How can I prepare for salary negotiations?

To properly view this site, javascript must be enabled and Flash version 9 or higher must be installed.
Get the latest Flash player
Karen Chopra
Licensed Professional Counselor
www.ChopraCareers.com  
 

Karen James Chopra, LPC, MCC, NCC, has been counseling career clients since 1999 and has helped hundreds of clients change careers, find new jobs and deal more effectively with workplace challenges.

In addition to her private practice, she has worked for two national corporate outplacement firms: Lee Hecht Harrison and Resource Careers. These are the organizations that help people who have experienced a layoff or downsizing to find new jobs, and their programs are usually considered the gold-standard of job search technique.

Ms Chopra is a regular presenter on career issues, having taught career theory at the graduate level, designed and delivered numerous workshops, and served as a regular guest commentator on WMAL’s career radio show “Your Career Life.”

She is a career-changer herself. Before entering the counseling field, she worked for nearly a decade as a trade negotiator for the United States Government, first at the Department of Commerce and then at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Ms. Chopra holds a number of relevant licenses and certifications: licensed professional counselor (LPC) in the District of Columbia; Master Career Counselor (MCC), a designation of the National Career Development Association (NCDA); and National Certified Counselor (NCC), a designation of the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC).  She belongs to all of the relevant national and local associations involved in career counseling, including the American Counseling Association (ACA),  the National Employment Counselors Association (NECA), the National Career Development Association (NCDA) and the Washington Metropolitan Area Career-Life Planning Network (MAC-LPN).

Her B.A. is from the University of Virginia, and she received a masters of science in foreign service from Georgetown University, and a masters in community counseling from George Washington University.

How can I prepare for salary negotiations?

 

This expert: 237,377 views

This series: 7,183 views

Print

Transcripts

Karen James Chopra: Hi, I am Karen Chopra. I am a career counselor in Washington DC and now we are going to talk about how to prepare for a salary negotiation.

Host: How can I prepare for salary negotiations?

Karen James Chopra: You can prepare yourself for a salary negotiation first by doing a research on what you think or expect that you are going to be making at the company and so you should be asking people when you are networking and when you are doing your research, "Well, what's the salary that I can expect at this level and for this type of work?

" You get enough of that data from enough people and you will be able to ballpark what the salary range is. So that's the first piece. Get a sense of what you think the job is going to do. The second piece of preparation is figure out what you need to make, what is your output bottom line? How low can you go before you are starting to eat into savings or starting to have to use credit cards to live on? You should know that number before you walk into a salary negotiation because there maybe some jobs that you simply shouldn't take, they are not paying enough to provide you the living that you need. So that's another piece that you need. The third piece you need and we will talk more about this is you need to be ready to dodge salary questions and to not provide all the information that you have at your disposal to anybody who asks whenever they ask. So you want to start getting ready to not talk about your salary or your salary requirements or your salary history in the course of an interview.

Other Videos