Career Negotiations Podcast

Do You Need a Competing Job Offer? How to Handle Multiple Job Offers

• Brandon Bramley

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

Do you need multiple job offers to negotiate salary? A lot of job seekers assume they need a competing offer before they can negotiate, but that’s not necessarily true.

In this episode, I break down whether you actually need multiple job offers to negotiate salary and how to confidently approach your salary negotiation whether you have one offer or several.

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

SALARY NEGOTIATION TOOLS MENTIONED

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.

Do You Need Another Offer

Brandon

If you've ever thought I need another job offer before I can negotiate this one, you're not alone. A lot of people believe that without a competing offer, they don't have any real leverage and that can stop them from negotiating altogether. In this episode, my goal is to show you whether you actually need multiple job offers to negotiate and how to confidently approach your salary negotiation in either way. I'll first break out when having multiple offers can actually help during the hiring process so you understand where they can create leverage. That way you use them strategically if you have them. Then I'm going to walk you through why you still have strong negotiating power even if you only have one offer and how leverage works in the hiring process. That way you don't fall into the trap of thinking you need another offer to negotiate. And I'll close out the episode by walking you through how to handle multiple offers if you do have them, including what to say when you share that information. That way you can approach the process strategically and secure competitive compensation. So let's get into the negotiation

Meet Your Negotiation Coach

Brandon

strategies. Hey all, welcome to my channel. If you're new here, my name is Brian Bramley. I'm the founder and lead negotiator at thesalarynegotio.com. I provide job art for negotiation coaching, salary negotiation courses, and tools to help professionals like you navigate the negotiation process and secure competitive pay. I'm not just a career coach or recruiter giving out generic salary negotiation advice. There's already a ton of bad advice out there from your friends and online. Instead, I've actually led hundreds of salary negotiations across various roles, helping my clients secure hundreds of millions more in compensation. So my background is actually in strategic negotiations, and my goal is to debunk the bad advice out there and give you proven negotiation strategies that are actually gonna help you earn more. So if you're a professional looking to earn competitive pay, subscribe here for actionable tips. And when you're ready to take your negotiations to the next level, visit us at thesalarynegotiate.com for coaching courses and tools that are gonna help you earn more in your

The Clear Answer On Leverage

Brandon

career. This is one of the most common questions we get from clients. And the short answer is simple. You do not need multiple job offers to negotiate salaries successfully. In fact, most of the candidates we worked with to secure higher compensation did not have a second offer at the table. That said, I will agree that having other offers can be helpful in certain situations, but note that they're not required. And in some cases, they actually can work against you if not handled correctly. So you want to be very careful when to bring those up if you do have them.

When Multiple Offers Actually Help

Brandon

So let's start when multiple offers can actually be useful. If you're interviewing with software companies at once, having multiple offers can give you a better understanding of the pay rate for your role. You can see different companies that are structuring compensation and what range you can realistically expect for that role. It can also be helpful to create some urgency in the hiring process with slow recruiters and in some cases give you additional leverage negotiating. But the key here is that having another offer is a bonus and not a requirement to negotiate salary. It's mostly a bonus because now you'll have multiple options in case you don't want to go forward with one company and you want to go forward with another company.

How Extra Offers Can Backfire

Brandon

Now, here's the part most people don't think about. Okay, having multiple offers isn't always a good thing if you don't handle it correctly. From the company's perspective, their goal is to fill the role quickly. If they believe you're juggling multiple offers and are likely to go somewhere else, they may decide it's not worth investing in time with you and they just call the interviews quits and they decide to go in a different direction, right? If you're not gonna accept, there's no reason to waste time, especially if they understand that it's with a company that they can't compete with, right? So I get this all the time where people get a job, say with like Meta, like a big tech company, and they say they have that offer with a startup that they want to work with. The startup says, hey, look, we cannot afford that, we're not gonna be able to match it, let's go with someone else, right? So it's a silly thing to do to think it have gives you leverage in all situations. So I highly don't recommend sharing that too early because this usually will reduce the chance of getting an offer, and it's why it's important that you actually be strategic about how you share that information during the recruiting process. So always keep that in mind.

