Tag: job offers

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Negotiate job offers

Hate to haggle over money? Worried that you might lose an attractive job offer if you focus too much on salary?

Well, consider this: Research shows you could lose over $1 million over your career if you choose not to negotiate when receiving job offers. Don’t make this mistake. Learn how to negotiate effectively to earn more money and gain the respect of the hiring manager. If you don’t, you’ll make lifestyle sacrifices, be paid less than what you’re worth, and leave a lot of money on the table.

Look at this example of a past job offer I negotiated.

Initial Offer

Base salary = $150,000

Equity = .4%

Performance bonus = $0

Final Negotiated Compensation

Base salary = $200,000

Equity = 1.25%

Performance bonus = 15%

Don’t limit negotiations to salary

Discuss all the details when defining your relationship with the hiring manager and employer. Define expectations and agree on everything up front. You can negotiate salary, benefits, stock options, work schedule, start date, geographic location, vacation days, professional development, success metrics, bonus, expense reimbursements (e.g., cell, commute, relocation), and your performance review schedule.

A productive negotiation is more like a dance than a tug of war. Good negotiation involves both parties collaborating to solve a puzzle, so building rapport and trust are essential. You and the hiring manager should be talking and thinking together to align expectations and define a mutually beneficial exchange of value.

Find ways to be helpful. According to a comprehensive analysis of 28 studies on negotiation, the most successful negotiators cared as much about the other party’s success as their own.

The negotiation sets the stage for how you and your manager will work together and how you will reach an agreement when you have different points of view. No one wants to be taken advantage of or start the relationship on the wrong foot.

Push through fear to prioritize your future

Most people want to avoid conflict. And many of us, myself included, suffer from imposter syndrome, which are persistent feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt despite evident success.

These uncomfortable feelings grow from the root of fear. Never negotiate from fear because fear distorts reality. You may fear that a negotiation will jeopardize the job opportunity, but the opposite is true. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

If you express genuine excitement and gratitude for their offer and present your preferences with a positive, respectful tone, negotiating will get you more money and more respect from a hiring manager. Most managers don’t want to hire a pushover who lacks confidence or does not know their value. Remember, they offered you the job because they believe you are the best fit for the role.

Of course, there are always outliers, but do you want to work for someone who would pull an offer because you tried to engage in a fair and reasonable discussion to ensure a mutual exchange of value? If a company does retract an offer because you asked for more, be grateful. You just dodged a bullet. Working for that employer would not likely provide the growth opportunities to guide you toward your career goals.

Let’s examine the three phases of effective negotiation:

Prepare to win

Activate a winning mind-set. Are your beliefs holding you back? Removing limiting beliefs is the most important and most challenging part of asking for more. You must suspend your fears, insecurities, and self-doubt. I know, easier said than done. I struggle with this all the time.

But this is one of those times in your life where the stakes are too high for you to lose the mental battle. Push through your fear. Prioritize your future self and the people you love more than your fear of asking for more. Being well prepared will build your confidence and support a winning mind-set.

Think like a detective. Information is power. Most people don’t invest nearly enough time preparing. The outcome of the negotiation rests on your level of preparation, so do your homework. Conduct research on the company, hiring manager, and salary base rates for your desired position and industry. Conduct a detailed search on the hiring manager and read everything available about their background, work history, interests, and affiliations. I’ve invested many hours looking for clues and prepping by reading a hiring manager’s 1,500 tweets and everything else I could find online. This knowledge will help you craft questions to extract useful information and influence the manager.

I usually invest 8-12 hours preparing for an interview or negotiation. One time, I spent two days driving from San Francisco to Los Angeles and back to accompany the founders of a start-up to a customer meeting in order to better understand the job opportunity.

Understand your leverage. Reflect on how much value you bring to the employer. How unique are your skills and experience? Do you bring key relationships or opportunities? Are you easily replaceable? How urgently do they need to fill the position? Who has more leverage? How badly do they need you versus how badly do you need this job? This consideration highlights why you want multiple offers to give yourself leverage and create scarcity.

