Career Negotiations Podcast

IBM Salary Negotiation - How to Negotiate IBM Compensation

• Brandon Bramley

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➡️ *My free Salary Negotiation Guide:* https://www.thesalarynegotiator.com/salary-negotiation-guide

Do you know how to negotiate IBM salary? In this episode, I cover IBM compensation packages, my proven step-by-step IBM salary negotiation strategies, and some common mistakes to avoid during an IBM offer negotiation.

That way you have negotiation advice that is based on hundreds of salary negotiations and actually work with IBM offers.

SALARY NEGOTIATION TOOLS MENTIONED

IBM SALARY NEGOTIATION RESOURCES

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WHO AM I

I'm Brandon, the Founder and Lead Negotiator at The Salary Negotiator®. As a former corporate negotiator, I now help employees increase their compensation. Through hundreds of salary negotiations, I've helped career professionals secure over $200 million in additional compensation. My expertise is backed by more than 150 five-star reviews from career professionals on Google and Trustpilot.

How To Spot A Competitive Offer

Brandon

As we all know, IBM provides pretty good compensation to their employees in perks. So how do you know though if you actually have a competitive job offer before you accept the new role, right? So in this episode, my goal is to cover everything you're gonna need to confidently navigate an IBM salary negotiation. I'm first gonna cover the compensation structure at IBM so you know more about IBM's base salary, their equity package, and their sign-up bonuses in their job offers. That way you're gonna know exactly what to expect before you get the offer. Then I'm gonna walk you through my five recommended steps for negotiating an IBM job offer that are proven through real IBM salary negotiations that I've actually led for my clients. That way you can filter out some of the bad advice out there and use salary negotiation strategies that are actually gonna work specifically with IBM. And I'll close out the episode by highlighting three common mistakes you should avoid in an IBM salary negotiation. That way you don't risk the opportunity, you actually secure competitive compensation. So let's jump right into it. Hey everyone, welcome back to my channel. If you're new here, my name is Brandon Bramley and I'm the founder and lead negotiator at thesalarynegotiate.com. I provide professional job of negotiation coaching, salary negotiation courses, and tools to professionals like you so you can navigate the negotiation process and secure competitive comp. I'm not just one of those career coaches or recruiters giving out generic salary negotiation advice online. There's already a ton of bad advice out there. So instead, I've actually led hundreds of salary negotiations across a ton of roles, helping my clients secure millions of dollars more in compensation. My background is actually in strategic negotiations, and my goal is to help you debunk some of the bad advice out there and give you proven salary negotiation strategies that are actually gonna work. So if you're a career professional looking to earn competitive pay, subscribe here for some actual tips. And when you're ready to take your negotiations to the next level, visit the salarynegotier.com for coaching courses and tools to help you earn more. Now, before I dive into how to negotiate an IBM job offer, let's first talk about the compensation components because it's really important to understand the differences between your base salary and your total compensation. I talked to way too many people that only focus on their base salary, but it's really just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to your pay at IBM. When considering a move there, you need to look at the whole picture, which is your total monetary take-home pay, which is known as your total compensation. At IBM, this is gonna include your base salary, your equity grant, and the sign-on bonus. So to dive into these three compensation components a little bit more in your IBM job offer, we first want to start out with your IBM base salary. So this is gonna be a consistent guaranteed pay that everyone's gonna see in every salary role. It's really only gonna change with promotions or mayor increases since it's a set rate. So since it's such a standard compensation components, I really don't want to spend too much time there since you should all be familiar with it. But second, the big thing you're gonna get at IBM is an equity grant. Okay, so your IBM equity package is gonna come in the form of RSUs, which are called restricted stock units. These are gonna represent ownership in IBM, and these RSUs are subject to a four-year IBM besting schedule. This means that IBM equity will best over a four-year period in equal annual increments, meaning you're gonna receive 25% of your RSUs in year one, 25 in year two, 25% in year three, and the final 25% in year four. So you don't get the value of your IBM equity in front. Remember that. But the cool thing about having equity, right, is you're now a shareholder and you actually get to go ahead and join in on those value fluctuations over that period from day one. So if the IBM stock price goes up, so does the value of your equity. The only bad thing is if it goes down, so does your equity value. Okay, so keep that in mind since there are risks. And the other thing that you should know is if you leave IBM before the IBM RSUs fully vest per the vesting schedule, you are going to forfeit those unvested portions. So you'll lose out on that equity if you do transition jobs before then. Um, and the last thing I want to highlight on equity is IBM does offer annual equity refreshes. These are additional RSU grants each year. However, these IBM stock refreshes usually fluctuate and they're not always guaranteed. So we don't typically include them in our total compensation calculations. We've also noticed that IBM recruiters don't necessarily confirm how much will these be, but we think it's a great