What is your salary expectation? - II

In this posting, I am going to write one more scenario related to CTC expectations/ Negotiation and then share my thoughts on how one shall define CTC expectation at the time of interview.

Scenario-3 (Experienced candidates - (In continuation of 2 scenarios given in the last posting)

HR: What is your current CTC?

Candidate: 5.00 lakhs per annum

HR: What is your expected CTC?

Candidate: 10 Lakhs

HR: that’s 100% increase from your current CTC. How do you justify that much of increase ?

Candidate: I already have an offer for Rs. 8.50 lakhs per annum.  If you can offer me Rs.10.00 lakh per annum, I can take up your offer.

HR: When did you get that offer and when are you expected to join your next employer.

Candidate: About two months ago and I am expected to join in 1 week’s time.

HR: If you join here, what would happen to the employer who has already given you an offer?

Candidate: hum….. long pause

HR: Is it not wrong to reject the offer in the last minute and disappoint the employer who has given you 70% increase

Candidate: ….. Long pause. I need to go wherever I am getting better offer.

I’ve come across quite a few candidates as given above. It’s not a bad idea to reject your offer. We need to work where our skills are better valued. But it’s not a good idea to reject an offer almost at the time of joining. You are “using” an offer that you’ve already got from one employer to get more increase from another employer.  It does not show you in good light in terms of values and ethics.  It may not be illegal but certainly not an ethical practice.  When we are laid off by an employer, we cry foul but we don’t hesitate to ditch the employer in the last minute and we don’t care about it all.  A point to ponder.

How should you ideally look at your Salary?  Let us check how one should self-assess and ask for salary increase.

1)  Not Experience, it’s your skill or competency that matters:

In any industry, what matters is the skills that you carry, not the total experience. If you have 10 years of experience and you've kept doing all the 9 years what you did in the first year, the experience is just 1 years not 10 years. All the 9 years are only repetitive experience and it really does not add any value to your skill.  So you need to understand your skills and what you are actually capable of doing in a realistic manner rather than talking about total experience. It would not cut the ice.

2)  Where do you stand in the Market on salary front?

You need to know the market salary for your experience and where you stand against it. If you are already on the higher salary percentile, your chances of getting bigger jump in the salary, for the same role, is less. In case you are on the lower sider, yes bigger increase is possible. So what determines your CTC increase is where you stand as compared to market salary.

3) Demand and supply:  

what is the demand for you skill very much determines how much salary you can negotiate for.  Not all skills could have that demand.  Do ask yourself where your skills have more demand / you are working on a niche skill or not.

A decade ago, when large IT companies were developing banking applications, can you guess who would have had more demand?  It was the sr. banking executives from Banks who were hired with a huge CTC that was not comparable to their current salaries.  The simple reason was they knew the in and out of the banking systems and that was the kind of domain expertise that the IT companies were looking for. 

4) Role fitness:

Do get to understand the role offered and how equipped are you in terms of skills and competencies required to take up that role. If you meet all the skill expectation and you’ve worked on those technologies, you will be in a position to play that role immediately without any training and you are going to be productive right from the day-1. That's going to be a big advantage for the employer.

For example, the employer is looking for someone who can independently launch their new product in health care domain and you find that you are already in health care industry and you have good experience in marketing health care products.  What more can be a better match than this and you are going to be productive right from Day-1 and take things forward independently.  You don’t need any hand-holding or training and there is no sort of learning curve involved in hiring you.

So you need to talk about role fitness and substantiate more in terms of value-adds that you can bring on the table. That’s what every employer would be interested to hear. In case you fall short of the skills / experience required, you stand a less chance on the negotiation table.  In such a scenario, better be flexible rather than demanding.

5) There is no industry practice that says that you should necessarily get 40% or 30% increase whenever you move from one company to another company.  It’s absurd.  And no company would be willing to give you a salary increase because your friend or cousin has got it. The same principle applies here too. 

To conclude, remember, in the long-term, even if salary increase is little less than the expectation, a good performer who does not do job-hopping will get what he deserves to get and overtake the frequent job hoppers.  Those who get salary increases just by job hopping cannot sustain it beyond a point and they are bound to get stuck unless they really build their skills and make themselves competent enough

No one works for charity. However, every employer would prefer someone who is more career-oriented / who would be interested in building a long-term career with them than someone who is too much money oriented. So do strike a balance.

So what is your salary expectation?

 diD yOU enJOY ReADinG ThIS ArTIcLE? 

                                  If yES, 

yOU maY sHAre it wiTH Your FriENds tOO