“Negotiations are won by whoever cares less.”

—Naval Ravikant, cofounder AngelList & successful tech investor

Set optimistic goals. People who expect more and ask for more get more.Set optimistic but credible goals based on your research. Confidence and self-esteem play a significant factor in negotiation. Think through best- and worst-case outcomes. But write down only your desired salary, work schedule, and other details of the best-case scenario.

Make a list of negotiables and rank them by priority. At the appropriate time, share your prioritized list with the hiring manager to build trust and trigger reciprocity. Rank-ordering helps them understand your interests without giving away too much information. Ask the hiring manager to share their priorities and look for opportunities for mutually beneficial tradeoffs.

Here is an example of how you might rank your priorities:

  1. Salary
  2. Benefits
  3. Stock options
  4. Work schedule
  5. Geographic location
  6. Vacation days
  7. Professional development
  8. Success metrics
  9. Bonus
  10. Expense reimbursements (e.g., cell, commute, relocation)
  11. Performance review schedule
  12. Start date

Prepare arguments and questions. Write out your three strongest arguments about why you are an excellent fit for the job. Anticipate how the hiring manager will respond and identify potential counterarguments. Develop a list of your weaknesses they might identify and turn vulnerability into strength. Proactively talking about your weaknesses can encourage the hiring manager to minimize them and argue the opposite.

Write down “what” and “how” questions to help you identify underlying motivations. For example:

Come prepared to communicate why you want the job and how it fits into your long-term career goals. Writing down your questions, arguments, and counterarguments will ensure you are well prepared.

Give and take

Share information to get information. Be vulnerable and make the first move by sharing your priorities, preferences, and fears. Never lie. Make your authenticity work to your advantage. In his best-selling book Give and Take, organizational psychologist and leading expert Adam Grant shows how the best way to earn trust is to show trust. His research offers a wealth of evidence to show that “Most people are matchers: they follow the norm of reciprocity, responding in kind to how you treat them.”

Put yourself in their shoes. Show that you understand the hiring manager’s perspective, mind-set, and worldview. All of us have a deep desire to feel understood. Your ability to understand their goals, constraints, incentives, and emotions gives you an advantage. People are driven by emotions more than logic. Build rapport and connection to establish trust and uncover useful information. If you prepare correctly, you will understand your counterpart and be ready to ask the right questions.

Show you are listening. Listen actively to words and tone of voice and watch their body language closely. Use your emotional intelligence to read the emotion behind their words. But it’s not enough to see and understand their perspective. You need to acknowledge their situation and show you’re listening. You don’t need to agree with their viewpoint, but you need to understand it. Once they feel you are listening, they’re more likely to be honest and tell you something that may prove useful in the negotiation.

Pay close attention to nonverbal communication. Body language and tone of voice have a significant impact on what is communicated. Notice gestures, facial expressions, tone of voice, eye contact (or lack thereof), posture, and other ways people communicate without using language. If you are speaking to more than one person, notice the dynamic between colleagues.

Maximize your ability to pick up clues and prioritize communication better to understand the emotion and meaning behind words. Get time in person whenever possible or use a video call as a backup.

Preferred hierarchy of communication methods:

  1. In-person meeting (first choice)
  2. Video call
  3. Phone call
  4. Email
  5. Text (last resort)

Listen more, speak less. The listener is in control because a person reveals information when talking. And the listener can guide the conversation by asking the right questions. Avoid asking yes-or-no questions. Instead, ask questions that start with “how” or “what.” Avoid “why” questions because they can come across as an accusation and put the other party on the defensive.

Use silence as a tool. Pause and let the other party fill the silence. Make the hiring manager feel they are in control. Probe and gather information to uncover the unknowns that you don’t expect.

Employ mirroring to build trust. Expert negotiators use a technique called mirroring to build trust and keep their counterparts talking. Mirroring is a type of imitation. You can mirror words, body language, or tone of voice to signal respect and concern.