idea that you actually ask the recruiter to see if you can find out how much these might be in this role. So you have a better idea of how you get more equity at IBM. Um, and finally, there's the IBM sign-up bonus. Okay, this is a one-time cash payment typically paid out 30 days after you start. It's often designed to offset your lost incentives or equity from a previous company or is just an incentive to join IBM. Okay, so IBM sign-up bonuses aren't always included in the initial IBM offer, and unfortunately, they are gonna require negotiation. Um, the good news is I've had great success securing IBM signup bonuses for my clients. Just remember that you are gonna have to negotiate typically to get one. So keep that in mind. One thing that you'll notice is different than compensation at other companies at IBM is you're not gonna get a performance bonus at IBM. Okay, this is typically a percentage of your base salary that a lot of companies give, but it's just not a compensation component that IBM believes in. So remember you're not gonna get that and you're just gonna get the other items. So these three main items, IBM salary components that you all get, your base salary, your equity, and your sign-in bonus are gonna make up your total compensation at IBM. To help you visualize this, we have a total compensation calculator on our site where I'll run you through a quick example. It's gonna let you input your base salary, your equity grant, and your sign-in bonus. Then it shows your estimated compensation over those four years, both on a total and an annual basis. You can find our free total compensation calculator at thesalarynegotiator.com if you want to run through any examples yourself or put your IBM offer in there. But I'll go ahead and include it in the episode notes so you can use this free tool as you look at your next IBM offer. Okay, so now that we've covered IBM's compensation structure, let's get right into the IBM salary negotiation steps, right? That's why we're all here. So these are the strategies I've used to successfully negotiate many IBM job offers, and I'm gonna recommend you all follow to navigate your IBM salary negotiation once you actually have an offer in hand. So once you get an IBM job offer, the first step to negotiating is to make sure you fully understand the compensation components and the benefits in your IBM offer package. The biggest takeaway from this is that understanding the IBM total compensation before negotiating is very important. That way you know exactly how to value the IBM job offer and what to negotiate, including your base salary, your equity, and your sign-up bonus. Okay? I don't want you making mistakes where you just try to negotiate one of those components because our goal in the salary negotiation IBM is to increase them all. So remember that. The second step is what I call doing your due diligence and asking strategic questions, which is where you're gonna go ahead and review the IBM offer and come back with a list of questions for the recruiter. This is gonna help you clarify any questions you might have before you move to IBM and build negotiation leverages by strategically asking questions. Okay, you're gonna call out items that might not be as competitive as your current company or what IBM's competitors might offer. Okay, and if you need ideas on how to draft these correctly, we have a big list of the strategic questions on our templates page or in my course. But really, don't skip this step. A lot of people do, but it's really important on building leverage by showing the recruiting theme that you're doing your due diligence and you're not just coming out of left field by throwing out a counteroffer. The third step is to do your IBM compensation research. Okay, you're gonna want to find the base salary and the total compensation ranges for your specific role, location, and level at IBM. Okay, you can use a variety of online resources and you can see some of our recommendations in the episode notes below, but you're gonna want to use multiple to make sure that you're averaging across all of those and you're trying to identify where your current offer falls on those ranges and how much more room for improvement there is. That way you can build that into your counteroffer. And once you get those, you can go ahead and start working through different tools to see where you want to place the counter offer. And if you need help with that, our compensation research tool actually shows you how to average across those and how to build that into a counter offer and how big of a change that is against the initial offer that they provided. Okay, so now that you got your IBM compensation research done and hopefully the answers to your questions, you're ready to draft an IBM counter offer and get this out the door. This is where we're gonna take a database approach and craft the IBM counteroffer to send to the recruiting team. Okay, we're gonna present the top end of the range that we're targeting based off your research and call out any items that weren't competitive when you did your due diligence. I'm always gonna suggest you do this by email, even though you feel that you want to chat with the IBM recruiter directly, because the IBM recruiters are trained to deter negotiations and talk you out of your counter. Okay, they're gonna cut in, they're gonna steer you in a different direction, and it's not a good strategy when instead you can send the counter email and be prepared for any pushback, which leads into the final step of the negotiation. Because when you do send a counter offer at IBM, you are gonna get recruiter pushback and there's gonna be objections you need to overcome. Okay, so the way to overcome IBM recruiter pushback is to essentially let them know that you understand their concerns, that you hear them out, but you still have those concerns and you'd appreciate them still taking back your comments to a team to see if they can improve the offer. It's probably gonna be needed to handle these objections a few different times, but