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Negotiating a Job Offer and Closing the Deal

How do I evaluate a job offer?

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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 do I evaluate a job offer?

 

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Host: How do I evaluate a job offer?

Karen James Chopra: You want to sit down and take apart all the elements of it. The biggest part of it of course is going to be the salary, but you also want to are you eligible for bonus? How big is the bonus? Up to what percentage of your salary can you get as a bonus? You want to look at what the health benefits are. This one is particularly tricky because health benefits vary dramatically from company to company. So you want to know what you are expected to pay and what they are going to cover. For example, some clients will discover that they are leaving an organization that provides family coverage and they are moving to an organization that only covers the individual who is working. The difference to know, buying health insurance for the rest of the family can run into the tens, thousands of dollars and so a job offer that initially looks like it's more money but has very different health benefits or other benefits in them, can actually end up being less advantageous to the employee when you actually look at it. So take a look at what the health benefits are, take a look at, do they offer a 401K or other profit sharing plans, when do you start participating in that? Do they offer matching? Because that's essentially free money that they are going to be giving you if they are matching you on your 401K. Do they offer things like blackberries? Do they offer things like telecommuting? Do they offer things like Metro Fare cards or commuting subsidies? Do they offer tuition benefits? These are all the types of things you want to look at.

You are also going to look at how much leave they give you. How much sick leave do they give you? How much annual leave do you get? Do they give personal days? What are the requirements for accruing those and what are the requirement for using those? If you are working for a company that currently gives you four weeks of leave and your new company is only going to give you two weeks of leave, you have essentially lost two weeks of pay right there and you need to factor that into how much the new company is paying you before you can determine whether this package is really equitable.

So those are all the things to sort of walk through and think about, when you evaluate how well you last job compensated you and how differently and how well this job is going to compensate you.

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