Repeat the last three words of what your counterpart said in the form of a question, and then be quiet for a few seconds. For example, if the hiring manager says, “this role is critical to ensuring customer satisfaction,” you can use mirroring by responding with…” ensuring customer satisfaction?” The person will instinctually elaborate on what they said to keep the conversation going. Nod your head in agreement and mirror their body language. Mirroring works on a subconscious level because people trust people who are similar to themselves. If you pay attention, you will notice you instinctively do this all the time when interacting with people.

Use labeling to reveal unspoken feelings. By labeling unspoken feelings, you invite the other person to describe what they are feeling but may not be saying aloud. Expert negotiators use labeling to neutralize negative emotions and reinforce positive feelings. If you detect tension, concern, or an adverse reaction during your conversation, use labeling as a tool to acknowledge emotion and help diffuse it.

Use neutral words in the form of a phrase or question to label the emotion followed by a few seconds of silence. This will help disrupt intensity and bring the emotion out into the open. By naming it, you show you understand how they feel. A label is a neutral statement of understanding.

Use phrases like these:

It sounds like you are concerned about …

It seems like you have a different perspective about …

It looks like you disagree on …

Using labels will encourage your counterpart to respond and either agree or disagree with what you say. Once an issue is brought out into the open, you can discuss it and find a solution. Labels help you dig beneath the surface and uncover your counterpart’s behavior and perspective’s emotional drivers.

Create fear-of-missing-out (FOMO.) Convince the hiring manager you are unique and will be hard to replace or find elsewhere. In any negotiation, you need leverage to apply pressure to the other party so you can achieve your goals. Although leverage is never the only thing that matters, it is a powerful tool.

Make it clear you are serious about joining their company and excited by the opportunity. But make sure the hiring manager is aware you have other job offers competing for your attention. Be prepared to honestly answer questions such as “Do you have any other offers? If we make you an offer tomorrow, will you say yes? Are we your top choice?”

Share and gather useful information to inform the agreement. Weave the above techniques naturally into the conversation. Remain flexible and adaptable. And don’t rush the process. Enlist the hiring manager to help solve problems. Be genuine and use persuasion principles outlined in my previous email “How to get multiple job offers” to influence.

Agree or walk

Make the first move. Communicate your salary expectations as a range before you receive a formal offer. This sets a strong anchoring effect that influences the employer’s proposal and the rest of the negotiation. You may be surprised by research that says negotiators who put forward their offer first usually come out ahead. Most people think you gain an advantage by letting the employer make their offer first, but the conventional wisdom you read on the major job sites is wrong and not evidence-based. Overwhelming evidence shows there is usually much more to gain by making the first move.

In salary negotiations, the initial anchor is the best predictor of the final salary. Waiting for an offer only makes sense if you are very uncertain about value. However, base rates for compensation adjusted for years of experience, geography, and company size are well-known. The credibility of your offered salary range depends on having a legitimate rationale to back it up. Anchors are so powerful that they even affect the judgment of experts who think they are immune to such influence. For example, real estate professionals who believe they are experts on the local market are still heavily influenced by a home’s list price.

Making the first offer also sets the tone and establishes you as confident, well-prepared, and knowledgeable about your value. High anchors direct the hiring manager’s attention toward your strengths; low anchors direct attention to your weaknesses. Making the first move and setting a high anchor also gives you flexibility and room to make strategic concessions, which will make the hiring manager more satisfied with the outcome.

Recruiters will often ask about your salary expectations on your first call. Always offer a salary range (e.g., $103K to $110K) and make your best-case scenario the bottom of the range. Also, use a non-round number for the bottom of your salary range. This implies you have made specific assumptions and method to calculate the number. Make sure that you can explain your beliefs for your salary range and that your proposal is designed around the base rates for the role, geographic location, and company size. I recommend setting the low end of your salary range not more than 10-15% above the top of the industry-established salary range you uncover in your research.

What do you do if an employer beats you to the punch and gives you an offer or shares the salary range before you share your salary expectation? First, recognize that you are being anchored. Second, make sure you express your enthusiasm and gratitude for their offer. But avoid getting sucked into a compromise and don’t let it influence your response. If their offer is far off the mark, ask them to explain their reasoning or tell them their initial offer is so far off that you don’t feel it’s a fair or productive place to begin.

