Helping my mom with salary negotiation

Today I helped my mom prepare for salary negotiation.

She is going to a job interview tomorrow, and like most people, she’s uncomfortable with salary negotiation. So I went to the classic patio11 blog post and studied up.

Then we practiced, with me pretending to be the interviewer.

The mission is to follow rule #1: Don’t be the first to give a number.

So I helped her come up with a script for how to handle the salary question.

Interviewer: “What is your salary expectation?”
Interviewee: “I’d be happy to talk numbers, but first I’d like to focus on seeing whether this is a great fit for both of us.”

Or, pull out the UNO reverse card, and flip it back on them.

Interviewer: “What is your salary expectation?”
Interviewee: “Well, I’ll have to take some time to consider all the factors and run the numbers. But what salary did you have in mind for this role?”

I’m no negotiation master, but you don’t have to be great at it to reap very outsized rewards.

My awkward, basic attempts at salary negotiation have increased my take-home pay by tens of thousands of dollars, and I’m sure that number will reach the hundreds of thousands over the course of my life.

So I’m hoping that just a few hours of practice might help my mom get a salary she’s happy with. Will share an update on how that goes.