Salary Negotiation Tips: 12+ Incredible Insights (Especially Life-Sciences)

Did you know? In 2022, close to 50% of India’s life-science professionals have failed to negotiate their salaries and left the money on the table (though they accepted the offers).

In order to secure the job, unfortunately, they settled for less.

Because they didn’t know how to command the negotiation.

Many aspiring professionals worry more about getting hired than their actual worth. A result of lack of a solid negotiation strategy.

We first must understand. Negotiation is selling your skills at a price YOU decide.

Once your resume hits the spot, an interview is the next challenge. And once your interview hits the spot, salary negotiation is the next challenge. And you better be prepared for it.

The shorter you sell yourself, the lower it reflects your ability and authority over your skills.

Now, if you are looking for:

• Getting highly paid
• Do’s and don’ts for the negotiation
• Negotiation over a call
• Next steps after successful negotiation

Then you’ll love the actionable methods here. Let’s get started.

Salary Negotiation Tips That’ll Result

Whether you negotiate with the HR or hiring manager, you must be able to convince why you deserve what you desire.

1. For Newbies

Freshers generally don’t have much to say about their professional expertise. In such cases, recruiters by and large have their hands on the negotiation.

But you can ask for a little more than the offered value. Show interest in the opportunity and your ambitions to support your demand.

If they are not ready to consider your number, you can be assured that at least you are getting the standard compensation. Once you land on the job, outperform and constantly upskill yourself.

For an experienced professional, things need more organized in order to better negotiate.

2. Know Your Worth

Negotiations are most effective when you back them with solid reasons. Only expectations don’t work. Understand the challenges you may face with cost-cutting machines.

Research what other companies are paying for the kind of role you’re approaching. Even before preparing for an interview, set your lower limit and draft your own negotiation strategy.

Don’t hesitate to experiment with your strategies in different opportunities. Some may fail, but a few of them will definitely help.

Use platforms like Glassdoor, LinkedIn, or Naukri to set up your expectations. Simply look for job openings that reveal their salary brackets for different roles.

If you sit across the table without keeping the numbers in your mind (% and figures), you’ve almost lost the conversation with the hiring specialists.

3. Show Your Worth

Once your research is done, it’s time to present it properly. You can say “Considering my experience and expected output, I am asking a fair amount as my efforts will be to acclamatize quickly, streamline, and outperform.”

Talk about the salary trends in your current domain. A geographical aspect may be an added advantage if you’re about to live in an expensive city.

And yes, don’t give them a range. If you do, they’ll start from a lower one. As simple as that.

4. Justify Your Craving

Once you explain your reasons for what you are demanding, don’t forget to describe what makes you different from your competition.

Of course, the recruiter always looks for value-for-money candidates.

In order to prove the same, explain to the recruiter how you deserve what you desire.

5. Set Your Lowest Expectation

There are instances when HR people will ask you questions like: “What is the lowest salary you’ll be comfortable with?”.

This is tricky. Recruiters ask this even when you tell them your first expectation. So how should someone answer that? Is it ethical to ask such questions?

Well, read at the end of this article how to respond to such questions.

But be ready to accept the worst-case and define your last point below which you’ll not consider the opportunity. Don’t sell yourself short for the sake of grabbing the job (See Point #9 below for a why).

6. Pitch Yourself Confident

Remember, your statements will drive the negotiation towards or away from you. Your experience will help you talk with confidence.

Nobody can predict how the discussion will go, but make sure you sound bold and confident with your gestures.

Practice your pitch in front of the mirror or with a good friend who can give you genuine feedback.

When you fill out certain forms before an interview, some recruiters ask right there about your salary expectations.

Be careful while putting numbers there. In a rush to attend an interview, you may miss out the calculations. Put the number you already decided.

7. Be Ready With Your Counter-Offer

Don’t forget to keep a note of how medical policies, perks, and other variable items are going to be part of your CTC.

It is now becoming a regular practice to incorporate such variables into the CTC thereby reducing your take home salary.

Try to minimize your variables as much as you can. Because, when you approach for the next job, that recruiter will simply minus the variables from your current CTC and then put you an offer. That way, you end up getting a lower raise.

A situation may come when you feel a big gap between what you expect and what is being offered. Thinking about how you can counter that, will surely help.

Again, this is the worst-case and you must be prepared to take the conversation ahead. Suppose you plan for 15.5 LPA and you get an offer of 12 LPA. You see? the gap is vast.

Put a counter-offer like this:

“I can understand you. I just want to repeat my interest to grab this position, work on some wonderful projects and foster my skills. I think it is absolutely reasonable for my profile to ask for 14.5 LPA.”

This is how you should endorse your statement and ask for a raise. Ultimately, you’ll end up winning the negotiation.

8. Take a Pause Before Saying “Yes”

If you think the offered number fits in your pigeonhole, don’t rush to say “Yes” or “I agree”. Take a pause, rethink and convince yourself that this is what you want.

Don’t make a doubtful face during that pause. It shows to the recruiter that even after so much discussion, you are still not convinced. Instead, simply ask for time to think.

It is very important not just for that moment, but for your upcoming time with the organization. Later, you shouldn’t feel that you’ve been paid less. That’ll affect your performance and desire to put continued efforts.

9. Dare to Say “No”

Rejection is a part of the negotiation process. Ultimately, both of you are sitting there to reach an agreement and that the employer already feels you are a suitable candidate for the position.

Don’t be afraid to reject the offer if things are not as you anticipate.

Remember, Negotiations actually start once you say NO.

They don’t want to repeat the whole process to fill the position unless they’ve got an option.

Do not accept the offer if it is not worth it.

