Salary Negotiation Resources

[Goobernut]

So because I feel like this is a separate subject deserving of its own topic, I created one

I just got an email from my uni that the Women's Center (which is not part of the social work college) is doing a day long conference on Salary negotiation for women. I honestly didn't think of that as a resource for education on that topic. Just thought I might add this for those looking for salary negotiation training.

I plan to go, so if I get any good sources I'll pass them on.

Please feel free to add additional sources you find for salary negotiation here. I think we all need all the help we can get!

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[submarine1991]

I was talking to a faculty mentor yesterday about topics to discuss during our meetings and I couldn't come up with any. Then she briefly mentioned salary negotiations and I got excited and told her all about your queries and the upcoming conference. This faculty member is passionate about this as well and we talked about the discourse around salary negotiations, particularly for women. Please pass on any powerpoints and other material that you get from this conference! I can't wait to hear all about it.

 

[wesleysmith]

My RSO was hoping to set up a seminar on this topic as well. Good idea Goobernut! I'll see what I can get going this Wednesday and hopefully I'll have something to bring to the table. Keep us posted!

 

[wesleysmith]

Hey Goobernut, bumping this thread to see if you attended that lecture yet? If so, got anything good to pass along? Still working on my end, it's amazing how school keeps trying to get in the way of the extra curriculars I try to engage in...how rude :S

 

[Goobernut]

Yes! I did go. It was last Thursday, but I was waiting to see if the facilitator would ever email the slides out! I literally got the handouts in the email this morning. No PowerPoint though

I am on my phone now, so I'll respond in full with links and summary tonight.

 

[Goobernut]

So it was a seminar that is put out by American Association of University Women (AAUW) and is called Smart Start. I have the full student workbook and several other handbooks. I'm pretty sure that if you contact AAUW you might also get locations of where this workshop is being done local to you as well. It is a standarized workshop, so it's not a program that my university developed or anything

In short, we learned how to benchmark what a typical salary would be in the job that we want. This is pretty simple, in addition to indeed.com and salary.com there is also wageproject.org. Wageproject had a lot of other neat tools that a new job seeker would really find handy. Budgeting tools, how much benefits mean in real dollars that kinda stuff. Also important to determine your minimal acceptable salary. These tools are paycheckcity.com

The key points I found interesting:

Don't bring up money first. During the interview avoid it if at all possible. If forced, give a range or "I'll consider any reasonable offer." Once you are hired, that's when negotiations begin. Get them the reasonable HIGH end. Do realize that they may not be able to negotiate, and they will usually tell you up front if they can't. She said if you are going to work for non-profits, you most likely won't be able to negotiate for additional salary, but to remember there are benefits and other things to consider.

when negotiating, make sure your tone is positive. Especially for women (I'll expound on this later, but I'm sure you alll reading can figure out why haha).

other things to negotiate for other than salary:
bonuses, promised increases, profit sharing

Almost as good as money:
company car, benefits, travel awards, relocation assistance, dental or optical insurance, free on-site childcare

non-monetary:
title (this I found to be the most interesting), training and education, extra vacation time

Sorry, I'm so tired, but I wanted to brain dump this while I was thinking about it. Feel free to ask questions, there isn't any magic to the negotiations other than be prepared with your "market research" and to remind them why you are worth more than other people in a upbeat positive way. And the bit about waiting until you are offered the job. You negotiate before you accept, but after they offer you the job.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

So it was a seminar that is put out by American Association of University Women (AAUW) and is called Smart Start. I have the full student workbook and several other handbooks. I'm pretty sure that if you contact AAUW you might also get locations of where this workshop is being done local to you as well. It is a standarized workshop, so it's not a program that my university developed or anything

In short, we learned how to benchmark what a typical salary would be in the job that we want. This is pretty simple, in addition to indeed.com and salary.com there is also wageproject.org. Wageproject had a lot of other neat tools that a new job seeker would really find handy. Budgeting tools, how much benefits mean in real dollars that kinda stuff. Also important to determine your minimal acceptable salary. These tools are paycheckcity.com

The key points I found interesting:

Don't bring up money first. During the interview avoid it if at all possible. If forced, give a range or "I'll consider any reasonable offer." Once you are hired, that's when negotiations begin. Get them the reasonable HIGH end. Do realize that they may not be able to negotiate, and they will usually tell you up front if they can't. She said if you are going to work for non-profits, you most likely won't be able to negotiate for additional salary, but to remember there are benefits and other things to consider.

when negotiating, make sure your tone is positive. Especially for women (I'll expound on this later, but I'm sure you alll reading can figure out why haha).

other things to negotiate for other than salary:
bonuses, promised increases, profit sharing

Almost as good as money:
company car, benefits, travel awards, relocation assistance, dental or optical insurance, free on-site childcare

non-monetary:
title (this I found to be the most interesting), training and education, extra vacation time

Sorry, I'm so tired, but I wanted to brain dump this while I was thinking about it. Feel free to ask questions, there isn't any magic to the negotiations other than be prepared with your "market research" and to remind them why you are worth more than other people in a upbeat positive way. And the bit about waiting until you are offered the job. You negotiate before you accept, but after they offer you the job.

Sounds like it was a good workshop, although I wonder about the advice to wait until you're actually hired to negotiate salary; that runs counter to most of what I've heard, but maybe things have changed. Then again, could be a semantics issue. If the advice was to wait until they've decided to hire you/offer you the job, then sure. But if it was to wait until you're actually hired and an employee, then by that point, it may be too late.

In some organizations, for example (e.g., the VA), once you've actually been hired, you're locked in. The only time you really have to negotiate salary (i.e., grade and step) and other perks (e.g., relocation expenses, loan repayment, signing bonus) with the VA is prior to being hired.

