie Miller, senior recruiting officer at Microsoft. "If they're just coming to the table and asking for the sake of asking, that's not a well-founded request."

Competing offers are great justifications for upgrading your package. Don't keep these secret. If another company is offering you a seductive benefit, share that information with all the parties involved.

"It's important that you're as open with the employer as possible," Wray says. "It's not perceived by the employer as playing one off the other to try to get something more, but rather as trying to let that employer know what choices you have to make. And the more the employer knows about the choices you have to make, the more the employer is in a position to help decide what they might be able to offer to persuade you to join them."

Can you be too aggressive?

Although there's little chance that aggressive negotiating will result in a rescinded offer, you can go too far. The employer can chose to just walk away from a negotiation that's proving too difficult.

The reality of the current economic environment is that in many cases there are lots of qualified candidates for each job. It's an employer's market, so chances that an employer is going to go to the mat for any one candidate is a lot less likely than it was two years ago.

You're not just dealing with the HR person. "Any negotiation request is shared with that candidate's future manager," Miller says. "So they're developing the very beginnings of relationships with the group that they're going to consider coworkers and managers in the future."

Make sure your requests are reasonable, and that your manner is cordial. You want what you deserve, but you don't want to get off on the wrong foot.

Next steps:

• Poll your peers and find out what kinds of offers they've received from similar companies.
• Look over your employment package, and consider your expenses. What areas of the offer could be improved?
• Carefully develop your negotiation strategy based on solid justification for why you need to augment your package.