Tips for negotiating your salary (from an ex-FAANG recruiter)

Hey everybody, how's it going? My name's Mayuko and welcome back to my channel where we

talk about tech, career, and life. So today again, we're going to talk about salary

negotiations. So I posted a video recently about whether to negotiate your salary. And so

today we're going to follow up and talk about how to exactly do that. And this is from my

conversation that I had with Sarah, who is the lead negotiator at levels.fye. She was on Muko's

corner at my show about leading a life that feels more you in both your life and tech career

Sarah, again, just has like so much great information from her time as a tech recruiter at Amazon, Facebook, and Google to talk about the do's and don'ts about how to negotiate a salary

So the topics covered today will be like, how do you answer? What are your salary expectations

And exactly what medium is best for having these conversations. And before we get started, I wanted to say thank you to the sponsor of today's video, Skillshare

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Thanks again to Skillshare and now let's dive in. Okay, next I want to talk more about like how do you actually negotiate specifically

I have a lot of questions about this, but I guess like the first question that I had

I think this was one of the questions that I really was curious when we first started talking was

when a recruiter asks you, what are your salary expectations? What's the best way, like what's the golden answer, the do's and don'ts of how to respond to that question

Don't give them that number. Don't give them that range because like I said, the range is really large

You don't know where you land in that competition. And so I would recommend push back on that recruiter and ask

hey, I'm just really curious, what is what happens with advanced to this position

And you don't have to answer anything in the pet leader. If you don't know the answer, just let them know

actually haven't flipped much thought into this. This is a really important thing Let me just take some time to think about this and we revisit this later And then you know usually recruiter are pretty respectful of that Another thing too is if you in the state of Washington or California as a candidate

when you request for a compensation ban, legally speaking, they have to share the minimum range with you

And recently with Denver, too, they passed a law where for the employer, when they post a job description

they have to mention the minimum salary range too. So the recruiter can push for it, the recruiter can ask that is it anything in place that you know tell them they can ask

but ask the candidate to not have the data to you know. That's really good to know. I think in the past I recommended to you all, my viewers, that you should say

I expect to be compensated competitively, which is fine. But I think instead flipping the question to them, right

Because as soon as you put out a number out there, you were basically, might already be giving yourself away at a discount

which is great for the company because I'm going to like, wow, we get someone at this caliber for this cheap

Great. Let's just like keep on with their number. But in fact, you're actually worth a lot more

Exactly. And it's just like, you know, once you give a number, the recruiter will hold you to it

So you say to a 30k in total compensation, they will give you exactly that

Like nothing more, nothing less. And let's say you start interview with another company and they give you 300K

You can't come back and be like, we're just kidding. Like, now I want 300k

You know, now the recruiter can say, like, wow, he came back, you know, and tell me the other competing offer, which means that he really, he or she really wants this position, I'm not going to move the needle

And they will eventually cave and expect this offer. You know, from really aggressive recruiter, they'll do that

And then another thing, too, when they give you the range, don't say yes, don't say no

Let's say you flip it back on them and say, hey, I'm just really curious. What is the compensation down for this position

And let's say the recruiter tell you, all right, well, the range is 100K to 120,000

hey, how does that sound to you? Do you like this number? Avoid saying, yeah, no, that sounds great, or no, that's really low

Keep things a little bit more open-ended by saying, that's a really good start

So that you have to get through for yourself to negotiate later

For sure, yeah. It's like you leave it as lukewarm as possible for as long as possible is what I'm hearing

Exactly. With negotiation, you want to be, you want to use really neutral like for a here

You don't want to undershare, but you don't want to overshay at the same time. So then at what point do you actually give a number or like who should be the first one to give

a number then, I guess? Yeah, so even at the very end when the recruiter, you know

share with you the good news, like, all right, the team really loves you, they thought you

do really well on ABCD, see a lot of growth potential in you. You know, we're ready to move

on to the offer stage. What are you looking for? Even at that stage, I still would recommend

and don't give your number. Sometimes you want to take this call

to really understand the compensation philosophy. Like they can just be pushing for a number when they don tell you like what goes into it right you can make a decision without being informed so push it back on them and say truthfully you know i

been really busy prepping for the interview i haven't put much thought into it um if you don't mind

just kind of going over the compensation uh structure with me first and then we can go over perks and

benefits and then we'll take it from there and you know once they go over everything again

you can just push it back on them one more time saying you know this is a little bit newer for me and