Next, respond with your predetermined salary range based on your research and goals. Don’t just state your desired salary. Justify your expectations by explaining your strongest arguments regarding how you will provide value. And express your needs based on your situation. For example, be honest about a large student loan or family members you are financially responsible for supporting. Then pause, be silent, and wait for them to respond.

Negotiate the whole deal at once. Resist the temptation to tackle one issue at a time. For example, don’t agree to a salary first, then move on to other topics. Negotiate multiple issues simultaneously, not serially. Consider the value of the entire deal at once. Don’t fixate on salary or any single point. If you get stuck on one issue, deflect and redirect the conversation to consider other negotiables. This strategy will help you and the hiring manager grapple with tradeoffs and problem-solve together. Use the word “fair” to put them on the defensive and gain concessions. Ask them to explain why they think their offer is “fair.” Focus on the most critical elements of the deal. But don’t over-optimize and haggle on every minor detail. Also, avoid giving ultimatums because they can come off the wrong way and box you into a corner.

Don’t split the difference. Meeting in the middle often leads to a bad deal for both parties. Solve the puzzle with the hiring manager to address each party’s priorities and constraints but stand firm on your most important goals. Expert negotiator Chris Voss believes strongly in this principle. He wrote a book, Never Split the Difference, about his life’s work as a veteran FBI negotiator and founder of the Black Swan Group, a consulting firm that trains Fortune 500 companies to handle complex negotiations.

Push boundaries to understand the territory. Getting the hiring manager to say “no” to a request is helpful because it makes them feel in control and secure and helps you recognize where the boundaries are. Don’t be afraid to find the edge. If necessary, force them into a “no” by mislabeling an emotion so they can correct you. For example, you may say, “It seems you can’t make compromises on this issue.”

Conflict brings out the truth. At some point in the discussion, you are likely to hit a core disagreement. When you hit a wall, seek advice to help problem-solve. Tell the hiring manager you value their opinion and ask an open-ended question related to what they would do or recommend if they were in your position.

Understand the power of the person you are negotiating with. Are they the decision-maker or do they need to get approval? How much influence do they have? Do you trust them, and do they have a vested interest in hiring you? You’re generally not negotiating with one person. Usually, a team is involved, even if the rest of the people are behind the scenes. The amount of flexibility a hiring manager has to negotiate often depends on the company’s size and how their budgets are structured. Large companies tend to restrict the flexibility of the hiring manager, while start-ups and small businesses are usually more flexible and will make accommodations if they believe you are the best person for the role.

Speak in a calm and positive tone. Strive to come across as easy-going, good-natured, and solutions-oriented. Avoid aggressive confrontation. If you feel attacked, pause and avoid responding from anger. Instead, ask a question so they can elaborate. Don’t be defensive or reactive. Reserve your direct, assertive voice for when you need to push back. It will have more impact if you reserve it for only the most critical points of the negotiation. And don’t forget to smile.

Imagine you’re negotiating on behalf of someone you care about. If you have trouble advocating for yourself, imagine you’re in charge of getting a job for your spouse, sibling, or friend. How hard would you negotiate in that situation? You might assume that you’re the best advocate for yourself, but research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology shows that many people—especially women—tend to do better when negotiating for someone else.

Summarize your understanding. Summarize what you hear and ask the hiring manager if your understanding is accurate. They can correct you if you have not described the situation accurately. By getting them to say, “That’s right,” they feel understood and affirmed, and you are more likely to make progress. And if you are unsure whether they are fully transparent and honest, you can use summaries to get them to reaffirm their agreement.

Agree or walk away. Hopefully, you can agree on essential terms after working together to define a mutual exchange of value. However, if you are stuck and not making progress, you must always be willing to walk away. If not, you are very unlikely to get what you want.

People sense desperation, and many hiring managers have incentives to get the most for the least, so they will exploit any weakness. Create a deadline to push the process forward to help get unstuck. Often a deadline will rush the other side to be more impulsive. If appropriate, you can also share the terms of a competing offer and say, “I’d rather come to work here. Is there anything you can do to make this an easier decision for me?”

