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.