Learn how to negotiate like a diplomat, think on your feet like an improv performer, and master job offer negotiation like a professional athlete when you download a copy of our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

salary negotiation

What is Salary Negotiation?

For a new employee, a salary negotiation can be intimidating, but it’s one of the most important conversations to have at the beginning of your career.

Job candidates are often eager for salary negotiation tips, and with good reason: they tend to be at a bargaining disadvantage relative to the hiring organization.

But for a new employee, successfully negotiating a salary offer up by $5,000 could make a huge difference over the course of her career. A 25-year-old employee who enters the job market at $55,000 will earn about $634,000 more over the course of a 40-year career (assuming annual 5% raises) than an employee who starts out at $50,000.

Before we negotiate price, however, negotiation experts typically advise us to first assess the zone of possible agreement (ZOPA)—that is, whether there is an overlap between your reservation point (the point at which you are indifferent between walking away or taking the deal) and the other party’s reservation point. In other words, in the context of a salary negotiation, is there at least one number on which you and the hiring company can agree?

You can figure this out by researching your industry, talking to others in your position, and assessing your own qualifications. Prepare to explain the value you would bring to the organization. Develop alternatives to the current negotiation to increase your flexibility at the table, and remember that the other party’s alternatives may be less attractive than yours.

Consider too, that during a salary negotiation, job candidates often focus on back-and-forth haggling strategies. But it’s at least as important to think about our broader goals, the type of organization we’d be joining, and the best way to frame an offer.

To learn more and refine your salary negotiation skills, download our FREE report, How to Negotiate Salary: Learn the Best Techniques to Help You Manage the Most Difficult Salary Negotiations and What You Need to Know When Asking for a Raise, today.

The following items are tagged salary negotiation:

Salary Negotiation: How to Negotiate Salary: Learn the Best Techniques to Help You Manage the Most Difficult Salary Negotiations and What You Need to Know When Asking for a Raise

Posted by & filed under Free Report.

Salary negotiations are often stressful and challenging. But with the right strategies, you can negotiate your employment terms with ease. In Salary Negotiation: How to Negotiate Salary: Learn the Best Techniques to Help You Manage the Most Difficult Salary Negotiations and What You Need to Know When Asking for a Raise, you’ll discover innovative ways … Read More

Salary Negotiations in the NBA and Beyond

Posted by & filed under Business Negotiations.

In negotiation, one great deal can beget another. For the National Basketball Association (NBA), its stellar 2016 national television contract begat dozens of stellar salary negotiations for top players and even mediocre ones. But after the boom year passed, players’ expectations bounced up against reality. The story, which could repeat itself after the next TV … Read Salary Negotiations in the NBA and Beyond

Salary Negotiation: How to Ask for a Higher Salary

Posted by & filed under Salary Negotiations.

For a new employee, salary negotiation skills can be the most important and the most intimidating, but the most important, of difficult conversations to have at the beginning of your career. A new employee, successfully negotiating a salary offer up by $5,000 could make a huge difference over the course of her career. … Read More

Negotiating Salary: Confronting the Gender Pay Gap

Posted by & filed under Salary Negotiations.

In December 2014, leaks of data hacked from Sony Pictures revealed that when negotiating salary for their roles in the film American Hustle, actresses Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams came away with significantly less than their male costars in the ensemble cast. Lawrence and Adams were paid 7% of the film’s profits; Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, … Read More

What is Anchoring in Negotiation?

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

What exactly is anchoring in negotiation, and how does it play out at the bargaining table? Consider this anchoring bias example from Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School faculty member Guhan Subramanian. While running a negotiation simulation in one of his classes, Subramanian noticed that one student spent a considerable amount of time explaining … Read What is Anchoring in Negotiation?

Individual Differences in Negotiation—and How They Affect Results

Posted by & filed under Business Negotiations.

Negotiation advice is often “one size fits all,” yet we approach negotiations with vastly different experiences and traits. How do individual differences in negotiation play out? In one study, Washington University professor Hillary Anger Elfenbein and her colleagues found evidence that individual differences, including personality, accounted for an impressive 49% of the variance in negotiators’ … Read More

How to Negotiate a Higher Salary after a Job Offer

Posted by & filed under Salary Negotiations.

If you’re wondering how to negotiate a higher salary after a job offer, congratulations: You’re aiming higher than many job candidates ever do. It’s common for prospective employees to accept whatever offer the would-be employer puts forth without negotiating for more. Unless the employer explicitly stipulates that their offers are nonnegotiable, that’s typically a mistake. … Read More

How to Negotiate Salary: 3 Winning Strategies

Posted by & filed under Salary Negotiations.

The question of how to negotiate salary seems to preoccupy negotiators more than any other—and with good reason, considering how dramatically even a small salary increase can impact our lifetime earnings. The following three salary bargaining tips from leading negotiation experts will help you gain more from your new-job negotiations. … Read How to Negotiate Salary: 3 Winning Strategies

Are Salary Negotiation Skills Different for Men and Women?

Posted by & filed under Salary Negotiations.