Make sure to get details of the final agreed-upon offer in writing.

Next steps

After you have received one or more job offers, you will enter the final step of making a decision. To figure out whether a decision is good or bad, you need to understand what could be gained or lost and the likelihood of each job offer leading you closer to your goals. Instead of relying on tried but not-so-true tactics like pro and con lists, you need to pull out your full arsenal of mental models and decision-making tools.

To learn more, sign-up for the “High-Performance Playbook” email series (it’s free), where I share the best evidence-based strategies, tactics, and frameworks to advance your career and make more money.

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How to evaluate job offers

I hate the idea of backtracking and wasting time. Have you ever accidentally gotten on the wrong train or bus and traveled for a while before realizing you were going in the wrong direction? If so, you understand the anxiety and frustration. Getting on the wrong train or bus may only waste 30 to 60 minutes of your time, but accepting the wrong job offer can cost you six months to a year of your life.

Because job decisions involve so much uncertainty and tradeoffs, the ideal job-decision tool would be a crystal ball. Then you could peer into your future and see the outcome of your choice. But since you don’t have a crystal ball, how do you make a decision?

The stakes are high. Where you decide to work has an outsized impact on your happiness and quality of life. And the person or people you work for and with have an even greater impact than the company you join. These decisions affect where you live, how much free time you have, the quality of your relationships with friends and family, your health, and what type of house you buy.

When you accept a job offer, you are committing significant time and energy. And you’re closing the door to other opportunities, at least temporarily. Often, it takes three to six months to ramp up in a new job before you hit your stride to make significant contributions or understand whether you are a good fit for the role, team, and culture. You don’t want to waste time and deal with the consequences of quitting suddenly just because you didn’t make a good decision. 

Invest time evaluating this critical decision. Leverage over two decades of scientific research into the predictors of a satisfying life and career to help you assess your job offer.

The best predictors of job satisfaction:

Use thinking tools to evaluate job offers

You may be thinking, “Those factors make sense, but how do I practically apply them to my job decision?”

Use the evaluation criteria and thinking tools discussed below to help you grapple with tradeoffs and clarify your thinking. To figure out whether a decision is good or bad, you need to understand what could be gained or lost and the likelihood of each possibility unfolding.

Thinking tools provide shortcuts to higher-level thinking, forcing your brain to think about a decision from different perspectives. They also allow you to engage in mental time travel and imagine your future in the job to uncover risks and weigh options. 

Think deeply, write down answers, and take time for careful and considered reasoning. I recommend investing a minimum of three hours of focused, undistracted time using the thinking tools below before soliciting feedback from trusted friends or advisors.

Avoid pro-con lists

Before I share my recommended thinking tools, I want to tell you about a common tool you should avoid: pro-con lists.

Pro-con lists suck because they:

Instead of pro-con lists, use the following tools and mental models to improve your thinking and evaluate your options.

Use the job decision scorecard

I created the job decision scorecard based on scientific research and other important factors to help me think through and evaluate job offers. Use this tool to assess a single job offer or compare multiple offers.

The scorecard includes:

Evaluation criteria

Adjust weights based on importance. Not all criteria are of equal importance. Adjust weights on a 1-to-10 scale (10 = most important) based on your preferred level of importance of each criterion. For example, you highly value having a supervisor you enjoy working with, so you assign a weight of 9 for the “Supervisor” category. Since you care less about “Perks” (e.g., gym membership, meals, cell phone), you assign a weight of 2 to this category.

Score each job offer. Add a score for each criterion on a 1-to-10 scale (10 = most favorable.) You will receive a total score adjusted by assigned weights. For example, if one job opportunity includes a 15-minute commute, I would give it a score of 9 in that category. I would give another job with a one-hour commute a score of 2.

Add confidence levels. Consider all factors and add your degree of certainty and likelihood of success. Are you 80%, 50%, or 20% confident this job provides the best next step in your career? Use a 1%-to-100% scale in Row 20 on the job scorecard template.

