How to negotiate your first salary, according to a Harvard Law professor

Published: June 23, 2016 9:58 a.m. ET


Negotiating your salary from $50,000 to $55,000 could earn you $600,000 over your career

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Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep in the 2006 movie “The Devil Wears Prada.”




It’s no secret that many of today’s young people could use a little more money in their pockets. Between student loan payments, sluggish wages and historically high rent costs, 20-somethings are often struggling to make ends meet.

And yet, many don’t do the one thing in their control to change that. Less than 40% of students entering the job market between 2012 and 2015 negotiated their pay with their employer, according to a 2015 survey from personal finance site NerdWallet and Looksharp, a company that helps recent graduates find jobs. Often they’re just happy to land that first job and don’t want to rock the boat, says Robert Bordone, the director of the Negotiation and Mediation Clinic at Harvard Law School.

But that mistake could be costly. Research shows that a job seeker who negotiates her salary up from $50,000 to $55,000 will earn $600,000 more over the course of a 40-year career.

Bordone and a team of his students are working with the White House to develop a suite of tools to help students, particularly those at community colleges, negotiate salaries at their first jobs. Development of the tool kit is still in its early stages, so details are scant, but the White House plans to make the new resources available publicly later this year. MarketWatch spoke with Bordone about how young people can make sure they get paid fairly, even when they think they don’t have a ton of leverage.

MarketWatch: Tell me more about last week’s announcement that you’ll be working with the government to develop a tool to help young people negotiate.

Robert Bordone: We will be working through the Departments of Labor and Education and with some people at the White House to design a tool kit that is going to hopefully offer some coaching and assistance in particular to people who are in community college negotiating for their salary for the first time in an entry-level job. The goal is to provide some resources to make that first negotiation less daunting and more helpful particularly with respect to their salary and thinking about their whole benefits package.

We will have a team of students here at Harvard Law School working on that, trying to draw on the research that’s been done, but also talking to stakeholders.

MW: Why is having a tool like that important?

RB: It’s really hard to know in your first job what is appropriate and if it is appropriate to raise things, how do I do it? What’s a skillful way of doing it? You’re entering the professional environment for the first time and there are a lot of unknowns.

One of the reasons why a negotiation tool kit can be particularly helpful is because that initial salary that you negotiate can really be the basis, especially if you stay in a job for a long time, of your salary [in the future]. The implications can be really big down the road because you’re often getting some kind of percentage increase from your first salary and even when you change your job, often a new employer will look at your last salary.

MW: What are some tips for young people trying to negotiate their first salary?

RB: The first piece is timing. Typically if you’re interviewing you may have some sense of what the salary ranges are, but I wouldn’t bring up salary issues until I have the offer. It might hurt your chances actually, if you bring it up too soon.

But once you have an offer, doing as much as you can to get a sense of what the comparables are in your field. That could be some combination of research online or with a career counseling office, but also to the degree you know people either within that organization or in similar jobs, any way that you could ask people and learn what the relevant numbers are and what packages are looking like, it’s worth doing. Employers want to be and look fair and so it’s going to be much more persuasive if you’re going to ask for more money to have some comparables.

In most contexts, negotiating the details is appropriate. There’s a whole set of people who feel like they shouldn’t raise it. It’s OK to combine your appreciation and excitement about the job with questions about compensation and other benefits. The more you know what other packages look like, the more confidence you have in doing that. The typical mistake is to feel so thrilled and relieved that you say, “I accept.”

To the degree you have the capability to actually practice with someone who has been in the workforce or if you have a career counseling office, a career counselor can really help you practice how to raise those issues.

MW: Any other mistakes young people should try to avoid when negotiating?

RB: Either not raising it at all or getting too stuck on something. You want to make sure that your salary is fair and appropriate, but sometimes young people, if they’re comparing offers from different employers, they can over-focus on the money piece and miss other things that are really valuable to them.

The antidote to this is really thinking broadly about what your interests are when you think about your first job. That includes, of course salary, it includes benefits, it includes vacation. It also includes, will I be mentored here? Is there somebody here who I’m excited to work with who might take me under their wing in some way? What are the other colleagues like? Are they people I feel comfortable with?

Of course people say they care about these things, but then often at a moment of decision they can get over focused on just the dollar amount and lose sight of the others. What are my interests when I think about this job? Are there internal growth possibilities here and how would I align myself for them? Or is it the kind of thing where I’m going to be here for three years and then go to graduate school? How does it set me up for that?

The mistake is over-focusing on one or two issues, like that everyone will be impressed. But they’ll be impressed for a moment at a cocktail party, you’ll actually be living your life the rest of the time.

MW: What are the differences between when you’re negotiating your offer at your first job versus later in your career?

RB: In many ways there are a lot of similarities. Some of the differences are typically someone negotiating for their first job, they’re new at it themselves, so they just have less experience. As you go down your career, there’s more of a uniqueness to you when they’re making a decision. You bring 10, 12, 20 years of experience. So in some ways there is more possibility for negotiation there.

That’s not to say there’s not a possibility for negotiation at the entry level. But there are a lot of employers who have a pretty standard, “Here’s what we do for people right out of college.”

MW: A lot of young people are often nervous to negotiate their first salaries, particularly given that the economy hasn’t been great for recent college graduates over the past few years. Should they avoid those feelings and always negotiate?

RB: I hesitate to say always and never because professional contexts really vary. It’s important to be attentive to that. In a law school context, for example, we have graduates of law schools who are going to law firms -- they’re not going to negotiate their starting salaries. It is what it is. You’re not going to negotiate basic benefits, but there often are domains that are negotiable. So things like when your start date might be or what department you’ll be in and how much of your time will be spent doing X, Y or Z. Sometimes you might be able to negotiate when you’ll be considered for a promotion.

I wouldn’t advise to take an ‘always or never’ approach. Know in whatever field you’re going into what tends to be negotiable and what isn’t. Then do a second scan. If you’re really well prepared and know what your interests are at a deeper level, there are often creative things that are outside standard protocol that a manager can do and that a hiring manager can do. And that actually can impress a really good manager. [They’ll think] ‘This person is thinking creatively, they’re thinking out of the box.’



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