On the seventy-first entry of Tristan's Tips, our amazing host Tristan Layfield explains how to effectively negotiate your worth. Don't regret taking a role and not asking for what you are worth! If a company wants to hire you to boost their diversity profile, don't feel bad about it. Leverage their white guilt and make the situation work for you. Negotiate your worth, gain those skills, and position yourself for something better!

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TRANSCRIPT

Tristan: What’s going on Living Corporate? It’s Tristan back again to bring you another career tip. This week I want to talk about negotiating your worth.




With the increased critique and attention on race throughout all systems and structures, companies and organizations are having their dedication to their diversity, equity, and inclusion plans called into question. Many are reassessing their organizational makeup, which has caused them to take a couple of different actions. First, some are revisiting their candidate pipelines to see what candidates they may have already passed over and reach out to them for interviews or even to offer roles. Second, many of the companies are restructuring their talent acquisition plans to hire more Black professionals and other professionals of color.




It can be irritating to receive job offers this way because many Black candidates were qualified (and ofter overqualified) well before these company's social and moral fabric was being called into question. While normally, I would strongly caution someone from accepting roles offered in such a manner, with nearly 40 million people unemployed, what we're not going to do is block our blessings just because of where they came from. If this situation happens to you, take this as confirmation that everything positive you've thought about yourself, your abilities, your skillset, and your expertise was true. If that is the case, then what is also true is that the value you attribute to those things is more than likely accurate too. So it's essential that you leverage this moment to your advantage and negotiate based on your worth. Here are a few tips to help you in your negotiation:




First, confidence is key here. If you aren't confident, it will undermine your entire negotiation process. So believe you are worth the money you are asking for and have the actual experiential evidence to back it up. You can't just say you want to be paid something because of personal reasons like your bills or that you want to purchase a new home.




Second, do not accept the offer when it is first given to you as it is likely a low ball offer. Ask for some time to consider it.

 

Third, do your research on what your potential market value is. You can utilize sites like Glassdoor, PayScale, and LinkedIn to get salary information. While they may not be exactly spot on, they give you a good ballpark range of what to expect. Make sure you also factor in the added value you bring from your previous experience, education, certifications, and skills.




Fourth, when negotiating, please do not throw out the number you were actually looking for because they will likely return with a number lower than that. Let's say your potential employer offers you $55,000, but you were hoping for $65,000. If you tell them you are looking for $65,000, they'll likely return with something between $55 and $60,000. I would throw out the number of $75,000; this gives you some wiggle room to meet in the middle and land closer to your targeted salary.




Lastly, don't forget that salary is only part of your compensation package and, therefore, only part of your negotiation. There are so many other things you can negotiate for, including a signing bonus, a 90-day bonus, relocation, PTO/vacation, remote work days or flexible schedule, professional development, your title, and benefits, just to name a few. So if a company isn't able to meet your salary requirements, maybe you can negotiate some of these to make the offer worthwhile.




Don't regret taking a role and not asking for what you are worth. If a company wants to hire you to boost their diversity profile, don't feel bad about it. Leverage their white guilt and make the situation work for you. Negotiate your worth, gain those skills, and position yourself for something better.




This tip was brought to you by Tristan of Layfield Resume Consulting. Check us out on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook @LayfieldResume or connect with me, Tristan Layfield, on LinkedIn.