Conducting a fantastic interview to land that first job should be a landmark achievement in a young adult’s life. Still, there remains the question of whether to negotiate following your offer and how to go about doing so.
Kim Holladay, director of BBA Career Services, conducted a job offer negotiation workshop on Thursday evening called “Deal…or No Deal: Offer Consideration & Negotiation” to advise SMU undergrads from any school on what they can expect when entering the professional environment.
Holladay would like students to remember that knowledge is power when considering salary discussions. The better informed you are of competitive offers and local salary averages in a particular field, the smoother your requests will sail across the negotiating table.
“Refrain from picking a single number when you go in there,” Holladay said. “You never know if you’re lowballing yourself when you don’t give them a salary range to consider.” There are plenty of salary data Web sites such as salary.com and quintcareers.com that do not require memberships.
Entry level salaries in the city of Dallas averaged $45,700 for college grads. In the last five years, the second-most common resource for landing a job was indeed a previous internship or part-time job with that company.
According to Holladay, about three-quarters of Cox grads have an internship before they graduate.
Holladay reminded students that career and professional factors such as job responsibilities, resources, training, promotion opportunities and potential co-workers are important factors to weigh when making a selection. “The average work week this past year was 52.5 hours,” she said. “Remember that a lot of your week is spent with these people.”
The “package” as far as your contract goes, should be more than a promise of a paycheck every two weeks. Depending on the job, travel expenses, relocation costs, cell phone bills, health benefits and reimbursement for gasoline are all very practical requests that a person might initially feel uneasy about bringing up during salary negotiations.
“Finding the best fit for you is most important.” Holladay said.
