This offer is too low!I will be graduating from Harvey Mudd College in May and I have a job offer from small but growing environmental engineering firm in San Francisco. Based on research I' ve done through the Salary Wizard and NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers), and the competitiveness of my degree, I' ve determined that I should expect to be paid $52-60K. However this company sent me an offer of $46K! How do I get them to agree to something in that range? I have to give them my counter offer by tomorrow. Here' s the rest of the package: Overtime amounting to about 10% of salary, 4% bonus, medical, health, dental, life insurance, 401K contribution of 3%. I liked the company a lot when I interviewed there, but now with this low offer, I' m less inclined to work there. Please help! 1. Salary wizards run high. Often as much as 30%. 2. You' re not going to be able to get them to come up $10K or so. That' s 25% more than they' re offering, it just won' t be happening. 3. You really don' t have anything to negotiate with yet. You' re a soon to be grad and although I' m sure you' re wonderful, you' re totally interchangable with dozens of other new grads. They like you, but they can like the next guy just as much. So, consider how much you want this job and if you' re able to hold out for a year if you don' t get another offer or don' t get one this high. If you' ve got a lot of good prospects, you might gamble on it and see if you can do better elsewhere. If not, you may want to take it to get your foot in the door. Remember too that right now you' ve got no experience. Building a good reference is just as important as the salary at this stage in the game. If you add the 10% OT and 4 % bonus, you' re at $52K. There, I got you a 14% raise, I should be a crooter! All seriousness aside, Counteroffer with whatever is your minimum and see if they cut you lose or what. Consider also, most employers have a standard 10% penalty they apply to anyone who went to a school with a funny sounding name. You might get around some of that by talking about how well your school' s football team did last year.
Thank you for your helpful comments thus far. I thought I'd address some other things too. -First, NewShopper, my school might not have a flashy name, but we areranked #1 in undergraduate engineering in the nation, so do someresearch before you knock it. -The 10% overtime is not guaranteed, so I can't just add it in to the base salary -I don't believe that the salary wizards are overestimating. Theaverage starting salary for a graduate from my school is $56K. Many ofmy peers are getting offers from $55-60K -Thank you, Tess, but in reality, I have an contact in the company who is an alum who said that someone higher up is really fighting hard to get me to work there. Why they would offer me something so low then is a bit of a mystery. I can already tell this is going to fall on deaf ears but let me try again. YOU don' t decide what the job is worth, they do. YOU don' t decide how much value you bring to the job, they do. YOUR SCHOOL (and Yes, I actually do know what sort of great school it is), does not decide what you get paid. When someone gets hired, (anyone) there is usually a salary range. A "perfect" candidate who is totally qualified and meets all expecations and exceeds some is usually offered the mid-point of that range. You are going into an entry-level position. You' ve got great education, but you haven' t worked yet. You are most likely being offered a figure somewhere between the bottom of the range and the midpoint. Those are different things each bringing different skills to the table. When you have education AND experience, you' ll really be able to go somewhere. In the meantime, you should get a tiny dose of realism. You can certainly ask if the offer is negotiable, but you' d have to be able to say why you are worth more. Not that some research says someone else somewhere else is worth more, why YOU personally are worth more. I can promise they' re not going to come up 25%. It just won' t happen, but hey, you can try. If you negotiate, there are 4 choices: 1. They meet your new amount. 2. They meet in the middle. 3. They hold firm. 4. They move on to someone else. With any job, you' ve got at least a 50/50 chance that they take option 4. As a new grad, I believe the odds are much higher. So, if you want to roll the dice, go ahead. But if you really want to work there, don' t blow a great opportunity based on some number you' ve picked out of thin air. As I said before, if you' ve got lots of prospects and losing this job doesn' t matter, then give it a whirl and see what happens. Not much to add to what others have said, but a couple comments: Yes, salary.com and other sites DO run high. My DH is in engineering and though he is "almost" at what salary.com says he "should" be at, he has 20 years of experience. Plus many of the jobs he interviewed for were paying a lot less than what salary.com indicated they "should" be paying.... Second, you have to factor in that this company is a small one; you said it yourself. Now, how does that compare to the companies that are supposedly offering your graduating peers? (Remember, some of them could be inflating their salaries to impress everybody else!) Are they getting $56k, $60k from companies of similar size, or are these firms larger? That plays a very large role. Typically small companies just do not have the resources that larger entities do. Last, I' m not saying you' re not worth more, and frankly, I don' t see how anyone can live on a salary in the $40s in that area. But, after years of researching relocation opportunities, I have found that companies in areas with vastly higher COLs simply do not offer vastly higher salaries--the wages are not proportionally higher, as one thinks they "should" be. If you really like this opportunity and can' t negotiate a higher starting salary, take it for the experience. And, if they' re growing, you have a chance to grow along with them. Having worked for both small & large companies, my personal feeling is that if you get in with a great small company, the rewards & growth opportunities can be limitless. But, you have to choose the right small company, one that wants to grow and knows how to do it; hook up with a small company that thinks & acts small, and you' ll get more frustration than anything else! You can choose to ignore what Tess and Ann Marie wrote to you, but they' re correct. Salary surveys DO tend to run high. You' re an about-to-be college graduate with limited real-world work experience, which means you' re going to be offered entry-level positions that pay entry-level salaries. And it is the employer who gets to decide what a particular job is worth to his or her company - not the job seeker. About all you can do is politely ask if their salary offer is negotiable and see what they say. If it' s not, you have two options, take the offer or decline it and keep looking. If their offer is negotiable, and you' re asked what salary you have in mind, you can counter with an anticipated salary range by saying something like, "I was anticipating an offer in the $48K to $52K range, but there' s no way that a new grad with little or no work experience is going to be able to negotiate a $10K salary increase for an entry-level job, regardless of where you go to school or where you rank in your class. What you should be looking for is an opportunity to get your foot in the door and prove, based on your performance, that you' re worth more. I was just yanking your chain, I know Mudd is a fine school. Didn' t make the final four in basketball in recent memory, though... You didn' t say what your major is or what job you' re trying to get. Still, I tend to agree with you that the offer is low considering the COL in San Fran. You hear a lot of advice about getting a review in six months, etc. In my experiance, that doesn' t happen in engineering. I' ve only worked for really big companies, so maybe it' s different with small shops. My experiance is, the average raise is ~4%, if you' re a zero you get 2% and if you walk on water you get 6%. The only way to get 10% or more is find another job. That makes it important to get a good starting salary, otherwise you' ll have to leave in a couple of years. I' ve seen guys get good raises, leave for a big increase and come back in three or four years for another big increase. The companies paid relo in both cases. It doesn' t make any sense, I blame IHR. | |
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