Remember:

When you say yes to others, make sure you are not saying no to yourself.

— Paulo Coelho

10. Ask Questions to Yourself 1st and then Recruiter

Before you ask for a hike, have the answers at your hand for the questions like:

• Do you have a stable job profile?
• Were you the best in the job at hand?
• Have your responsibilities increased over time?

For you, all of the answers should be “Yes”.

Moreover, if the same questions are asked during an interview, don’t forget to explain them with examples.

After negotiation, don’t hesitate to ask open-ended questions to maintain the discussion tempo like:

• What does a normal day look like?
• Can you please explain how you calculate and reward variables?
• How did you come to this value? (If you want to ask about their salary calculation part)
• Please give me an overall idea of your leave policy.
• When do you want me to join? Notice Period is your biggest concern while switching jobs so make sure you avoid unnecessary emails.

Recruiters simply cannot answer Yes/No to such questions. Meanwhile, you become more aware.

11. Choose Friday/Saturday

This technique occasionally works out. Sometimes, interviews and salary discussions happen on different days due to the lengthy shortlisting process. Walk-in-interview is the best example of this.

Recruiters take their time and might ask your availability for the salary discussion on some other day. Simply note what their weekends are and propose a day just before their weekend.

On weekends, recruiters often find it difficult to restart the discussion on Monday and don’t want to miss their targets. So, it is highly possible that they’ll somehow agree to fulfill your demand.

This is not a certain situation. But if it arises, you can try out.

12. Negotiating With Your Current Employer

“I don’t want to leave the current employer as my job is great, the company is great but salary? Terrible”.

If this is something you feel, approach the decision-maker in your current organization for a raise before resigning. This is the best way to negotiate when salary is the only concern.

Convince your current employer why you feel this way. Show them how you deserve what you desire and they might give you a raise.

Few companies call it a salary correction also. Most business-oriented companies retain their performing employees. So make sure, you’re one of them.

Responding to Some Tricky Situations

What’s Your Current Salary?

First of all, what do you feel? How will your current salary make them give you an offer?

For Indian jobs at least, this is the most common question. Actually, this question is illegal in other countries like some regions in the US.

You might say, “As my calculations are based on the current CTC, I am okay with that”.

That’s actually good. But the thing is, the recruiter’s do their homework even before you and try to close the deal on the lower side.

The actual money allotted for the position may be much higher than what you are about to get. They simply try to figure out, for how short they can buy you.

What is the Lowest Salary You’ll Accept?

Sometime back, one of the recruiters asked me this question. I had a question in my mind, “Why he’s asking me this even after I expressed my expectations?”.

But instead of answering as he was expecting, I said “I’ve already mentioned my expectation, so let’s proceed with that.”

This question is often asked in pharma recruitments in India. But, this is an unethical way to ask. Either they should provide their range or ask about yours.

If you get trapped and tell them the lowest random number, you’ll not get more than that anyhow. So instead of answering it in numbers, it is better to bring the negotiation back on track using sentences like above.

Negotiation on a Call

Sometimes, you may need to negotiate your salary over the phone in case;

1. Your prospective employer doesn’t have things ready after a face-to-face interview.
2. Your interview itself is planned over the call.

For effective discussion, follow this:

• Book your slot when you are physically and mentally comfortable.
• Choose a quiet place where no one would bother you.
• Check for proper network availability.
• Keep your notepad handy with your salary calculations written on it. Mark low, mid, and high points of your salary values well in advance.
• Draw a scheme for your negotiation strategy.
• Conquer the negotiation.

Here’s an example of how you can make a counter-offer:

Thank you for this opportunity. I would like to talk about your offer. While researching the CTC that industries provide for the same level of experience and qualifications, I was expecting an offer of at least exceeding 16 LPA. Can you please reconsider?

This way you can kick-start in the proper direction. One benefit of this approach is you get time to build up your confidence. These things also help when you face video calls.

Negotiation Over Email

There are instances when a job offer is sent directly to your email. What does that mean? You can reply with your counter-offer. It is just that you should know how to throw your expectation.

For an offer received via email, one of my colleagues once asked the recruiter over a call to resend the revised offer “as discussed”. Now, this is sometimes helpful too based on your tuning with them.

Follow these steps to tick all the boxes of a better negotiator over an email.

1. Read and analyze your offer letter thoroughly.
2. Highlight the points you’ve doubt about and comment out.
3. Schedule a follow-up call by asking your recruiter about their availability like this:

Hi XYZ,

Thanks for the offer. I’ve gone through and wanted to confirm few things regarding the same. I was wondering when we can discuss this or shall I write it out here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Regards,
ABC

4. Discuss and update your marked offer letter either on call or over an email.
5. Check and verify your revised offer letter.

Situations may be different but the important thing is, you take each step predicting the recruiter’s response to that.

What’s Next After Negotiation?

First, ideate your CTC break-up to maximize fixed and minimize variable income. With this, you’ll be paid higher in your future jobs. Most importantly, your basic pay part.

Once you have successfully negotiated, you need to prioritize a few important things.

• Resignation to your current employer
• Smooth transition of your current responsibilities
• Avoid big roles during your notice period (play it safe)
• Learn about the new role and develop the required skills in the meantime
• Keep in touch with your next employer for any follow-ups
• Exit current job on a good note

Conclusion

Though negotiation is a complex process, if you read above, it all boils down to how do you convince what you conceive.

So, follow these strategies to set up your negotiation process and convert them into actions and results.

Don’t forget to balance your thinking and practice out quite often. Even better, it pays off one day.

You’ve now got an idea of how to do it right. What do you think about these strategies? Do you want to add something to this? Or do you find them sufficient? Either way, comment below.