Why One Offer Still Has Power

Brandon

Now let's talk about the most important point. Even if you only have one offer, you still have salary negotiation leverage, a lot more than you think, and I cannot highlight it enough. Companies invest a significant amount of time and money into hiring. Okay, it can take weeks or months with most companies to find the right candidate. So once they've decided that the person they want, they don't want to restart that process. You essentially have a hiring manager advocating for you that wants you in the seat and not someone else. So it's much easier and more efficient for them to work on adjusting the offer from the beginning rather than working with someone else or moving on to another candidate. Okay, and that's exactly where your leverage comes in, not from having other offers. Biggest mind shifts here is understanding the salary negotiation is expected. Okay, you don't need external leverage like another offer to justify asking for more. Your leverage really comes from being selected as a candidate and if the compensation data shows that they can pay more in the role, because you're gonna want to be paid at the top end of their pay range and the same as anyone else that was doing the same role. So once you realize that, it comes much easier to approach these conversations. So don't ever skip a salary negotiation because you don't think you have leverage.

A Step By Step Counteroffer Plan

Brandon

Okay, so when it comes to how to actually negotiate your job offer, whether you have multiple offers in hand or not, these are the exact steps you should take. First, you should understand every component of your job offer, including the total compensation and the benefits. That means understanding the base salary, the bonus, the equity, and the sign-on bonus in addition to the benefits. That way you're negotiating everything up and just not one component. Next, you want to gather and build leverage with your career by asking strategic questions, okay? Trying to ask questions that are gonna actually build leverage by showing how competitive the offer is against your current company or some of their competitors. Then you need to do the compensation research, okay, both on a base salary basis and a total compensation basis for the exact role level in company because not all companies pay the range or pay the same, and you're gonna wanna find out where you fall in on those ranges and how much more room there is to negotiate. And then you're gonna want to send a professionally drafted counteroffer to the recruiter, calling out the data points and how it might not be as competitive as your current opportunity. But then be prepared with the final step where you're gonna need to handle objections or pushback from the recruiter. You can't skip this step, there will be pushback, and that's where you want to go ahead and be prepared for. So if you follow the steps, right, then you shouldn't have any initi issues negotiating the package. They're gonna either come back with a better offer or not a better offer. At that point, you can decide on if you want to send a second counter offer. So if you do send a second counter offer, that's typically where I would introduce another

What To Say About Other Offers

Brandon

that you have another offer. That way you're not risking them going in a different route thinking that you have something competitive and you're still taking the database approach in your first route, but you're asking and adding additional context to it if you do need to push again. Okay, but even if you don't have another offer, you can still send a second push. You're just gonna take a little bit different of an avenue to do that. Okay, at some point during the interview process as well that we haven't talked about, is you're probably gonna be asked about having other offers. So whether you do have other offers or you don't, you don't necessarily want to be truthful about that, but you also don't want to lie. The best way is to give them a direct answer that highlights that you're a hot commodity, but always doubling down that your interest and your goal is move forward with their team. Okay, something like, hey, as you know, a lot of recruiters have come my way recently. Um, so there are a lot of opportunities out there, but my goal is to make a move to your team, right? Comments like that double down that hey, maybe you do have another offer, there are other items out there, but you put it in the perspective and the benefit of the recruiter, which is you want to make a move forward to their company. Okay, so always keep that in mind. That way, if you don't get into the issue of saying current companies, where your other offers are, get stuck into like a timing constraint, letting them know, like, hey, I have an offer that I got right now, where they delay their offers, you have to walk away from that. Instead, you highlight exactly where you're at, what you have, and you highlight in their best interest that you want to move forward with their team.

Closing Advice And Next Steps

Brandon

Look, at the end of the day, you do not need multiple job offers to negotiate successfully. Okay, while they can certainly help in certain situations, they're not required as I highlighted, and relying on that belief can actually hold you back. But if you do have another offer, it is worth it bringing into the conversation if you don't think it's going to hurt your negotiations and you do it strategically and only give them the data they need. All right. But if you do need help with this approach, right, whether you have another offer or if you don't, and you want help building leverage or when you should actually bring these other offers into the compensation, I'm always happy to work with you. Okay. I highly suggest you never go into the negotiations alone. So head over to the salarynegotiate.com to either work with me directly as your salary negotiation coach or check out my salary negotiation courses and tools. You'll find all the links in the episode notes below. But if you found this episode helpful, make sure to subscribe and leave a comment and share it with someone that could use this advice in their career. So thanks for tuning in and good luck with your next salary negotiation.

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 SALARY NEGOTIATION RESOURCES • How to Handle Multiple Job Offers: https://www.thesalarynegotiator.com/resource-center/negotiate-with-multiple-job-offers • Salary Negotiation Script Strategies: https://www.thesalarynegotiator.com/resource-center/salary-negotiation-script-strategies-for-job-offer-negotiations • • How to Counter a Job Offer Correctly: https://www.thesalarynegotiator.com/resource-center/counter-offer-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=MjTzCiES0TU

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Brandon Bramley

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