I got a job offer at 47k salary. How can I negotiate my salary offer to 50k?

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All job offers can be negotiated. Actually anything can be negotiated. You just have to keep in mind a few principles.

Number one, always leave yourself with an out. Never take a tack when negotiating that could lead to blowing up the whole deal, unless you either care so much about your outcome that you’re willing to walk away otherwise, or you literally couldn’t care any less about the outcome.

In this case, one tack you could take is that you have other offers and you’d really like to take this one, because it has X, Y, and Z perks, but it’s hard to ignore these other people who offer A, B, and C. Let’s say we move the salary up to $50k and I can sign on the dotted line right now.

The danger here is that they tell you to go take their offer. You should plan a retreat so you can take the original $47k offer if they don’t bite.

That brings me to number two. What you have in your favor here is that the company has way less invested in this negotiation than you do. They could literally decide to give you the extra $3k just because you had the balls to ask for it. It’s not like the $3k is coming out of the HR manager’s pocket.

So, they gave you an offer for $47k. In my experience, when you give a range, they offer you the lowest number in the range and are expecting you to negotiate it upwards. That they offered you $47k would indicate to me that the salary range you gave them was too low. Literally anything plausible-sounding you feed them is likely going to get them to up the offer.

Finally, principle number three, never go nuclear in a negotiation. Just state your rationale, if they go with it, great, if they don’t, just nod and acknowledge that they have a point. Negotiation is a gentleman’s game. In a gentleman’s game, bragging rights are more important than the stakes. And everyone is looking for everyone to succeed.