Poker Game

• You know what you're worth, but you don't exactly how much the company can pay. The hiring manager does, and that always gives a slight edge to the employer in salary negotiations. But from the horse's mouth are many admissions that employers, as a matter of policy, start with a figure below what they can reasonably afford to pay. For example, Michael Ball, founder of Career Freshman, told Forbes.com, "It's no different than how we play poker. Employers are not coming in with their full hand. They're always coming in a few thousand below what they have to cap out at. There's always more wiggle room."
  
  

Stay Grounded in Reality

• Sometimes, however, job candidates can overestimate the size of that hidden chunk. These are tough economic times, and companies have scaled back, too. The Society for Human Resource Management conducted a poll in 2004 of human resources managers and employees, asking how much flexibility employees thought they had in negotiations and inquiring about HR managers' real knowledge about flexibility. Some 70 percent of employees thought there was "some flexibility" when 59 percent of HR managers knew there was "some." The difference was more exaggerated the higher up the scale. Nine percent thought there was a "lot" of flexibility, when just 2 percent of managers reported they had a "lot." Still, only 1 percent of HR managers said they had no flexibility.
  
  

The Difference Between Negotiating and Not Negotiating

• An executive compensation manager told Forbes that job candidates can be confident that negotiation often results in about a 10 percent improvement over the initial offer. Certainly many variables play roles in the amount of the boost, such as experience level. However, the advice is grounded in science. Linda Babcock, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University, polled students graduating with master's degrees whether they accepted an offered starting salary or attempted to negotiate. Fifty-one percent of men but only 12.5 percent of women asked for more. The results was that those who tried got an average of 7.4 percent more than the non-negotiators.
  
  

Negotiating Perks

• Where women become more aggressive in negotiating, according to SHRM's research, is in flexibility perks. In a downtrodden economy, such perks are quite valuable, even though they don't line your pockets with extra cash. SHRM found that men were more likely to ask for additional money-based perks, such as bonuses, incentives, relocation expenses, severance and stocks. These perks add considerably to a total compensation package.
  
  

The Difference Is Down the Line

• Don't be trapped into thinking you can make up the difference between what you missed out on through pay raises. Another SHRM poll projected that the average raise for most employees in 2011 is a paltry 2.9 percent. Besides that, the starting salary follows you, and your raises will start from a lower point if you don't negotiate. Think of it like compounding interest. Babcock provided the "Washington Post" an example of two 22-year-olds who start their careers at the same time, one at $25,000 and the other at $30,000. Assuming that each gets 3 percent raises each year and that neither negotiates better raises, the starting-salary negotiator would make $361,171 more over 28 years. Babcock later told National Public Radio that not negotiating your basic salary at the beginning of your career means leaving between $1 million and $1.5 million on the table over your lifetime.