At the end of your second interview, the person interviewing you says, “We’d like to extend you an offer.” Then, the interviewer verbally goes over the highlights of the offer including salary, vacation time and various benefits. If you’re working with a recruiter, you likely know this offer is coming, and your recruiter has pre-negotiated your salary and benefits based on your expectations. If you’re not working with a recruiter, and the brief overview of the offer meets or exceeds your expectations, it means you both have done your homework, and you can feel confident about verbally accepting the offer. Once this happens, the interviewer should explain the next steps in the acceptance process, like receiving a written offer letter from Human Resources and determining your start date.
If the verbal offer did not “knock your socks off,” here’s one thing you can say after the verbal offer overview, “Okay, great. I’m really excited about the opportunity and really look forward to being a part of the team. Is now a good time to discuss the offer?” -The interviewer will likely say, “Sure,” and ask you to go over your concerns. A polite way to ask about salary and benefit flexibility is: “I really appreciate where you came in with the salary, but I’m really hoping to be at $XX,XXX. Would you have any flexibility to do a signing bonus to get me closer to my salary target?” One often overlooked detail about offer negotiation is that any counteroffer is considered a rejection of the original offer, so it is always possible, although unlikely, that the hiring manager may interpret your counteroffer as a lack of interest, and move on to another candidate. Keep in mind, your interviewer (hopefully) wants you to join their team as much as you want to join it, and most hiring managers will do whatever they can to help meet your expectations. If a signing bonus isn’t an option, you could ask for additional vacation, supplemental benefit assistance or about the possibilities of any telecommuting options. However, if you’re working with a recruiter, you shouldn’t be in a position where you ever have to negotiate because your recruiter should be acting as a liaison between you and the hiring manager.
If you’re able to meet in the middle, and your salary requirements or other factors are nearly met, your interviewer should offer to revise the offer letter for you to sign and begin discussing next steps. If your negotiations to revise your salary or vacation time fall flat, you should evaluate if you are prepared to walk away from the offer if you can’t meet half-way. You should also be prepared to be happy when some of your “must-have’s” are met, and feel good about the new position. If you and the interviewer decide that you’re too far apart to make the position work well for both of you, make sure you don’t leave them with the impression that the salary and vacation time were the deal-breakers. You want to make sure you walk away citing concerns about the position itself, and leave your interviewer with the idea that if they have a position open in the future, you could be considered.
In theory, the scenario that you would have to walk away from a job offer is really unlikely. Somewhere in the process the company should have asked what your salary expectations are, or you should have said something like “I’m really interested in the position, and am looking in the $70-$80k range, is this in line with what you’d like to pay someone in this position?” While you don’t want to talk salary too soon, you also don’t want to get to the offer stage and determine your expectations don’t align with the level the company wants to pay the position. When you’re working with a recruiter, the recruiter will present the job and let you know its salary level and other pertinent benefits. If it’s not in line with your expectations, you will not even get to the interview stage.
No matter where your negotiations end up, just remember, when you say no to the wrong opportunity the right one will likely find you. Additionally, if you find yourself in a situation where you don’t have to negotiate and the offer is exactly what you wanted, don’t feel like you could have gotten a better offer. -Think of it as you and your future company communicating really effectively to strike the perfect match.