Women Don't Negotiate = Women Make Less Money.

I got a new job. I can't go into details on here regarding what that job entails, as I don't want to blow my thinly-veiled cover (to those who know me, it's impossible for me to blog without giving away who I am.) Needless to say, the position is 99 percent of the way to dream job, and I'm really proud of myself for somehow falling into the opportunity.

The focus of this entry is not my new job, persay, but my terror of negotiating and my delight in figuring out that I can get what I want in a negotiation without feeling guilty.

The day of my meeting to negotiate terms of my new job, I spent all my free time scouring the Internet for advice on how to approach any likely scenerio. I took my current job with absolutely no negotiation, and while I don't regret it (the job was worth more to me than a few thousand more dollars at the time, when my lack of full-time experience made it painfully difficult to get a job at all), it does suck being stuck at my entry-level salary a year later. Between the company struggling financially and my inability to be brilliant in their eyes, I lost the opportunity to be promoted five months into the gig. And since then, I haven't even dared to ask. I've been working my ass off and I'm pretty sure I've been earning my keep, to say the least. It has just become increasingly clear to me that in order to be valued as I ought to be, I need to move elsewhere.

So I applied for dozens of positions and even got offers for a few, but ultimately turned them down. They all paid more than my current gig, but I decided while I'd like a fatter paycheck, salary isn't the only thing that would get me to make the leap to a new position. I'm picky. And I really wanted to find a job where I knew I would feel like I'd be able to give just as much as I take, if not more.

Found that job, or so it seems. I had no idea what the salary would be. It's one of those Web 2.0 jobs where there's no pre-defined standard for base salary at any level. It's a guessing game for all involved, to be determined based on either my former salary or my current and potential value.

The one strict rule in negotating, it seems, is that you're not supposed to note your current salary at any point. Nor should you bring up a number first. In my situation, I was practically forced to put a number out there. I blurted out a range, which was higher than what I'm making now but not entirely ridiculous. The low point in the range was what I figured I should be making at my current job if I was in a company that actually paid attention to the growth of its employees and wanted to reward them for their hard work. The high of the range, $5k more, was what I'd like to be making, even though I didn't think that was really possible.

Side story...

The other day I met up with a young woman who used to intern with me at a community newspaper. She graduated a year after me (I was interning the year after I graduated, while she was graduating that year with a degree in journalism.) Turns out, she hated the internship (and seemingly journalism as a whole, but maybe it was just the internship.) So the other day we re-connected on Linked In and it turned out she was working in a PR office a few towns over. So we decided to meet up for lunch.

We talked a lot about issues of age, salary, and feeling like being taken advantage of at work (mostly due to our age.) Turns out that her salary, surprisingly enough, was $3k less than what I'm currently making. She was frustrated with her job, mostly because of the pay - I'd imagine mind numbing PR work without a rewarding salary would get old fast. We've both been in our positions a year now, even though I'm officially two years out of school and she's just marking her one year anniversary of graduation.

She took such a low salary without negotiating at first because she needed the experience as well, but likely she could have gotten her base pay up to that $35k figure that seems to be standard for entry-level corporate or agency work (unless you're a software engineer or something). Now she's stuck. She could ask for a raise, but the raise would bring her up to what she should have started at a year ago.

Back to the main story...

Negotiation is an amazing tool when used properly. It's amazing what you can get just by asking. Women are taught to make other's happy, to be people pleasers (at least most of us are) so negotiation seems like a painful experience. Aren't they offering me what's in my best interest? Not likely. It turns out that men often think of their own interests first, whereas women are the opposite. So a man will low-ball a salary and expect the other person to negotiate. If the other person is a man, chances are he would negotiate for a higher salary or at least better benefits. If the other person is a women, it's questionable if she'll say "Ok" or go with the great tactic... "hmmmmm..."

But I'm living proof that it can't hurt to ask. At the start of the negotation process, I was given a salary quote, which was the lowest number I had noted in my range at my first interview. While I could have taken that and been happy with it, I felt like that was a little low considering my additional commute time for this new job and all the added responsibility. I was thinking of asking for $2k more, but I realized if I did that, then he might pick a number in between the two, and I'd end up with only $1k more. So instead I mustered up all my courage and pushed the number up $5k. It was quite a nervewracking moment. I was waiting for him to say no. He almost said no. Then he said, "done."

Moral of the story - female or male, but especially female, make sure to ask for what you want when you're negotiating. It might make sense to accept what's offered to you for your first job out of college, but even then most people respect a little negotiation initative. Afterall, business - whether it's working for a giant corporate company as a sales rep, or as a development associate at a non-profit, is ALL about negotation. And if you can't ask for what you want when it comes to your livelihood, what's to say you would be able to do it on a daily basis to help your company get ahead?