Benjamin Todd

That could mean thousands of dollars of extra donations per year, making those 10 minutes you took to negotiate among the most productive of your life.

You could also negotiate to work on a certain team, have more flexible hours, work remotely, or learn certain skills.

All of these could make a big difference to your day-to-day happiness and career capital, and are often easier to ask for than additional salary.

Negotiation is not always appropriate.

Don't do it if you've landed a highly standardized offer like many government positions.

They won't be able to change the contract.

Also, don't do it if you're only narrowly better than the other candidates or have no alternatives.

And definitely don't negotiate until the employer has made an offer.

It looks bad to start negotiating during the interview.

However, we think negotiations should be tried in most cases once you have an offer.

Hiring someone takes months and consumes lots of management time.

Once an employer has made an offer, they've invested many thousands of dollars in the process.

The top candidate is often significantly better than the next best.

This means it's unlikely that they'll let the top candidate get away for, say, a 5% increase in costs.

It's even more unlikely that they'll retract their initial offer because you tried to negotiate.

Stay polite, and the worst case is likely that they'll stick to their original offer.

Negotiation should be most strongly considered when you have more than one good offer, because then you have a strong fallback position.

How to negotiate

The basic idea is simple.

Explain the value you'll give the employer and why it's justified to give you the benefits you want.