 

[wesleysmith]

Sounds like it was a good workshop, although I wonder about the advice to wait until you're actually hired to negotiate salary; that runs counter to most of what I've heard, but maybe things have changed. Then again, could be a semantics issue. If the advice was to wait until they've decided to hire you/offer you the job, then sure. But if it was to wait until you're actually hired and an employee, then by that point, it may be too late.

In some organizations, for example (e.g., the VA), once you've actually been hired, you're locked in. The only time you really have to negotiate salary (i.e., grade and step) and other perks (e.g., relocation expenses, loan repayment, signing bonus) with the VA is prior to being hired.

I was curious as to how salary netogtions would work at the VA being that they work on steps/grades. For example, if an unlicensed SW starts at G9 and moves to G11 after gaining full licensure, is there wiggle room for negotiating grade (i.e., 10 instead of 9) based on experience or would that mostly just affect what step in G9 you would start at?

 

[AcronymAllergy]

I was curious as to how salary netogtions would work at the VA being that they work on steps/grades. For example, if an unlicensed SW starts at G9 and moves to G11 after gaining full licensure, is there wiggle room for negotiating grade (i.e., 10 instead of 9) based on experience or would that mostly just affect what step in G9 you would start at?

A grade increase is going to be much more difficult to negotiate than a step increase, in general. Step increases are usually where adjustments are made for experience within a grade, while the step is usually going to be based on fairly explicit criteria (e.g., licensed or not, practicing for at least X number of years post-licensure, etc.).

The willingness of the facility to adjust your step can vary from VA to VA. I'd imagine that it'd be easier to request a step increase if you're already coming in at the maximum grade for a particular job (e.g., 11 for social work) and also have significant experience on top of that, than to request a step increase at one of the non-maximal grades (e.g., coming in at a GS9).

 

[Goobernut]

Sounds like it was a good workshop, although I wonder about the advice to wait until you're actually hired to negotiate salary; that runs counter to most of what I've heard, but maybe things have changed. Then again, could be a semantics issue. If the advice was to wait until they've decided to hire you/offer you the job, then sure. But if it was to wait until you're actually hired and an employee, then by that point, it may be too late.

In some organizations, for example (e.g., the VA), once you've actually been hired, you're locked in. The only time you really have to negotiate salary (i.e., grade and step) and other perks (e.g., relocation expenses, loan repayment, signing bonus) with the VA is prior to being hired.

To clarify, a person should wait until the company extends the offer of employment, but before you say "yes" to the job. Good catch on my mistake. Sorry for the confusion, it was late at night and I was just trying to get it down hah!

Wesley, in my experience with the GS system, like AA said, it's much easier to negotiate steps rather than grade. I didn't negotiate for steps because they had a formula and auto calculated my step by years of experience, so I was happy with my offer. Personally, I found pay to be very straightforward in the GS system. That is likely to highly vary by site (competency of the local department) so YMMV. But you can at least bring up the fact that steps are there to allow for more experience within the grade level.

I don't think that GS 11 is the highest grade you can be hired at EVER as a MSW, (I'm on my phone and can't see exactly what AA said) because it's dependent on degrees and experience, rather than just title. There are many director positions in the GS system that start as a GS-12. Once you are an employee, you have the ability to move up past an 11. Maybe he meant highest incoming grade with no experience for certain clinical positions?

For example, not all GS 9 employees have a masters, but that's what they will start MSWs out with because we qualify for the nine with our education (and no experience). I know several GS 12s who are directors of whatever agency within the GS system.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

To clarify, a person should wait until the company extends the offer of employment, but before you say "yes" to the job. Good catch on my mistake. Sorry for the confusion, it was late at night and I was just trying to get it down hah!

Wesley, in my experience with the GS system, like AA said, it's much easier to negotiate steps rather than grade. I didn't negotiate for steps because they had a formula and auto calculated my step by years of experience, so I was happy with my offer. Personally, I found pay to be very straightforward in the GS system. That is likely to highly vary by site (competency of the local department) so YMMV. But you can at least bring up the fact that steps are there to allow for more experience within the grade level.

I don't think that GS 11 is the highest grade you can be hired at EVER as a MSW, (I'm on my phone and can't see exactly what AA said) because it's dependent on degrees and experience, rather than just title. There are many director positions in the GS system that start as a GS-12. Once you are an employee, you have the ability to move up past an 11. Maybe he meant highest incoming grade with no experience for certain clinical positions?

For example, not all GS 9 employees have a masters, but that's what they will start MSWs out with because we qualify for the nine with our education (and no experience). I know several GS 12s who are directors of whatever agency within the GS system.

Oh, I wasn't saying that social workers can't ever get past a GS 11, no. However, the VA typically does have full performance grades for each position. For psychology, it's GS13. For social work, I believe (but am not positive) that it's 11 or perhaps 12. But a psychologist, for example, can move to a GS14 if they're in a supervisory position (e.g., director of training, lead psychologist), or GS15 if they're in a higher-level administrative role (think: chief of psychology, chief of behavioral health, associate chief of staff, etc.).

However, if a psychologist stays in a predominantly clinical role and doesn't take on additional administrative/supervisory duties, no matter how long they're in the VA, they won't move past a GS13. The good news, though, is that because of the steps, there's a set schedule of pay increases. They slow down significantly after the first few years, but by that point, folks are usually established enough in their communities and careers to begin being involved in various non-VA works as well.

And I would agree that, by and large, the GS system is rather straightforward and transparent. Which is good in terms of knowing what you'll be getting, but a bit bad in terms of your negotiation ability being limited. Pros and cons. The benefits are great, though.