Podcast — The Other Side of the Table

Hey, everybody, how's it going? My name is Mayuko and welcome back to my channel where we talk about tech, career and life.

So today, again, we're going to talk about salary negotiations.

So I posted a video recently about whether to negotiate your salary.

And so today we're going to follow up and talk about how to exactly do that.

And this is from my conversation that I had with Sarah, who is the lead negotiator at Levels.FYI.

She was on Mayuko's Corner, my show about leading a life that feels more you in both your life and tech career.

Sarah, again, just has like so much great information from her time as a tech recruiter at Amazon, Facebook and Google

to talk about the do's and don'ts about how to negotiate a salary.

So the topics covered today will be like, how do you answer?

What are your salary expectations and exactly what medium is best for having these conversations?

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Thanks again to Skillshare. And now let's dive in.

OK, next I want to talk more about, like, how do you actually negotiate specifically?

I have a lot of questions about this, but I guess like the first question that I had, I think this is one of the questions that I really was curious when we first started talking was

when a recruiter asks you, what are your salary expectations?

What's the best way? What's the golden answer?

The do's and don'ts of how to respond to that question.

Don't give them that number.

Don't give them that range, because like I said, the range is really large.

You don't know where you'll land in that compensation band.

And so I would recommend push back on that recruiter and ask, OK, I'm just really curious, what is the compensation band for this position?

And you don't have to answer anything in the pack here.

If you don't know the answer, just let them know.

Hey, I actually haven't put much thought into this.

This is a really important thing.

Let me just take some time to think about this.

And can we revisit this later?

And then, you know, usually recruiters are pretty respectful of that.

Another thing, too, is if you're in the state of Washington or California as a candidate, when you request for a compensation band, legally speaking, they have to share the minimum wage with you.

And recently with Denver, too, they passed a law where for any employer, when they post them a job description, they have to mention like a minimum salary range.

So the recruiter can push for it.

The recruiter can ask that.

Is it anything in place that, you know, tell them that they can ask?

But as a candidate, you're not obligated to answer that question.

That's really good to know.

I think in the past, I recommended to you all, my viewers, that you should say, I expect to be compensated competitively.

Which is fine.

But I think instead of flipping the question to them, right?

Because as soon as you put out a number out there, you basically might already be giving yourself away at a discount, which is great for the company.

Because they're like, wow, we get someone of this caliber for this cheap.

Great.

Let's just like keep on with their number.

When in fact, you're actually worth a lot more.

Exactly.

And it's just like, you know, once you give a number, the recruiter will hold you to it.

So you say $230k in total compensation.

They will give you exactly that, like nothing more, nothing less.

And let's say you start interviewing with another company and they give you $300k, you can't come back and be like, we're just kidding.

Like, no, I want $300k.

You know, now the recruiter can say, wow, he came back, you know, and tell me the other competing offer, which means that he really, he or she really wants this position.

I'm not going to move the needle.

And they will eventually cave and accept this offer.

You know, from a really aggressive recruiter, they'll do that.

And then another thing too, when they give you the range, don't say yes, don't say no.

Let's say you flip it back on them and say, hey, I'm just really curious.

What is the compensation then for this position?

And let's say the recruiter tell you, all right, well, the range is $100k to $120k.

How does that sound to you?

Do you like this number?

Avoid saying, yeah, no, that sounds great.

Or no, that's really low.

Keep things a little bit more open-ended by saying, that's a really good start.

So that you have room for yourself to negotiate later.

For sure.

Yeah.

It's like you leave it as lukewarm as possible for as long as possible is what I'm hearing.

Exactly.

With negotiation, you want to be, you want to use really neutral verbiage here.

You don't want to undershare, but you don't want to overshare at the same time.

So then at what point do you actually give a number or who should be the first one to

give a number then, I guess?

Yeah.

So even at the very end, when the recruiter, you know, share with you the good news, like,

all right, the team really loves you.

They thought you do really well on ABCD, see a lot of growth potential in you.

You know, we're ready to move on to the offer stage.

What are you looking for?

Even at that stage, I still would recommend don't give your number.

Sometimes you want to take this call to really understand the compensation philosophy.

Like they can't just be pushing for a number when you don't tell you, when they don't tell

you like what goes into it, right?

You can't make a decision without being informed.

So push it back on them and say, truthfully, you know, I've been really busy prepping for

the interview.

I haven't put much thought into it.

If you don't mind just kind of going over the compensation structure with me first,

and then we can go over perks and benefits, and then we'll take it from there.

