Ten Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer

Ten Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer When the story of how I landed a job at Airbnb went viral, I was surprised at how infatuated people were with my negotiations. Media stories portrayed me as some kind of master negotiator—a wily ex-poker-player who was able to con the tech giants into a lucrative job offer. This is silly. It’s silly for a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones is that in reality, my negotiation skills are nothing special. There are lots of job candidates who are better negotiators than I, to speak nothing of recruiters and other professional negotiators. It just so happens that most people don’t negotiate at all, or if they do, they just negotiate just enough to satisfy themselves that they did. Worse yet, most of the advice out there on negotiation is borderline useless. Almost anything you read on the subject will be a vague and long-winded exhortation to “make sure you negotiate” and “never say the first number.” Beyond those two morsels of advice, you’re ... Read full article.