Last month, I shared median salaries for a range of popular job categories I regularly post, pulling from ~4,500 data points from the last year or so of data. One of the reasons I wanted to share that data was so you can use it to negotiate salary increases – either in your current role or during the interview process. 

Negotiating is a stressful part of the application process, in part because we’re often trained to accept the offer we receive. And for those of us coming more recently from education, we may have never individually negotiated our salaries because the school or university set a salary scale and told us what we’d make (or, if we were part of a union, our union representatives bargained on our behalf). In addition, if we’re getting a job offer that’s a substantial raise from our current role, it might not occur to us to negotiate further! 

But as salary transparency is giving candidates more information about competitive salary ranges, candidates feel more comfortable negotiating salaries than they have in previous years — and folks are successfully negotiating higher salaries. 

That said, not every company will negotiate a salary, almost entirely for equity reasons. For example, one company describes their compensation practice as follows: “We strive to pay our employees competitively (we’ve got your back). We strive to be equitable in our compensation practices (unapologetically intersectional). We don’t negotiate salary offers (transparency and honesty). And we want to pay our employees for the impacts they make on the organization (the right to be you).” Others keep it briefer: “given our commitment to equity, we do not negotiate salary offers.” (Fun fact: this exact phrasing showed up in a few different job descriptions!)

But more frequently, companies do expect that a salary will be negotiated which means their offer leaves room for that negotiation. So unless the organization has one of those non-negotiation policies, you should absolutely feel comfortable asking for more money or other concessions  before you accept a job offer. While you may have heard horror stories of folks who have had a job offer rescinded after pitching a higher rate, this is not a standard (or common!) professional practice and is a red flag about the company. 

Of course, even when you negotiate, you may not get a higher offer. But the practice is expected enough that most companies are going to offer you a slightly lower salary that anticipates that negotiation bump – unless they’re already offering the top of their stated salary range. Many people leave money on the table once the offer has been pitched, so it’s definitely a skill to have in your toolbox!

Table of Contents

• Salary is Not the Only Benefit You Can Negotiate
• What kind of information should you have before you negotiate?
• Know Your Value
• Strategic Scripts for Negotiating
• Negotiating a raise rather than an initial salary

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