Instructions to complete the job decision scorecard

Step 1. Make a copy of the Google sheet to enable editing and data entry.

Step 2. Adjust weights in column B on a 1-to-10 scale (10 = most important) based on your preferred level of importance of each criterion.

Step 3. Score each job offer on a 1-to-10 scale (10 = most favorable) for each evaluation criteria. You will receive a total score adjusted by assigned weights on Row 21.

Step 4. Add confidence levels using a 1%-to-100% scale on your likelihood of success (e.g., 80%, 50%, 20%) on Row 22.

Don’t get caught up in being too precise. Remember, it’s a thinking tool—not a crystal ball. It can help you grapple with tradeoffs but can’t precisely predict the future, no matter how accurately you score it.

Engage in mental time travel

Envisioning positive and negative future outcomes helps you identify obstacles, predict reasons for success and eliminate regrets. Research shows that anticipating the ways things might go wrong helps you more successfully reach your destination. You can produce 30% more reasons for why something might fail when you engage in mental time travel to identify obstacles to the desired outcome.[1] Use the following steps to facilitate your mental trips.

Apply mental models

In the summer of 2016, I went through the startup accelerator Y Combinator (YC.) One of the most valuable aspects of that experience was “office hours,” when I met with a YC partner and got feedback about a specific problem or decision. I gained new insight as the partner helped me view my problem through a different lens. Mental models can function like a YC partner or advisor, forcing you to see a problem from a different perspective and teaching you how to think better.

Mental models make decisions less risky by helping you better understand the reality of the world around you. We all have models in our heads based on our genetics, experiences, and backgrounds, but we need a toolkit of models to make good decisions. Relying solely on one model is like seeing every problem as a nail and solving every problem with a hammer.

Get feedback on your job decision

After you invest time alone using thinking tools, ask two to three trusted friends who know you well to provide feedback on the job offer. Also, seek feedback from a coach or two to three people in the field you want to enter. Feedback will give you an outside view to ensure your enthusiasm for the opportunity is not blinding you to negative consequences or other options. Be aware of the bias of the people giving you feedback. Sometimes you will receive feedback that conflicts. Your job is to synthesize the input and decide what to disregard.

Choose wisely

Don’t rush your decision. Sleep on it to allow your mind to consider your options. Your subconscious mind does more thinking than you realize. After investing time using thinking tools and seeking feedback, you are ready to make your choice and commit. Don’t accept the offer if you lack conviction. Remember, “Hell Yeah or No!” It may be better to invest your time exploring other options and building skills rather than job hop as there will be a significant time investment before you and your new employer know if you will be a successful match. If you decide to accept, commit fully and start planning for success.

To learn more, sign-up for the “High-Performance Playbook” email series (it’s free), where I share the best evidence-based strategies, tactics, and frameworks to advance your career and make more money.

[1] Deborah Mitchell, J. Edward Russo, Nancy Pennington, “Back to the future: Temporal perspectives in the explanation of events,” Journal of Behavior Decision-Making 2, no. 1 (January 1989): 25-38.

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Get multiple job offers

In 2019, I experienced a roller coaster of highs and lows. I shut down my start-up after investing three years and most of my savings into the company. This failure triggered feelings of self-doubt but provided painful lessons. At my low point, when I was uncertain how I would crawl out of the deep hole I had dug for myself, I feared I would be forced to take a job I didn’t like.

But I invested the time and energy to engage in self-reflection and learn from my mistakes, and I bounced back before the year’s end. In fact, I found myself riding high after receiving four competing job offers from Silicon Valley technology companies.

When my start-up failed, I was anxious and worried about getting a job before my bank account was fully depleted. To pay a mortgage in San Francisco, you need to make a base salary of at least $150,000 if you want to enjoy a normal social life without adding a roommate. 

But I didn’t want a job just to pay the bills. I wanted a fulfilling job to guide me toward my long-term goals.

In order to make the right career choice and gain leverage in my negotiations, I needed multiple job offers to position myself for the best opportunity. So I designed my job search to align the timeline of the offers.