And, you know, once they go over everything again, you can just push it back on them one

more time saying, you know, this is a little bit newer for me and everyone has different

compensation structure.

I know I'm not comparing Apple to Apple.

If you don't mind just sharing the numbers with me first, it would be super productive

or effective or super helpful for me.

I would greatly appreciate it.

It's almost like a game of poker.

I'm just like, just waiting for them to fold.

Just like waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and then having them be the first

to show their hand.

Exactly.

And like once the recruiter have to explain everything for you, they were just like, I

might as well just share a number now.

Right.

Right.

And like you mentioned at that stage, you've like already gone through the entire interview

process.

You got a sense for the company culture.

You got a sense of what they're looking for in this role.

You have their compensation philosophy together.

You can piece all of those together even that when they give you a number, you have the

data and information to be able to confidently say, like, actually, based on what I know

and what I've learned, I think I'm this much instead.

Exactly.

And you want to do a lot of the asking good questions during that call, like asking about

the bonus structure.

How does that work?

Typically, like, when is the payout?

Is it once a year?

Is it twice a year?

Is there any other bonuses on top of, you know, what you guys offer and things like

that?

And for companies that don't offer a bonus, that's the perfect window for you to use that

as a leverage against them.

Like, hey, since you don't offer me any bonus, what I want to be mindful of is inflation

and, you know, living costs that just keep going up.

So essentially, if I don't take this into consideration now, the longer I stay with

the company, essentially, the less my take home pay is going to be.

And I don't want to be in a position where salary is a thing for me to have to leave

the company.

So I hope you understand where I'm coming from.

They can't say no to that.

You're going to be the biggest asshole if you say no after that request.

Right.

That's true.

Yeah.

Use all of that knowledge you learned in AP econ to talk about inflation, to talk about

money and use all of that to your advantage.

This whole conversation of this back and forth between yourself and a recruiter, recruiter

has a hiring manager and other folks behind them to make decisions about all of this.

But what's the best format to be having this conversation?

Yeah, good question.

So typically what I would recommend do that over via email, you know, after the recruiter

tells you we would love to move forward, they go over the compensation structure with you

person benefit, let them know this is a lot of good information.

Let me just take some time to process all of this and get back to you later.

Would that make sense for you?

Would that work for you?

A as a recruiter for myself is so much easier to, you know, kind of follow the thought process

because sometimes it's really hard to like, maybe when I'm on the phone, someone just

pinged me, I got distracted.

Maybe they were asking me 140, but I misheard them and I wrote down 104, for example.

So just to have everything on paper is so much easier for the recruiter to, you know,

not make any mistake when it comes to numbers there.

And let's say if I have to get an approval from their manager, it's so much easier for

me to just kind of forward that email to the manager or the compensation team.

So as a candidate, you have so much more control over your narrative because you could

be saying the perfect thing, but communication goes both ways.

Also dependent on what the other side is perceiving that message.

So if this person misunderstood what you were saying, and this person is relaying all this

information to the team, you don't know what went wrong in that process.

Like things can go sideways really fast.

Or maybe this recruiter just explained something completely off and the manager could take

it the wrong way.

And that kind of what could potentially jeopardize your relationship with the manager.

It makes life so much easier on you to do it over via email because a lot of the time

too, I would see this happen with my friends where they, you know, I'll prep them, like

ask for this much.

And they were like, yep, nope, I got it.

And then we would rehearse it.

And then when they're on the phone, they get so nervous that they start to like discount

themselves.

Well, I guess like, I mean, I kind of want 300k, but like, I would be okay with 250.

And I'm just like, I'm just like, oh, the best analogy to think of this too, is when

you send the recruiter an email and then you have a call with them after, it's just the

analogy of like, when you watch a movie and you read the book before the movie is so much

easier to understand, right?

Versus if you just watch the movie and you've never seen the, they've never read the book

before, you have no idea what's going on in the movie.

So that's like kind of taking the call without priming the recruiter, like what you're going

to talk about and you have to explain everything live.

They're just going to sit there and be like, okay, like, I guess it makes sense, but I'm

not sure.

So email is the best way to go easier for you to lay out your thought process.

They're much easier for the recruiter to share all that information, but the team,

you have so much more control over your narrative.

Thank you all so much for watching the video.

I really hope you liked it.

Make sure to check out the other video I did about salary negotiations featuring Sarah.

And if you'd like to just watch the recording of the live stream I did on Muko's Corner,

then you can become a member today by clicking the join button down below and get access

to the full recording.

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So take care and I'll see you in the next video.

Bye.