How To Negotiate Salary With A Recruiter

One of my jobs as a career coach is to help you see things from the recruiter's perspective. I actually was in the staffing recruiting industry before I became a career coach, so I know what they're thinking. And in this case, I don't want you to think of recruiters as the enemy. You want to enter into any conversation with a recruiter very informed, very calm, and very confident. Because if you do that, you're going to build a great relationship and get the results you're looking for.

What You Need To Know About Negotiating Salary With A Recruiter

@j.t.odonnell Reply to @jannaandschnorkie @j.t.odonnell How I salary negotiate with recruiters. #edutok #salary #salarynegotiation #learnontiktok #careertiktok #careeradvice #recruitment #recruiting #recruiter #jobtips #jobsearch #careermode '¬ original sound - J.T. O'Donnell

Let's break this down. A recruiter cannot waste their time on you if they can't afford you. So when they're asking you about your salary expectations, they're just trying to figure out whether or not they can even present opportunities to you.

If a recruiter asks you about salary expectations, respond with a range.

Your salary range consists of two things:

Walkaway rate (the lowest amount of money you can accept without looking for another job)
Ideal salary

Now, your ideal salary is based on market research. It needs to be within alignment with the market. You need to make sure that you're not overreaching on that range and, at the same time, you don't want to sell yourself short. So you do your homework and figure out, based on your skill set and your location, what your ideal salary is.

Your salary range could be big, maybe tens of thousands of dollars difference between the lowest number (the walkaway rate), and the highest number (your ideal salary). But it's a range. And you should present that to the recruiter and say...

"My range is (blank). This is the least amount of money I can take, and this is what I'm hoping to make. And that's really dependent upon the benefits, the opportunity itself, and what's involved. Do you have any opportunities that fit that range?"

That's how you start this conversation.

Recruiters hate it when people avoid the salary conversation. If you went into a store as a customer and asked, "How much does this cost?" and the salesperson said, "Well, let's get to know each other more before I tell you," that would feel super shady, wouldn't it? Well, that's what you're doing in this situation if you're not upfront because the recruiters are the buyers, the customers, and you're the business-of-one, the service provider selling your services.

So, when negotiating salary with a recruiter, you should be very confident, calm, and relaxed, and be able to explain your range. When you do that, you look so professional. And now the recruiter is excited because this is their first interaction with you. They're thinking, "This person'they know their range, they know their worth, they know what they want. I can work with this person."

Ultimately, it's all about doing some research and knowing your value as an employee, and then communicating that effectively with a salary range. That's all you have to do to successfully negotiate salary with a recruiter.

If you need more help negotiating salary with a recruiter or hiring manager, I can help.

I'd love it if you joined my FREE community where professionals like you are learning how to become empowered in their careers so they can finally find career happiness and satisfaction. More importantly, I have tons of resources inside this community that can help you prepare for your next job search.

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Published May 4, 2023

CEO Critical Conversations: How Communication Failures Cost Your Company Millions

Effective communication is essential for business success. Therefore, communication failures will have costly consequences for your organization.

In this article, Work It Daily experts from Vistage will discuss actionable strategies for improving communication and why it matters to you, your organization, and the future of your company. Read on to hear these Vistage Chairs explain the impact of transparent/clear communication on morale, company culture, and business results.

Nora Taylor

âWhen CEOs fail to communicate effectively, it can lead to a range of negative consequences for the organization including lost opportunities, decreased productivity, increased employee turnover, damage to the companyâs reputation, and unplanned legal fees. Ultimately, communication failures can cost companies millions of dollars.

Today more than ever before CEOs need to build a culture that places importance on relationships with both internal and external stakeholders. CEOs set the tone of the organization with the culture. If the CEO wants effective communication in the organization, it is essential to prioritize the behaviors that promote open effective communications beginning with respect.

Communication planning should be thought of as critical, not obsolete, in this age of instant communications where every misstep has the possibility of going viral. Although plans may take a different form than those of the past, they are important.

In many ways, business communications have become very informal and that in and of itself is not bad. However, when you remove the formality, it does remove the guardrails. When delivering information around sensitive subjects, it is better to err on the side of sensitivity, not levity.

