How to negotiate salary.

Treat the offer as the start of a conversation

Plenty of people accept the first offer without a word. Deborah Kolb and Jessica Porter make a point in Negotiating at Work that's worth sitting with: the first hurdle usually comes before any technique. People simply don't register that they're in a negotiation. That's especially true in hierarchical workplaces, where asking for more can feel like overstepping, and the research they cite on gender and pay shows the hesitation isn't evenly spread.

It helps to remember where the employer is by the time an offer lands. They've read the CVs, sat through the interviews and argued internally about who to hire. They picked you. For most professional roles, a polite counter with a reason behind it is a normal part of hiring, even if it doesn't feel that way when you're the one pressing send.

Research the range, then research the people

Salary sites will give you a band, which is a fine place to start. The catch is that every other candidate is looking at the same band.

Kolb and Porter suggest digging for something better: what people in similar roles asked for when they were offered the job, and what they managed to negotiate once they'd started. Deepak Malhotra and Max Bazerman push in the same direction in Negotiation Genius. They describe MBA students who come to them about a job offer having compared notes only with classmates, and they send them off to find the people that firm hired the year before.

Yes, this means sending a few slightly awkward messages. Try a former employee, a recruiter who fills this kind of role, or someone one level up. Mostly you're trying to learn what was negotiable last time, and what wasn't.

Negotiate the whole package

If salary is the only thing on the table, every dollar you win is a dollar they lose, and the conversation tends to get tense. So widen it. Malhotra and Bazerman suggest writing down everything you'd value that the employer could plausibly give you: start date, vacation days, a signing bonus, the scope of the job, the timing of your first promotion, equity.

One of our favourite examples comes from Chris Voss in Never Split the Difference. A former student of his kept asking, with a big smile, for an extra week of vacation, joking that it was a French thing. The company genuinely couldn't bend its leave policy, so it offered her more money instead. You won't always get that result. But talking about the rest of the package shows you which levers the employer actually controls.

Voss also suggests asking what it would take to be successful in the role. Agree on that early and your next conversation about pay has something concrete to point back to.

Who should name a number first?

The honest answer is that it depends on how much you know. The first number in a negotiation pulls everything after it in its direction. That's great when it's your well-researched figure and not so great when it's a guess. There's more on this in our piece on making the first offer.

Voss has two cautionary tales. The novelist Raymond Chandler, new to Hollywood, opened his talks for Double Indemnity by asking for $150 a week. And one of Voss's own students hurt his salary negotiation by going first. In both cases the number came out before the person understood the market.

Malhotra and Bazerman's rule of thumb is simple enough to remember in the moment. If you have good information about what the employer can pay, open with an ambitious figure you can justify. If you don't, keep asking questions. And when a recruiter wants your expectations on the first call, it's perfectly reasonable to ask what they've budgeted for the role before you answer.

Know what you'll do if they say no

William Ury uses a pay rise to explain the walkaway alternative in Getting Past No. If your boss won't move, your best alternative might be a job somewhere else. The stronger that option is, the less this one conversation has to carry. We go deeper in What is a BATNA?

None of this means walking in and threatening to quit. Most people shouldn't mention their alternative at all. What matters is that you've decided, privately and before the meeting, the point at which saying yes stops making sense for you.

When the answer is "there's no budget"

Sometimes you'll hear this and it'll be true. Sometimes it won't. In Negotiating the Impossible, Deepak Malhotra shows how a stand-off over a raise can hide more than one issue. Your manager might not believe you've earned the increase. Or they might agree with you completely and simply have nothing to spend until next quarter.

You'd handle those very differently. The first calls for evidence of what you've delivered. The second might be solved with a review on a fixed date, a bonus tied to clear targets, or a new title now with the money following later. So ask, gently, which one you're dealing with.