I knew the spray-and-pray strategy of submitting multiple job applications online was a losing approach. So I used the principles of persuasion and the process described below to help get four competing job offers and land a great job leading business development for a start-up building wireless technology to automate factories, industrial processes, and smart cities.

Getting multiple job offers completely restored my confidence and helped me gain significant leverage in my negotiations with the four companies. 

Job seekers have an advantage

Qualified job seekers are well-positioned to secure multiple job offers because companies are engaged in fierce competition to hire and retain the best talent. Their growth and success rely on finding the right people, and the demand for qualified, skilled workers outstrips supply. Technology advancement and automation are rapidly changing the skills needed in the workforce, and this trend applies in start-ups, large corporations, construction, healthcare, and other skilled trades. As highlighted in this article in The Atlantic, companies have complained for years about the lack of skilled workers.

But even though you may have an advantage over the employer, you must overcome two significant obstacles to get the job you want:

Having options will allow you to evaluate which opportunities provide the best path to financial independence, fulfillment, and your desired lifestyle. 

Use principles of persuasion to influence decision-makers

Backed by over 60 years of scientific research, Dr. Robert Cialdini, social psychologist and foundational expert in the science of influence, highlights powerful psychological principles that direct human behavior. In this email, I summarize how to use these principles to land the job you want. To dig deeper into these ideas, I recommend reading Dr. Cialdini’s best-selling books, Influence: Science and Practice and Pre-Sausion which has sold millions of copies.

When applying for jobs, you can leverage social proof to stand out from the crowd and build trust quickly. When a recruiter or hiring manager faces uncertainty due to a large pool of unfamiliar candidates, they consciously or unconsciously look to social proof as a filter to help them efficiently screen job applicants. 

To utilize social proof, seek to get introduced through mutual connections; highlight your awards or past employment at a high-profile company known for strict hiring criteria; or bring attention to your affiliation with a school, social club, or religious organization you may have in common with the recruiter or hiring manager. 

As adults, we look to authority figures because they typically have more experience, access to better information, or more power. Job titles are a label and symbol of authority because we assume those titles were earned with years of work and achievement. Credentials and clothing are other examples of authority symbols. What we wear is not just ornamental; it also communicates status and position. This explains why bankers wear suits and why judges, police officers, and doctors wear uniforms. And that’s why you don’t go to a job interview in shorts and an old T-shirt.

Establishing authority requires showing that you’re a specialist or expert in a particular subject matter or skill set. You can read 100 books on a topic without anyone recognizing your expertise in a field. But if you write one book on that topic, you share your knowledge and demonstrate your credentials. This explains why writing a book is a universally recognized way of establishing authority and expertise.

But you don’t need to write a book to demonstrate authority. Just use the read, write, teach formula. It doesn’t cost money, and you don’t need permission from anyone. Read books on a niche topic related to your desired field. Show and share your knowledge by developing and sharing content online. Write blog posts, create videos, host a webinar, develop a case study, create infographics, share book summaries, build presentations, post frequently on social media, or write a short e-book. All that’s required is a sincere interest to learn about a niche topic and the time to develop the content. And you don’t need a large audience to see it. Your target audience will be the people involved in hiring at the companies you want to work at.

People are more motivated by the idea of losing something than by the thought of gaining something of equal value. Whenever freedom of choice is limited or threatened, we desire those things more than before. This explains why fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) drives everything from investment decisions in Silicon Valley start-ups to the run on toilet paper and firearms when the COVID-19 virus hit.

Create the perception of scarcity by getting multiple job offers to make yourself more attractive, accelerate the hiring decision’s timing, and gain leverage to negotiate a higher salary. Trigger FOMO in the minds of hiring managers. When an employer knows that a candidate has multiple job offers, the candidate becomes more valuable because their potential availability is threatened.

People also tend to like others who are similar to themselves. Do your homework on your target contacts; run a Google search to learn more about their backgrounds and read everything they have written or created online, including social media posts, videos, and articles. Look for ways you can highlight your similarities in background, lifestyle, opinions, interests, hobbies, religious beliefs, or personality traits. This may appear trivial, but it works.

