Negotiation Strategies That Helped Increase My Salary by 15%–60%
Every time I read something about negotiating a salary, a major takeaway is usually that everything is negotiable—e.g., if Corporate Daddy won’t budge on base pay, you can negotiate more time off. A few extra days off would be great—but usually, I want more money. I can’t invest my PTO in a Roth IRA (well, unless I quit and cash out, which is a viable short-term strategy).
Until I started my own business, I had always worked (a) for big companies with monstrous compliance departments that standardize everything and basically won’t budge on that type of stuff and (b) at levels low enough in the organization where negotiating the “extras” isn’t really on the table.
(If you’re negotiating as a director, vice president, or some other high-level position with a compensation package that screams “I have a price and you better pay it,” you may have better luck!)
Preparing for a negotiation and quantifying your track record
I agree with the advice that you should track your wins at work and measure them where possible, so you can unfurl your scroll of badassery when it’s time to talk about promotions.
If you’re saving the company money or earning the company more, the negotiation should probably go in your favor. The most common issue with this advice, I’ve found, is that the company likely already expects you to earn more for them or save them money in some capacity. Numbers that illustrate you’ve somehow gone above and beyond the scope of what your role is already compensated for are the real needle-movers.
This is probably stuff you’ve heard before, and when it works, it works!
Negotiation tactics matter, but they’re not the most important thing when negotiating on the “inside” of your current company
The most important thing—from what I’ve observed—is having an engaged network of advocates inside. We’re talking about other, more senior employees (ideally including your manager) at the company who (a) know you and (b) are willing to go to bat for you. Without this, it’s going to be very difficult to negotiate.
This is less about the words you say in the negotiation itself, and more about laying the groundwork over time. How you do your job when you’re not negotiating typically impacts the negotiation most.
The cool thing I noticed during my time in Corporate America is that you didn’t have to go the extra mile to stand out—usually, going the extra yard was enough. A few examples:
If your deadline for a project is Friday, hand it over on Thursday.
If you have a standing 1:1 with someone whose opinion impacts your compensation, send an agenda ahead of time and manage up.
If you’re asked to pull a report on three factors influencing conversion, throw in a fourth.
If you’re bringing an issue to someone, come prepared with one potential solution, too.
It doesn’t mean you need to be on Slack on Saturday mornings firing off compliments to everyone on payroll—but the “extra yard” mindset goes a long way in building a disproportionately robust perception of your work ethic that doesn’t typically take that much additional work or time.
You can be the best negotiator in the world, but if you’re not good at your job, it doesn’t matter. So much of the negotiation happens before you even come to the table.
That said, if you’re working this way and not moving “up” (whether via raises or promotions) at least once every ~24 months, it’s probably time to strongly consider looking elsewhere. Sometimes leaving is the best thing you can do for yourself.
Now that we’ve covered our basics, let’s talk about the overarching truth I’ve noticed in the last few years of negotiations.
The person who cares less wins.
If you enter into a negotiation willing to walk away, you suddenly have basically all the leverage.
Now, that’s easier said than done, as most people kinda care about maintaining their employment—but operating from a position of “I don’t need this” shifts the perception of power to your side.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that you’d actually walk away if you didn’t get exactly what you wanted, but entering into every negotiation with a floor (the lowest offer you’re willing to concede) helps you stay strong in the face of pushback.
It also doesn’t mean you’d approach the negotiation with a flippant or careless attitude. It just means that the person who’s operating with optionality on their side automatically has more power.
So how do you put yourself in that position authentically? It’s actually pretty simple: Have a better offer.
This line of strategy works best if you’re negotiating with a company you’re already employed by, because it gives you the time to get your ducks in a row before coming to the table.
Negotiating with your current employer
Whether that better offer comes from another company, your own business, or a different team inside your current company, you immediately uplevel your negotiating position when you can share—in the spirit of transparency, of course—that you’re weighing your current role against another opportunity.
While there are plenty of Jedi mind tricks and pricing approaches you can learn from negotiation experts (and we’ll explore some of my favorites in this week’s YouTube video), this is the ultimate cheat code.
It cuts out all the verbal gymnastics and careful scripting and “win” documentation and boils it down to a very simple, very primal truth: You can walk away if you don’t get what you want.
That essentially forces the other person to offer you the most they possibly can for what you’re worth to them, and if it’s not enough to be worth your while, you have a decision to make. Stay where you are, or walk.
There’s another upside to employing this strategy: It helps you explore the job market and understand your market rate.
