Our client gave us a great job description and requirements of what he was looking for… he told us that the most he was going to pay for the job was $60,000… we referred number of candidates none of whom he was really excited about…
We explained to him we had an excellent candidate who really didn’t have as much experience as he wanted but he really had a lot with other experience that would more than make up for it… after two three-hour meetings with her, he told her he wanted hire her… he told her he was going to call her the next morning with a formal offer…
When he called, she preempted the conversation by saying she wanted to come over and actually talk about the offer face-to-face and of course negotiate… when she got there, he explained that he wanted to make an offer to her of $65,000 … $5000 more than what he really wanted to pay… and he emphasized that to her…
According to both of them there was a long moment of silence and she said, “I’d love to go to work you, I’m perfect for this job and you are perfect for me and let me explain why you need to pay me $85,000…” she then proceeded to show him charts, documents and projections as to how she could make the department good enough and bring the job to the level where the $85,000 was fair… it took her 20 minutes to lay it all out and, according to our client, in a logical and, above all, convincing way… She had convinced one of the administrative people to give her yearly budget for the department and using that with some pretty heavy statistical analysis and projections, she showed our client how she was worth $85,000…
He hired her… at $85,000… the lesson?… prove your value!