if you do it correctly and in a professional way, if you get them to agree to take it back, nine times out of 10, they're gonna come back with a better offer. This is probably the harder part in the negotiation. So feel free to go ahead and check out my objection handlers on my templates page or my course if you want a scripts on exactly how to handle this pushback when you do encounter it, because it will come up. And from here, the IBM recruiter will either come back with a better offer that fits your needs or it's lower than your ass. So at that point, you're either gonna need to decide if you want to send another IBM counteroffer to push it in, or if you're ready to accept and lock in the role and start moving forward. Just remember, note that negotiating salary is not like how you negotiate in a business dealing or like a car dealership. Okay, there's not a lot of back and forth, and you really don't want to send more than two IBM counteroffers. Otherwise, you do risk coming off as aggressive and jeopardizing your relationship. So remember that this is part of the interview process and you want to be careful and professional as you navigate these discussions. Outside of the salary negotiation steps, the last thing I really want to cover is a few IBM offer negotiation mistakes you should avoid before you decide to negotiate your IBM job offer. Okay, the main item I'm always gonna recommend against, whether it's IBM or it's another company, do not share your salary expectations or your current pay with the recruiting team. It's always gonna work against you, okay? Because if you think about it, if you throw out a lower number than what IBM could offer, you're probably gonna end up on the lower end of their pay range. Okay, or you might even get down leveled if there are different levels that they're hiring for. And on the flip side, if you think of that silly negotiation tactic you may have heard online or picked up in a bad negotiation class that you should anchor high, that's another silly route. Okay, you shouldn't throw out unrealistic numbers because if you do that, one, you're usually not throwing out the wrong numbers. It can come off as too aggressive to where it drives the company to not even hire you and give you that IBM job offer. And it's usually gonna hurt you later down the road when you actually get the offer, get the review of all the components, and go into the negotiations. So make sure you always turn that question back on the recruiter to try to find out what their base salary range is and what their total compensation range is. That way you have a better idea of what they might pay, and then you can do your research to confirm that. But that also reads me into my second mistake, okay, is when you do your compensation research, make sure you're realistic about what you should ask in the IBM counteroffer. Way too often do I see people throwing out money or numbers that just don't make sense. And this either comes off as too aggressive and it's the one point that could get an offer rescinded because one, they don't think you did your research, and two, they can't pay you that. So you don't want them to not negotiate or go in a different route. Instead, take a database approach and make sure you're doing your compensation research so you can realistically provide a counter that they might be able to agree to. Okay, there's no point to throw out unrealistic numbers that they would never pay. The final thing is if you do everything right, you follow the right strategies, you should never be worried about negotiating or navigating an IBM salary negotiation. Okay, I get it. You might feel nervous, but as long as you follow our strategies and keep the negotiation pressural, there's no reason that you'd risk your IBM offer. Instead, if you do it right, you're gonna get a better package before you start your new role and it's gonna pay you dividends over your career. So make sure you're following proven strategies and get the support if you need it, if you need help negotiating an IBM offer. Well, that wraps up this episode on IBM salary negotiation. I really hope my breakdown of IBM's compensation structure, my proven IBM salary negotiation strategies, and the negotiation mistakes to specifically avoid with IBM helps you feel much more confident in having these discussions. But honestly, if you're serious about getting the best possible offer with IBM or any company, I highly suggest you don't go into the salary negotiations alone. So head over to the salarynegotier.com to either work with me directly as your salary negotiation coach or check out my salary negotiation courses and tools. You're gonna find all the links in the episode notes below. And if you found my episode helpful, make sure you subscribe, leave a comment for me, and share it with someone who could actually use this device in their career. Thanks for tuning in and good luck with your negotiations.

Brandon

 SALARY NEGOTIATION TOOLS MENTIONED • Salary Negotiation Coaching: https://www.thesalarynegotiator.com/ • Salary Negotiation Courses: https://www.thesalarynegotiator.com/courses • Salary Negotiation Scripts & Templates: https://www.thesalarynegotiator.com/salary-negotiation-templates • How to Negotiate a Job Offer Course: https://www.thesalarynegotiator.com/job-offer-negotiation-course • Salary Calculator: https://www.thesalarynegotiator.com/total-compensation-calculator IBM SALARY NEGOTIATION RESOURCES • IBM Salary Negotiation Guide: https://www.thesalarynegotiator.com/resource-center/how-to-negotiate-ibm-job-offer • IBM Software Engineer Salary & Levels: https://www.thesalarynegotiator.com/ibm-software-engineer-salary • Best Salary Negotiation Resources: https://www.thesalarynegotiator.com/best-salary-negotiation-resources • Job Offer Comparison Tool: https://www.thesalarynegotiator.com/job-offer-comparison-tool • Video Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxdFQ_v-EIw

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Brandon Bramley

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