How do you efficiently secure another job offer?
I’ll state the obvious first: Yes, any other better offer will do, but you’ll get the most juice for your squeeze here if it’s a job offer you’re actually excited about. Apply to companies in your field that you’d be excited to work for.
How to go about the application process, you ask?
Well, in my (limited) experience, there are a few best practices that helped me land great gigs:
Leverage LinkedIn. You don’t have to start posting LinkedIn humblebrag monologues or cosplaying a VC, but making sure your LinkedIn profile is #optimized will work wonders. Describe your “position” on your profile in such a way that it’ll be a search result for the types of jobs you want (i.e., if you need to massage the verbiage of your current role a little, do it—they don’t always translate company to company, and you want LinkedIn SEO on your side when recruiters are hunting for new people).
Personal anecdote: I was a Brand Copywriter at Southwest Airlines when I started working there and eventually ended up doing mostly UX Writing and training under our Principal UX Designer. My official title at the company? “Associate Manager of Customer Strategy.” Bitch, what is that? Nobody knows. I wanted to continue pursuing the path of becoming a UX Writer, so I called myself a UX Writer on LinkedIn, because that was effectively the work I was doing anyway.
I had the portfolio pieces and experience to back it up, but I would’ve looked qualified for the absolute wrong types of jobs had I called myself what my company was calling me. Calling myself a UX Writer got me hired at Dell (which added another feather in my resume cap), and I began getting recruiter messages from Google, Facebook, JPMorgan Chase, and PayPal for UX Writing jobs—all because my LinkedIn profile was crafted to be a magnet for those types of positions.
Cast a wide net and embrace rejection. Back in the summer of 2020, I was applying for jobs like I was unemployed. I used the “Jobs” feature on LinkedIn to find and apply for roles. It became my little employment hub.
Any company that excited me got an application. Spotify? Check. Pinterest? Yep. Google? Double-yep. I went application crazy and got (mostly) flat-out rejections. I ended up in lengthy interview processes at NerdWallet and PayPal, and eventually ended up getting an offer for a contractor role from Dell.
The point is: You’re going to get told “no” a lot, but it doesn’t matter. You only need one “yes” to have another offer in hand that you can leverage. If it’s less than you make now, maybe your current market rate is actually lower than you think for your level of experience—or maybe your current employer is actually pretty good, and that’s worthwhile information to know, too.
Molding your experience for jobs you actually want
If you’re casting a super wide net, you can’t mold your profile to fit every single application—but it’s worthwhile to open 5–10 job postings that appeal to you on separate tabs. Look for common phrasing or experience requirements, and make sure you’re using the same type of language that’s coming up frequently in your own profile.
Practically every single job I’ve ever gotten (or had a good shot at getting) had nothing to do with who I knew or what I applied for—it happened because something on my profile showed up in a recruiter’s search.
But if you’re reading about negotiation, you’ve probably already got your job offer
Great, so we’ve hit the high points on how to get another offer that you can leverage in a negotiation with your current employer. What if you’re negotiating with a new company?
Negotiating with a new company that’s offering you a job
Know that it’s unlikely the number they’re coming in with is the top of the range they’re authorized to offer. (It’s probably nowhere near the top, unless you’re way overqualified.)
All that to say: They’re giving themselves breathing room because they’re expecting you to negotiate. When you’re in that position, there are a few things you can discuss regarding your old compensation that can help juice it a little and give you some leverage:
Your old 401(k) or HSA match, if you had one
Your old bonuses or profit-sharing
Any other benefits that had monetary value
Stack that shit one on top of the other: If your base pay at your old employer was $60,000 but they gave you a $4,000 match, a $1,000 bonus, and a $500 stipend, your old compensation wasn’t $60,000. It was $65,500.
If your new offer from another company comes out the gate at $72,000, you can say:
“Thank you so much for the offer. I’m so excited about this opportunity and really grateful for it. My current compensation is in the high $60s, and in order to make leaving my current role worthwhile, I’m hoping for at least a 15% increase from my current compensation. Is $75,000 doable?”
If you have other bargaining chips, like being overqualified or leaving your current company before a bonus hits, you could ask for even more.
But in that one (totally reasonable) request, you may have just increased your base pay from $60,000 to $75,000. It’s only $3,000 more for them (a blip!) but a meaningful increase for you.
Just make sure you’re actually happy with the number you’re proposing. If they say yes to it, it’s likely the negotiation ends there. You can’t exactly come back later and say, “Cool, so what about $78,000?”
