Job Board Detox Tip #14: Research Salary and Compensation Packages

Job Board Detox Tip #14: Research Salary and Compensation Packages
Today’s job board detox tip: Research potential salary and compensation packages. Whether or not you have a job offer in the bag or not, you must research ahead of time potential salary packages. You must get as prepared for this part of the hiring process as you do for the formal interviews. It is that critical. Why is it critical? Because if you unprepared you could blow potential income and package opportunities. Say you get an offer and you are unprepared? What happens especially if you have given your salary range already? Perhaps the offer is the same pay that you came from but less flexibility or the benefits are so-so. You must get prepared. Understand what you want, what you need - we all have to have a baseline of what we can live on. Taking even the best job in the world will not be satisfying if you are unable to pay your bills. Quick tips to prepare yourself for this part of the hiring process. Research. Know what the position you are looking at in the geographic area is paying. Check out what people are saying about that company and their compensation habits for employees. Glassdoor.com is great for this. Are they cheap or do they take good care of their employees. Never discuss salary at the beginning of the process. Try your absolute hardest to not give a salary range. Here is a good line to use. “I am sure that the firm is paying within the market so I am sure their will be no issues. How about we continue to discuss how I can help your firm and we’ll take it from there?” This deflects the question and gets the interview focused off of salary, in a professional way. Practice negotiating. This is a learned skill for most of us but is extremely necessary. Practice and read up on salary negotiation skills. Lastly know what your must-haves or non-negotiables are. Know on what items you can bend and what you can’t. I had a client that took a large pay cut but was hired by a cutting edge firm in an area of the country he and his wife wished to move to. Plus he was given several opportunities to speak and be published. For the short term pay cut he will be receiving long term exposure and more than likely higher pay down the road. Resource: Jack Chapman is an expert in this area. Visit his website here. Job board detox salary image from Shutterstock
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