Nora Taylor helps CEOs and executives achieve success. As a Vistage Chair, she leads confidential peer advisory groups where the members work together to develop informed decision-making, improved judgment, and confident leadership.

Kirsten Yurich

Leader/CEO talks to her team during a work meeting

Eighty-five percent of business issues are relationship issues.

Most leaders did not take courses or get degrees in “how to manage relationships.”
Relationships are what many leaders spend the least amount of time “doing.”
As they get higher in the organization, the “what” they produce (from a tangible, leave-it-on-the-desk standpoint) changes.
- The higher they go, the more leaders are responsible for PRODUCING relationships.
Relationships are the product of a leaderâs work.
Relationships are the platform along which all other work is done.

How do you develop better relationships? Have more meaningful conversations!

Set intentions around your WHAT and HOW.

What should leaders be talking about?

1. Have more “why” conversations and less “how” conversations â increase motivation, get to the “real” issue, etc.

2. Motivation and fit between employees; SOONER rather than later in their tenure. Identify if there is a mismatch between the employee and the company (or the employee and the assignment).

Do the incentives line up / match with the people we have hired?

3. Are you setting clear expectations and do they line up with the feedback and consequences you have arranged?

For example, the leader tells the EE that her performance as a manager is important (the performance of her direct reports) but company incentives line up with alternate job outputs.

4. Donât leave the drama up to your employee. CEOs are CROs, creating the narrative so employees can see themselves as PART of it, instead of leaving it up to the employee to create the narrative and the leadership team be in reaction mode.

How should leaders be talking?

1. As humans, employees want to know that their leader is a real person who cares about them.

Ask yourself, “How do I want this person to feel when Iâm finished interacting with them?”

2. Taking the perspective of the “other.” We often call this “empathy.”

Lead with saying what you heard from their perspective.
Follow up with what you would want to hear if you were in the same situation or experiencing the same feelings.

Be deliberate and intentional with your relationships; they are your most important accomplishment as a leader.

Kirsten Yurich is a former CEO and current Vistage Chair. As a clinician, professor, author, and executive, she leverages this unique blend and creates learning environments for executives to become better leaders, spouses, and parents.

Mark Fackler

Business leader/ CEO says something during a work meeting

Communication failures fall into two categories. The first is the wrong message or, even worse, no message at all. The second is not communicating enough. Failing in either category can cost millions if not the death of an organization. Yet with focus and courage, they are easy to fix.

In a sense, CEOs have a simple communication playbook once you have your organizationâs foundation in place. That foundation consists of mission, vision, and values. Couple that with long and short-term goals and you have a foundation. Focused and courageous communication hardens the foundation, preventing costly or even catastrophic failures.

The CEO’s words must always point back to the companyâs organizational foundation. Messages to employees, clients, vendors, and the public in general all need to reinforce what you stand for. No matter what the situation, from crisis to mundane, craft the message derived from the foundation.

Once the message is set, repeat, repeat, repeat. This is where courage comes into play. Employees, clients, vendors, and the public at large will never leave you because you stick to foundational-based messaging.

CEOs must believe in their foundation, focus their communication on that foundation, and have the courage to repeat it forever.

Mark Fackler is a retired CEO and currently leads the Vistage CEO group that he was a member of from 1991 to 2002. He is passionate about creating great ROI for his member CEOs.

Mike Thorne

CEO/leader communicates with her team members during a work meeting

Twenty-three percent of executives say they are good at aligning employees’ goals with corporate purpose. Only 17% of employers think line managers are good communicators. Sixty-two percent of emails are unimportant to employees. Yet effective communication (changes/overall) lead to a 3.5X increase in performance. How can this not be a core strategy?

See the opportunity to communicate change as a connection vs. a confrontation and you will see the trust build and, ultimately, the performance of the company improve. Adjust your communication effort to the habits and mobile-first preferences (hybrid/remote/office mix) to what works for how your organization receives information.

Mike Thorne is a former CEO and current Vistage Chair. He leads and facilitates a group of trusted advisor entrepreneurs and a CEO peer group in New Hampshire and Maine.

What’s your experience with communication failures in companies? Join the conversation inside Work It Daily’s Executive Program.