After you have successfully completed the search for a candidate for a vacancy in your company and the offer is on the table, it is usually negotiation time. Some candidates will immediately accept your offer, but most will want to negotiate something even if it´s just for the sake of negotiating. And in some cases, very hard negotiation will happen. No matter what scenario, you should be prepared for some negotiation after you have made an offer and it shouldn´t catch you off guard. In the majority of the cases, you can prepare for these negotiations and keep it within reasonable limits for both sides.
First of all, before making an offer, always do your research. Establish a salary range for the position you are recruiting for also taking into account years of experience, location and skills required. Don´t just think about salary but also about additional benefits and perks. When you make an offer, you would include monetary and additional benefits within the ranges you have established. This will also give you your limits when negotiating. However, what if a candidate wants more than you are offering? More than the limits you have established? Here are some situations when we think you should compromise.
First of all, when the candidate has a unique profile you will definitely want to consider compromising. For example, in today´s digital environment, certain IT profiles are very scarce and therefore very difficult to recruit. So, if you have a specific need for such a profile and you are that close to actually hiring them, you might want to expand your salary range limits a bit (or sometimes, a lot) to make sure that you won´t miss out on this profile that you might so desperately need. In summary, if you´re dealing with unique profiles, scarce skills and talent that is very hard to come by, you will want to compromise because otherwise, it will be impossible to recruit such profiles. In these cases, reconsider your limits but also think about alternative ways of compensation to establish an attractive package.
Even if the profile you need is not very scarce, you will want to consider time and resources required to find someone else. If you have just finished a long and resourceful recruitment process it might be worth compromising a little bit in order to not have to start from scratch again. Obviously, a recruitment process takes time, money and other resources and you need to factor this in when you are thinking about possibly increasing the package. Apart from the costs involved in finding someone else, when it´s urgent to fill the position, there you have your answer already: you will probably have to compromise because of the time sensitivity.
Finally, you might want to consider compromising if the candidate could bring on other top talents that you are interested in. Think about, for example, people they have worked with in the past that are good profiles for your company as well. Or what if the candidate is a leader in their field? Chances are big that if you hire him or her, other top talents in that field will want to join you as well because you were able to attract that specific person. Hence, in those cases, you might want to compromise as well to establish this ripple effect!
In any case, make sure to get everything in writing and when the candidate agrees to your offer, make them sign the offer letter to make it official.
What are situations where you think it´s necessary to compromise when the candidate asks for more than you are offering? We would love to read your input in the comments section!
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