Most negotiators don’t engage in the kinds of high-stakes bargaining we read about in publications such as The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times, but almost every negotiator will need advanced salary negotiation skills during the course of her career to deal with a scenario that is, in many ways, the definition of a … Read More

Chatbot Negotiations: What Can AI Do for You?

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

Seemingly all of a sudden, chatbots like ChatGPT and other forms of artificial intelligence (AI) are becoming ubiquitous in everyday life. These virtual conversation partners can do everything from make dinner reservations to write essays to flirt, if sometimes with unsettling results. No surprise, then, that chatbots are beginning to play a role in our … Read Chatbot Negotiations: What Can AI Do for You?

Salary Negotiation: How to Ask for a Higher Salary

Posted by & filed under Salary Negotiations.

For a new employee, salary negotiation skills can be the most important and the most intimidating, but the most important, of difficult conversations to have at the beginning of your career. A new employee, successfully negotiating a salary offer up by $5,000 could make a huge difference over the course of her career. … Read More

Should Salary Expectations Be a Laughing Matter?

Posted by & filed under Business Negotiations.

In salary negotiations, job candidates are often at a disadvantage relative to the hiring organization. Due to the well-documented anchoring effect, the first figure introduced into the discussion tends to strongly influence the salary expectations. Unfortunately for candidates, the first figure mentioned in a negotiation often is not in their favor. … Read Should Salary Expectations Be a Laughing Matter?

Arbitration vs Mediation: What’s Wrong with Traditional Arbitration?

Posted by & filed under Mediation.

Arbitration vs mediation: Traditionally, the arbitrator is not limited to selecting one of the parties’ contract proposals but may determine the contract terms on his own. If negotiators know that impasse will lead to traditional arbitration, they typically assume that the arbitrator will reach a decision that’s an approximate midpoint between their final offers. … Read More

Salary Expectations: Calibrating Pay During a Labor Shortage

Posted by & filed under Salary Negotiations.

Employers may strive to set and negotiate salaries in a fair manner, but numerous factors can affect employees’ salary expectations and lead employees to believe they are being treated unfairly. Consider Karen Womack, a warehouse manager at Seattle’s T-Mobile Park, the home of Major League Baseball’s Seattle Mariners. Womack was earning $16.70 per hour before the … Read More

Job Offer Negotiation Tips During the Pandemic

Posted by & filed under Salary Negotiations.

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, many jobseekers have concluded that if they are lucky enough to be offered a good job in a tight market, they lack the power needed to negotiate better employment terms. In fact, a silver lining of the crisis is that it has created new opportunities to negotiate. With the coronavirus throwing … Read Job Offer Negotiation Tips During the Pandemic

Asking for More in Salary Negotiation: When Jennifer Lawrence and Jennifer Aniston Spoke Out

Posted by & filed under Salary Negotiations.

“We’re very much a sexist society,” actress Jennifer Aniston said in back in 2015 in an interview with the New York Times, addressing not just the constant questions she faces about marriage and children, but about recent revelations of pay discrimination and salary negotiation in Hollywood. “Women are still not paid as much as men,” Aniston … Read More

Compensation Negotiation Tips for Salary Bargaining

Posted by & filed under Salary Negotiations.

Job candidates are often eager for compensation negotiation tips, and with good reason: they tend to be at a bargaining disadvantage relative to the hiring organization. Due to the well-documented anchoring effect, the first figure introduced into the discussion can strongly influence the final outcome—and the wage or wage range cited by employers is likely … Read More

Conflict Management: Becoming a Team Player

Posted by & filed under Conflict Resolution.

Show me the money!” That refrain from the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire, shouted by a football player to his agent, continues to echo through U.S. professional sports negotiations today. A public arena, enormous piles of cash, and even bigger egos combine to make sports negotiations a unique context. Yet anyone who has negotiated through agents, … Read Conflict Management: Becoming a Team Player

You Have Less Information Than You Think

Posted by & filed under Business Negotiations.

Most negotiators understand the importance of preparation and will dedicate significant time and energy to analyzing important negotiations in advance. Chances are, however, that powerful negotiators will undertake less informative and less accurate analyses than their weaker counterparts will. For instance, in a hypothetical salary raise negotiation, a negotiator may be so confident of her contributions that … Read You Have Less Information Than You Think

Pitfalls of the Powerful

Posted by & filed under Business Negotiations, Daily.

Adapted from “Are You Too Powerful for Your Own Good?” by Ann E. Tenbrunsel (professor, Notre Dame University), first published in the Negotiation newsletter. Imagine that you’re a national account sales manager and are preparing to negotiate your annual raise. You have met all your sales objectives and feel that you are not only a valuable … Read Pitfalls of the Powerful

Be sure to give at the office

Posted by & filed under Daily, Negotiation Skills.

Reciprocation tactics are tried and true. Politicians “logroll” votes on pet projects, companies offer free product samples to consumers, and charitable organizations include small gifts when soliciting donations. According to the norm of reciprocity, if you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice in return, and vice versa. In the realm of negotiation, you can gain many … Read Be sure to give at the office