Everyone has different compensation structure. I know I'm not comparing Apple to Apple

If you don't mind just sharing the numbers with me first, it would be super productive or effective

or super helpful for me. I would greatly appreciate it. It's almost like a game of poker of just like

just waiting for them to fold, just like waiting and waiting and waiting and then having them be the first to show their hand. Exactly

And like once the recruiter have to explain everything for you, they were just like, I might as well just share a number now. Right

Yeah. I find it later. Right. And like you mentioned at that stage, you've like already gone through the entire interview process

You got a sense for the company culture. You got a sense of what they're looking for in this role

You have their compensation philosophy together. You can piece all of those together even that when they give you a number

you have the data and information to be able to confidently say, like, actually

based on what I know and what I've learned, I think I'm this much instead

Exactly. And you want to do a lot of the asking good questions during that call, like asking about the bonus structure, how does that work? Typically, like, when it's the payout? Is it once a year? Is it twice a year? Is there any other bonuses on top of, you know, what you guys offer and things like that. And for companies that don't offer a bonus, that's the perfect window for you to use that as a leverage against them. Like, hey, since you don't offer me any bonus, what I want to be mindful of is inflation

and, you know, living costs that just keep going up. So essentially, if I don't, take this into consideration now

the longer I stay with the company, essentially the less my take-home pay is going to be

And I don't want to be in a position where salary is a thing for me to have to leave the company

So I hope you understand where I'm coming from. They can't say no to that. You're going to be the biggest asshole if you say no after that request

Right. That's true. Yeah, use all of that knowledge you learned in APE company

to talk about inflation, to talk about money, and use all of that to your advantage

This whole conversation of this back and forth, if you're being yourself and a recruiter

Kruger has a hiring manager and other folks behind them to make decisions about all of this

But what's the best format to be having this conversation? Yeah, good question

So typically, I would recommend do that over via email. You know, after the recruiter tells you, we would love to move forward

They go over the zostation structure with you, perks and benefit, let them know

this is a lot of good information Let me just take some time to process all of this and get back to you later would that make sense for you would that work for you A as a recruiter for myself is so much easier to you know kind of follow that thought process

because sometimes it's really hard to like, maybe when I'm on the phone

someone just ping me, I got distracted, maybe they were asking me 140

but I misheard them and I wrote down 104, for example. So just to have everything on paper is so much easier for the recruiter to, you know

not make any, like, mistake when it comes to numbers there. And let's say if I have to get an approval from their manager

it's so much easier for me to just kind of forward with that email to the manager or the compensation team

So as a candidate, you have so much more control over your narrative because you could be saying the perfect thing

but communication goes both ways also dependent on what the other side is perceiving that message

So if this person misunderstood what you were saying, and this person is relaying all this information to the team

you don't know what went wrong in that process. Things can go sideways really fast

Or maybe this recruiter just explained something completely off and the manager could take it the wrong way

And that kind of what could potentially jeopardize your relationship with the manager

It makes life so much easier on you to do it over via email

Because a lot of the time, too, I would see that has happened with my friends

where they you know i'll prep them like ask for this much and they were like yep nope i got it and

then we would rehearse it and then when they on the phone they get so nervous that they start to like

discount themselves like well i guess like i mean i kind of want 300k but like i would be okay with

250 and i'm just like oh no i'm just like oh what

and i think the best ogy to think of this too is when you send the recruiter

email and then you have a call with them after is just the ogy of like when you watch a movie and

you read the book before the movie is so much easier to understand right versus if you just watch

the movie and you've never seen the they've never read the book before you've no idea what's

going on in the movie so that's like kind of taking the call without priming the recruiter like what

you're going to talk about and you have to explain everything live they're just going to sit there and

be like okay like i guess it makes sense but i'm not

not sure. So email is the best way to go. Easier for you to lay out your thought process there

Much easier for the recruiter to share all that information with the team. You have so much more

control over your narrative. Thank you all so much for watching the video. I really hope you liked it

Make sure to check out the other video I did about Sallery Negotiations featuring Sarah

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