Tips For Negotiating Your Executive Compensation

A guide for your Executive Search in Germany

Executive Compensation is one of a necessary evil in your process of Executive Search in Germany. With such high stakes and so many pitfalls with lasting repercussions involved, it can be overwhelming for any candidate.

As a Top 10 Headhunting Company in Germany, we have come up with certain tips that would help you prepare better and alleviate some of the stress.

Tip 1 – Do your Research

This is extremely important as overpricing yourself can make you lose the job and underpricing yourself would reduce your worth. It is important to understand the value of what you are planning to negotiate. Your compensation negotiation helps you to establish your worth. You can do this by researching what similar companies are willing to pay for someone with the same skillset and experience as yourself. You can do this online. There are many online websites that provide salary structure for many global companies such as Payscale and Glassdoor.

Tip 2 – Your Value is Not Tied to Your Current Compensation Level

You need to understand this very clearly. While your most recent compensation level supplies the key indicators of your experience level and skillset to the potential employers and search consultants, it should not be the sole focus of your compensation negotiations.

Whenever you are asked for your current salary level, you need to also highlight what your peers with similar experience are receiving by way of compensation. You can also mention any additional fiscal benefits that might be included in your current role. This will help draw a better picture of your goals, expectations and your worth, thereby providing a fair idea to the recruiter or potential employer.

Tip 3 - Executive Compensation Is Not Only About Salary

Remember, we just talked about perks or fiscal benefit in the above tip? So this would apply to your future company also. There are many items which are outside of the general annual salary structure that should not be neglected during the negotiation process. Be cautious to keep other factors in mind such as other perks, your title, working hours, flexi-time, remote working, further education, vacation days, bonuses and relocation compensation.

Tip 4 - Don’t Be the First one to start the Negotiation

This is the most common mistake and the one you would regret doing the most. Very often in negotiations the first person to initiate is the one who loses and salary negotiation is no different. If possible, do not throw a number out when asked. If you do so, there is a good chance that you end up selling yourself short or pricing yourself out of the competition.

To avoid such situation, you could either provide a very general range for yourself based on your research or ask them what the salary range for the role is. This also constructs a positive base showing that you can be flexible and are open to negotiation.

Tip 5 - Be Prepared for a Counter Offer

If you are not satisfied with your initial offer, you always provide a counteroffer supported by proper reasoning and come up with a more appropriate figure. In case it gets turned down, you could at least make a decision based on the fact that both the parties were well informed.

How A Recruitment Company In Germany Finds You

The recruitment companies in Germany are looking for you as desperately as you want to be found. Whenever an executive search is carried on, there are many platforms/channels, a Recruitment Company in Germany uses in order to find the best fit possible for the role in hand.

In order to be found, there are a lot of things you can do. Being active on social media is one such thing you can do. Here is a list of things that every search agency uses while finding a suitable candidate for their executive search:

Personal Network and Knowledge – Being one of the Top Recruitment Companies in Germany, we know that this is the first step any agency will take when they start their search for suitable candidates. Built over decades of industry and executive-level experience, an executive search professional’s personal network is their biggest asset which they leverage to find the right candidate in less time.

In order to come up as an option here you have to do what you do in your regular job: Make your brand. Attend Executive Leadership events and voice your opinion and values so as to establish yourself as a thought leader. Remember this is nothing but word of mouth marketing and for that you need to convince the people in your network that you are worth referring to.

Social Media – This is the second most important platform that is being leveraged in executive search. And I am not talking about only LinkedIn over here. The requirement of the job would decide which platform the agency would be looking for. For example, if they are looking for a head of marketing, they might check your followers on channels like Facebook and Twitter. If they are looking for an Operations head, they would be more interested in looking at your achievements showcased on LinkedIn.

Nonetheless, platforms such as LinkedIn and Xing (for Germany) remain the foremost sources. Ensure that your profile reflects your skills.

Voice your opinion in the most relevant form possible. You can add comments on various discussion groups on social media. This would help you establish yourself as a thought leader with a belief system.

Attendance Lists of Executive Events – Attending such events is something of a must. Executive search professionals can look at the attendance lists and then look into the background of the candidates who attended these events. Establishing yourself as someone who is proactive in such events can help you get the attention of Executive search agencies.

Proprietary Databases – Most Executive Search firms maintain a database in which they store candidate and client information. This is a valuable source of information for any firm while carrying out the search for appropriate candidates.

For this, all we suggest is keep giving interviews. This could give you an entry in this valuable database source. Even if you did not get a job for the role you applied for, you are now in the system and may be contacted for future roles.