The reality, though, is that you’ll probably already get offered quite a bit more than what your current employer is paying you, so this trick only works if you can juice your current compensation enough to give yourself that springboard.
I’ve used this tactic three times and it’s never failed me.
If for some reason it doesn’t work, you can try leveraging a bonus (or other reward) from your current position that you’re forgoing in the job switch for a one-time signing bonus.
For example, if your current employer does a cash bonus or profit-sharing of $5,000 per year and you’ve been offered a new job a few months before that’s scheduled to hit, you can use that “lost” bonus as a bargaining chip:
“I’m so excited about this opportunity, but I’m set to receive a performance bonus at work in a couple of months, and since I’ve earned it, I’d really like to receive it on principle. Would you be open to matching it in a signing bonus?”
(These scripts aren’t gospel, but hopefully they illustrate the point.)
What about research using Glassdoor or other sites that share salary data?
This information can be a little difficult to wield tactfully, depending on the relationship you have with the manager or recruiter in question.
“Well, Glassdoor says the average salary for this job is $82,000, not $75,000.”
You may be met with a, “Cool—and?” unless you have a masterful way of leveraging it. I like to use these ranges on salary transparency sites as guideposts for what I can talk a recruiter up to for an unrelated reason (or, if you have a good relationship with your manager, a less clandestine approach may work just fine).
For example, you make $60,000 ($65,500 when padded; let’s round up to $66,000), they offer $72,000, but you see $85,000 on Glassdoor.
(There’s a chance it’s higher on Glassdoor because those inputting the self-reported data have more experience, but that’s neither here nor there—you still want to ask for what you think you can feasibly get.)
If you have $85,000 in your head as the “average” or the “ceiling,” you really just have to come up with a reason to inch closer to that. You’ve heard my go-to tactic, but unless you’re obviously overqualified or have an extenuating circumstance you can wield, it may be difficult to play the “I’m worth more” card until you’re actually inside and can ~justify~ said value.
You’re probably aware (if you’ve gone through the job application process before) that the recruiter will ask for a ballpark number. This is to make sure your expectations for the role’s compensation are on the same planet as what they can actually offer you, so they don’t waste your time (and vice versa). I know traditional advice is not to give an answer, but I think there are creative ways to approach this in states without salary transparency laws.
How to answer the question, “What are your salary expectations?”
While this question can feel like a trapdoor, how you answer it depends on where you are in the process.
Let’s say you’re only willing to leave your current company for $70,000 or more, but you’d be thrilled with $80,000. If the top end of their range is $60,000, you’d probably rather know that up front so you don’t waste your time in the interview process (and if there are other openings that are better suited for you in the company, they can shuffle you there instead).
Refusing to give a number or deflecting can make it seem as though you’re not sure what you’re worth or what the role should pay, so if it’s early in the process, I like to say something like this:
“It’s hard to specify a target right now without knowing what the role entails and what success looks like, but I’m hoping to be somewhere in the (here’s where you give a very padded range!) $75,000 to $85,000 range.”
It’s unlikely you’ll undershoot a realistic estimate if you Glassdoor-stalk the role ahead of time, though there’s always a chance they had you pegged at $95,000 and now they’re looking at you with dollar signs in their eyes because they know you’ll probably take $80,000. It’s a risk you can mitigate with proper due diligence.
If you’re just a little over what they can offer, they’ll tell you, but I went through a screening call once where I told them I was expecting something in the range of $120,000 to $140,000 and they told me flat-out that the cap for the position was $95,000, but that they’d keep me in mind for more senior roles in the future.
If I had played coy, I would’ve been majorly pissed after wasting all the time on the process to learn the maximum salary was way below my target.
I know this isn’t traditional advice, but in my experience, throwing out numbers that actually excited me has never backfired.
I’m not an expert
…but I think my track record speaks for itself:
Started at $52,000 (didn’t negotiate because this was more money than my 21-year-old self could fathom)
Negotiated a raise after one year to $60,000 (15%)
Negotiated another raise after another year to $66,000 (10%)
Switched companies when I was offered a base pay of $108,000 (when I made the copywriter > UX writer switch!) (63%)
Negotiated up to $115,000 (6%)
…and now I’m a post-acquisition business owner who’s faced with tough negotiations more than I’d like, and still trying to find novel, better ways to increase my income. What’s your favorite negotiation strategy? I’d love to hear it. Shoot me an email at katie@moneywithkatie.com and let me know.
