Dear Eli,
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What do you think are the best ways to negotiate a new job offer? I personally get really nervous and am afraid to ask for more as I’m scared they might take the offer back. What do you think? Carla G.

Dear Carla,

As you can well imagine, I hear this quite often. I must admit, that until I came to my current position, nobody ever taught me about the art of salary negotiations. All these years I could have made thousands of dollars more. Who knew? However, now I am going to let you in on a secret. If you are not negotiating, odds are you are leaving money behind on the table. Who wouldn’t want $10,000 more per year, 10% more of an original offer, or more stock options?

Let’s start off with some facts for your consideration.

Interviewing candidates costs a company a great deal of money. The process is long and arduous. A company has to create a job description, post it, pay someone to review resumes and then pay someone else to do an initial phone screen. Then, most companies typically have an interview process which include several people and/or committees. By the time an offer is being provided, think of how many human capital hours has been spent to get a candidate in the door. It is not worth it for a company to be stingy at this point and to start the process all over again. About 98 percent of the time, a company will be willing to negotiate or will say, Unfortunately we will be holding firm at this number.”

It is extremely rare for a company to rescind an offer. If they did