‘You need to know what’s important to you’: Tips for negotiating your next position

Key takeaways:

• In negotiations, non-negotiables could be factors such as location or other career opportunities.
• Salary ranges, meanwhile, should not be set and instead be backed up by research.

WASHINGTON — When negotiating for your next position, it is important to understand your non-negotiables, your salary range and where your value comes from, according to an expert.

“One of the things I tell people — and it doesn’t matter what stage you’re at — negotiation is two-sided,” Vivian Hernandez-Trujillo, MD, director of the division of allergy and immunology at Niklaus Children’s Hospital, said at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Annual Meeting. “You need to know what are your non-negotiables, and what are your negotiables. At the end of the day, it would be great for me to tell you you’re going to get 100% of what you want. That’s not realistic, but the other side is not going to get 100% of what they want.”

For example, teaching was one of several non-negotiables for Hernandez-Trujillo.

“I wanted to be in a specific location because my family was there, so that was a non-negotiable,” she explained. “But, I had negotiables.”

One possible negotiable could be salary, as Hernandez-Trujillo warned that “at the end of the day, you shouldn’t really go in with a set number.”

“[It’s] the same way I would tell you [that you] should also not accept your first offer, you can at least go back and say, ‘Are you willing to negotiate on that?’ If you don’t do that, you might be leaving money on the table,” she said.

Hernandez-Trujillo underlined the importance of researching to back up the salary range presented, which she had a fellow do when she was hiring, “and I gave her the best offer based on that.”

“You can say, ‘Okay, I’ve looked at two private practices, these are the academic settings, these are where the offers are,’” she said. “That’s the right way to do it, so that you’re not shortchanging yourself but you’re also being fair to them [by saying], ‘Look, this is what I was offered. These are not made-up numbers.’”

Hernandez-Trujillo also warned that if something seems too good to be true, “it probably is.”

“You might be offered something that seems unbelievable, but if you don’t make the numbers, your salary could decrease,” she said. “That’s tough.”

Understanding your contributions can also be an important negotiating tool.

For example, at her institution, “we didn’t have an alloimmunity program, I started it,” she said. “We didn’t have penicillin de-labeling, I started it. ... Find where your value can come [from], because you will use that to negotiate.”

Ultimately, “you need to know what’s important to you,” Hernandez-Trujillo said. “We need to know ... what can we bring to the table? Because we all can bring something.”