= Premium Content

  • Monday, May 28, 2012

Previous

Next

Negotiating Tactics for Women

November 27, 2011, 9:29 pm

By Audrey Williams June

While doing the reporting for an article about negotiating academic job offers in a tight job market, I had an interesting conversation with Sara Laschever, an expert on how women approach such talks. Ms. Laschever wrote Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide with Linda Babcock, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University. Although the book was first published eight years ago, it still resonates with women whose eyes it opened to the idea that avoiding negotiation literally doesn’t pay.  For women on the academic job market now—actually, I bet some men on the market could benefit, too—here’s some of what Ms. Laschever shared with me:

What are some mistakes that women make in negotiations?
They over-identify with the other side. Women have this tendency to protect and take care of people. But you need to allow the other side to negotiate their side of the discussion. Women also tend to ask for too little. They should talk to people to get a sense of what men ask for and shoot for that. If you aim too low, not many places are going to say, “No, you didn’t ask for enough; take more.” You need to think about what your market value is.

How important is doing research on an institution before the negotiation process?
You have to do it. Do your research, and find out what the constraints are. You can find out about severe budget cuts, for instance. If it’s a state university, that information should be very easily available. If it’s a private college, it might not be as severely impacted because it has an endowment to fall back on. But you can go online to get more information about how the endowment is doing or to find reports from the board. You might be able to connect with people in particular departments or people in your field or even people that you know from graduate school about how tight things really are. The important thing is not to guess.

What if the information you dig up about what people are paid isn’t that great?
If you still want to work there, then you need to think about what to ask for other than money. You want to feel like you’re valued and you want them to signal that by giving you things that are valuable to you that aren’t money.

What should people know about the pace of negotiations?
Don’t try to negotiate until you have the offer. If you signal that you want a lot when they’re feeling stressed financially, they might not make you the offer. Once you get the offer, proceed slowly. Try to read the person. Volunteer a little bit of information, and when you do that, they’ll share something. Share what your constraints are, what your goals are. Argue from the position of your own value. Remember that you’re going to have to work with these people and you don’t want to antagonize them before you even arrive. People tend to act a little more negatively toward women who are aggressive than toward men who act the same way. Still, don’t accept less than you need because somebody else’s feelings might be hurt.

What if you don’t get what you want? Can you try again once you’ve put in some time on the job?
Assuming that they value your work and you’ve gotten good reviews, you can say, “I want to be recognized in line with what I’m worth to the institution. What can I do to make up the gap?” Sometimes that works. But often women think, If I deserved more, then they would give me more.

Is there a technique you recommend to make negotiating easier?
A lot of women are nervous about negotiating. It’s really good to get together with someone and role-play. Ask the other person to take it seriously. Get them to push your buttons and practice responding calmly and moving things in a positive direction away from conflict and emotionalism. Get them to explain why they can’t give you what you want. That gives you some practice on drawing them out so you can figure out what to say to remove whatever roadblock they raise. You can always say, “I understand that you can’t give me what I want right now, but how close can you come?”

This entry was posted in Faculty@Work, Negotiating. Bookmark the permalink.

  • Print
  • Comment
  • mulerooster

    My problem is I never know when the official negotiations should take place.  Sometimes I receive a casual offer from the department chair and I always think that it is informal and that the negotiations will come later.  Turns out, that informal offer should have been the time to negotiate.  So how do you tell at what point you negotiate?  When the chair offers you the job verbally and says the salary is ____?  When the school sends you a contract letter in the mail that states your salary and asks for your signature?  I’m always uncertain.

  • firefly70

    Here’s approximately how I did/ would do it. 
    Chair: “We’d like to offer you the job. … blah blah blah… The salary is $LessThanYouWant”
    Me: “Oh that’s great! [or some other positive, but not committed statement] … blah blah blah I’m excited for the opportunity. blah blah blah… When would be a good time for us to discuss salary and what I’ll need for my lab/other start-up necessities?”
    Chair: “how about now?”
    Me: “Let me email you my list of start-up materials. I’ve indicated which are necessary for me to do my research, and which I would like to have, but could get a grant for later. As for salary, I interviewed for another job, and the posted salary was $MuchBetterThanYourOffer.”

