If you’re not negotiating your salary properly, you’re leaving tons of money on the table. The money you could use to pay off debt, buy a house or take a trip to Dubai.
Finding the courage to speak up about your salary and negotiating what you’re worth can be tough, it’s an absolute must. A study shows that average pay and bonuses for black employees at Lloyds Banking Group are significantly lower than what their white colleagues receive, new ethnicity pay gap data voluntarily published by the organisation has revealed (1)
While the pay gap between ethnic minority and white staff smallest since 2012 according to the ONS. They found that median hourly earnings in 2019 for white workers were £12.40 an hour – just more than 2% higher than the £12.11 an hour for ethnic minority workers. The gap is down from a peak of more than 8% in the mid-2010s (2).
A key thing I wish to educate people on is how early on the salary negotiation begin, it often appears in sugarcoated phrases such as “how much you make at your current company?” or “what is your desired salary for this role?”.
I have messed up here before here and lowballed. Here is a rule of thumb, he who says the first number usually loses. In a perfect world, we could avoid this question or we could clam up and refuse to answer until we had an offer in our lap. Unfortunately, the world isn’t perfect and we’re not going to get what we want unless we know how to ask for it.
The best answer is no answer, but the second-best answer “I am very open to negotiation, but my top priority is finding the right fit. Once that is established, I am more than happy to talk salary.”
This may allow you to move on but at this stage, recruiters are trying their best to disqualify you during the shortlisting process, so an ideal response when they persist is “Would you be open to sharing the range you have budgeted for this role?”
Now, you should not leave it to the recruiter’s discretion to share the salary range, often you can find this on LinkedIn or Glassdoor. This should just be a confirmation exercise. You should be able to give them your range (which should sit within that 80% – 100% range you found above). This strategy will also be your approach to answering if a company forces you into naming your price. If you can’t find the salaries for a position at that exact company, do a bit of research and figure out what the average salary is for similar roles at other companies. Then calculate the range based on that.
You should always negotiate your salary. This is where the research comes into play, you should be able to map out the industry average for this role and add extra due to your skillset and the value you bring. I’d argue companies make millions and millions each year, paying someone an additional 10-30k isn’t going to break the bank (unless they are a start-up or have been adversely affected by COVID19).
The employer is either going to do one of two things:
- Offer to make up the gap, but then come in slightly below the average
- Say that they have been given “a number” for this position that they can’t exceed
The ball is in your court now. I have never, ever heard been rejected from a job because I tried to negotiate my salary. The worse thing that will happen is that they come back and tell you that they absolutely cannot budge.
References
1 https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/lloyds-banking-group-ethnicity-pay-gap-2020/
2 https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/oct/12/pay-gap-ethnic-minority-white-workers-ons
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