throwaway929394

People do "fact checks" on if I am fair to them. Recruiters do call on a lot of our people often, and we do retain them.

People have reputations that spread in a company and among friends of employees. If I routinely exploited people with false promises, I will have to keep hiring new people to exploit and it becomes self-defeating.

A reputation for unfair dealing is toxic to morale too and morale is what dictates if people put in their best work or unwillingly put up with the job for a paycheck.

Again n=1. I value people who have been with me long term more than I value people who I am newly recruiting. That just seems like common sense to me.

It comes from the idea that we often over-value the worth of people we don't know and devalue the worth of people we know well; the magic always seems to be "somewhere else".

I am afraid that this whole "mutual trust" aspect is missing in the OP and some of the comments. As a person who hires more than quite a few people, I definitely do not like to hire people with the mindset "The company is out to screw me, and I absolutely will stick for the absolute best for myself". If the mindset is established "the company is out to screw me", I actually do not want that person, regardless of how hot they are or how low a pay they want to accept (at that point, it is not about the pay). That spirit of mutual trust has served me well and I believe has served the people I have hired well.

>If a candidate won't fight for himself, why the hell would you think he'd fight for you?

There is balance here, won't you concede? There is "fighting for yourself" and then "fighting too much for yourself". Part of the success of a team of people is that there is a spirit of shared rewards and shared sacrifices. I felt he had crossed that line to want too much for himself (or at least conveyed that strong impression to me).

Again, n=1 and I am some random commenter here. Just that a) this has worked for me b) the candidate, even though he has a job, still wants the job I offered at my original offer.

>Care to elaborate what "negotiating hard" means?

He was one of those people "I should get the absolute maximum I could ever get out of any situation." He did get a better offer, and so he was successful in that. He also created much higher expectation of what he could do "he really negotiates hard, I hope he is worth it" kind of vibe.

Fortunately for me, I went in creating reasonably modest expectation (let's say I don't stand out) and I was able to vastly exceed those expectation while he came with inflated expectations that he fell short. Not a great way to start a career. And it went downhill from there for him.

People do make judgments about another person based on factors like this. In my friend's case, I wasn't the one judging him as a tough negotiator (I was a nobody), it was the manager who hired him.

My point is: articles like this should not be taken as the gospel and my own advice is not gospel either. Evaluate your particular recruitment situation (as a job seeker or as a recruiting manager) and act with judgement and common sense.

To emphasize: n=1, so I don't want to overgeneralize my experience, nor would I overgeneralize the OP's experience.

I had told him in the very beginning that my strategy is to hire people at a reasonable, but not out-of-the-world pay, and move them up fast if they prove their worth, and try hard to keep them for the long term (which I can only do if I am paying well, because the sector I am in is hot and our people do get a lot of recruiter calls).

The reason I do this is I want to send a clear signal to the people with me long term that I put their interests first, and I won't chase after the new-new-candidate with the best offers. This message is quite well known in the company, and when people have done their fact-checks on this, they know it to to be true: indeed, our long term people get the best pay.

After hearing all this, and after indicating he really wanted to work for me, he proceeded to negotiate hard, and at that point, I wasn't comfortable with him anymore. As I said, he is still chasing me (he has a job, but wants this job more) but I felt he revealed an aspect of himself that I am afraid may create a mis-fit between us - and this is a highly-paid executive management position.

Using a throwaway, because of my position.

I recently withdrew an offer to a VP candidate because he negotiated too much (without being a jerk). He probably took advice from an article like this, and he wanted a) higher pay b) more vacation time c) special dispensation for items involving pay and time whose effect is even more pay.

He has been pursuing me to accept my original offer for the past 2 months and I have been lukewarm because I got turned off.

Summary: all successful negotiation comes down to leverage and it all comes to who has the leverage in a given situation. If you don't have the leverage, you may want to think about how much you negotiate. I have been in situations when I had no leverage at all, like my first job - where I had only one job offer, due to a) irrelevant educational credentials b) tough economic times - and thankfully, I had not read articles like this and that job led me to life outcomes that today I am quite successful and wealthy.

One of my classmates negotiated hard for that same job, and while he got more money, he left a bad taste in people and eventually got fired (I won't say he got fired because he negotiated hard in the beginning but he started out with a negative vibe, and I heard that from managers, and it went downhill from there). In fact, later on, when I became successful, he approached me for a job, and again negotiated hard with me. I passed him on.

So don't just blindly follow advice like this article. In fact, don't just blindly follow any advice, including mine. Negotiate if your situation permits, and know when your situation doesn't permit.