    And it went on from there. Note that 11 years later, I still am waiting to hear whether I got that other job. And it was a term position, which the chair tried to use to convince me to take less $$ (since this job is continuing). I said I’d rather get paid $10.000 more per year for two years. I got them to bump up their offer $5000. I was 30 yrs old and am a pretty tiny girl. I basically bluffed b/c I thought the salary they offered was ridiculous. I’m not a poker player. I would suck at that. But when it mattered, I was able to do it.

    When I started the job, the grad students asked me to teach them how to bargain, b/c they had heard that I was a tough bargainer. 

    In sum: mention discussing the details as soon as they offer you the job. If you wait until they send you a contract, I would say you are too late. Also, be prepared with as much as possible so that when you get a call, you can send them your demands (I mean… requests) right away.

  • Mstrx

    BRAVO

  • Mstrx

    Prior to applying for my raise on promotion to full professor (I wanted more than the standard), I did research, created a table, prepared my argument, and worried, worried, worried.  I got the huge raise. But the stress was overwhelming and I lost sleep.

    I am so insulted and angry when I hear this nonsense that men make more money because we are men.  That is total nonsense.  We make more money sometimes because we simply demand it (and lose a lot of sleep in the process).  (And other times because we are stuck in a concrete basemen where 90% of workplace fatalities are men or because we work more hours.)

    So finally there is an article that advises women to learn how to ask for the money.  My only criticism is the sentence: “Women have this tendency to protect and take care of people.”  Well, so do I.  I’d advise against that sentence because it welcomes back the whining and self-pity that undermines contract negotiations.  Say it like it is (without the implied criticism of men – will it ever stop?): “Women have this tendency to be afraid of the hardcore negotiations.”  You will rise above that when you recognize it, instead of window dressing it in self-justifying false compassion.

  • keerti

    A well written Article. Thanks for sharing. Salary negotiation does not come easy to me so I will be using these steps for sure..

  • observer001

    In the humanities you can only bargain significantly if you have an offer from another institution, especially when it comes to raises, otherwise they will offer only one or two token thousand. Don’t let the comments from the science types warp your perspective, especially on raises.
    My (state-funded, R1) institution, as many others of its type, hasn’t provided raises (even for cost of living) for going on five years for all disciplines, though here it has been cloaked in the excuse of being a top-tier institution. It is now effectively policy that you can only ask for a raise if you have a competing offer, though you can be sure that when one of us gets an offer, we’ll be straight out the door so as not to constantly be on the market year after year.

  • tgupta

    It is true that women don’t negotiate and like you said, in my understanding it is mainly about what one wants, you can put the benefits & pay above the work, at the same level where you value work or may be at a lower level, but in the end looking at big picture is helpful.

  • syd80

    The point is not only that women tend to negotiate less, but that they are received in a more negative light when they do negotiate aggressively.  It is not an attack on men, but a recognition of the fact that gendered social pressures affect the situation from more angles than simply what women ask for.

  • Mstrx

    I completely disagree.  I antagonized a lot of people when I applied for that raise.  I was warned against it.  I upset the apple cart.  An associate dean told me not to do it.  My Chair was shocked when I got it.  And I did not care.  I wanted it and I got it.  And I was determined that I dd not care what anyone thought of me.

    So now you come along and tell me that just because a woman cannot deal with what I dealt with, that I have to recognize sexism and accept that I got my salary because of sexism?  Bullshit.

    (and I am so irritated with this topic. I went through hell with that raise. I got it because I sucked up and had the courage. And your post suggests that I got it because I did not have to suffer like a woman. Damn this is irritating.)

  • freya1

    This is a very
    interesting blog with good insights. When trying to negotiate in today’s
    society, women are most definitely at a disadvantage. It’s hard to overcome the
    natural tendency women have to take care of others before themselves and to
    overcome the sexual barrier that is all too common in the workforce. It seems
    much of the advice isn’t necessarily specific to women, but to everybody that
    finds themselves in a negotiating role for a job in the difficult economy.
    Research the institution or business (it can apply to many different scenarios)
    you’re applying to, wait until you get an offer to negotiate, and try again in
    a year or two if you don’t get what you want. This is all good advice for
    higher education and really any career professional seeking negotiations.

Copyright 2012. All rights reserved.

  • The Chronicle of Higher Education
  • 1255 Twenty-Third St, N.W.
  • Washington, D.C. 20037