Familiarity also affects liking. Although often unconscious, we tend to act more favorably toward people we met previously or the ones who were recommended by someone we know. Getting introduced to a hiring manager through a mutual friend can give you a significant advantage because it leverages the liking bond between friends. This explains why, when we meet someone new, we usually share the name of a mutual friend near the beginning of the conversation if we know someone in common.

In addition to leveraging familiarity and similarity, offer authentic compliments and positive praise when they are deserved. Positive comments make us like someone more. We are all suckers for flattery and tend to fall prey to compliments. Of course, a compliment needs to be genuine. But most of us like people who provide positive praise even if we know they want something from us.

Companies trigger a feeling of obligation by giving away free samples of food, personal care, and household products. Some companies, such as Amway, designed their entire business model around the reciprocity rule. Amway grew their door-to-door sales into billions in annual sales revenue by leaving a bag of free household products (e.g., detergents, shampoo, window cleaners) and then returning to the home a few days later to pick up the samples and take orders.

Whenever you reach out to a recruiter or hiring manager, consider how you could be useful to them. What unsolicited favors or gifts could you give? Could you introduce them to someone they would appreciate knowing? Perhaps you can forward them an article on a topic they may be interested in or related to their business. Can you provide information that may prove helpful in their product development and marketing plans? Don’t expect anything in return, but don’t be surprised if giving something of value unconsciously triggers reciprocation in others.

By asking targeted questions or making small requests, you may get the hiring manager to make small, voluntary commitments. For example, you can ask about the hiring decision timeline and when they will get back to you. This may prove useful when trying to align the timing of multiple offers.

Listen closely to what the recruiter and hiring manager say in your conversations. Use their statements to activate the consistency principle to reinforce your position and influence their decision. Also, uncover public statements made by the company’s representatives and weave those into your discussions to trigger the consistency principle and support your perspective.

Take steps to align multiple job offers

Persuading decision-makers that you are the best person for the job is essential. But you also need to align the timing of the job offers. It doesn’t do you much good to get another offer two weeks after you start a new job. Getting the timing right is tricky because each company has different priorities and a different hiring timeline. You need to run a tight process to maximize your leverage and ensure each company moves along at the same pace. It seems very simple on the surface, but if you don’t consciously focus and time your outreach and interviews, the offers won’t converge on the same timeframe.

The critical distinction here is between serial and parallel job hunting. In serial job hunting, you engage with one company at a time, one after the other. In parallel job hunting, you meet with multiple companies at a time and run multiple processes at the same time. Running a sloppy process yields bad results, so pay attention to this process.

Follow these steps to align multiple job offers.

Step 1: Build a list of target companies. Identify, research, and prioritize target companies.

Create a spreadsheet of companies and capture key information (e.g., company description, website, location, number of employees, target contacts.) I recommend starting with a list of at least 20 companies, and you should not limit your research to companies that have open jobs. You want to include the best companies that align with your goals, and companies are always on the hunt for talent. It may be worth your time to contact them even if they’re not advertising an open position that matches your experience. Add decision-making criteria to help you prioritize the list. For example, if I were evaluating new job opportunities, I would use the following criteria. 

Include as many evaluation criteria as appropriate. After establishing and adding your decision-making criteria to the spreadsheet, add a score on a 0-to-10 scale based on importance. Put a 0 (least favorable) score to 10 (most favorable) under each criterion for each job. Add confidence levels (e.g., 80%, 50%, 20%) on your likelihood of success. See Table 1 for an example.

For example, if one job opportunity includes a 15-minute commute, I would give it a score of 8 or 9 in that category. I would give another job with a one-hour commute a score of 1 or 2. This process will help you determine a total score for each job, but don’t get caught up in being too precise. You will not yet have complete information about the job opportunity. Remember, it’s a tool to help you grapple with tradeoffs and prioritize your outreach. Identify your top 5 to 10 companies on the list for further in-depth research and initial outreach.

Table 1. Evaluating target companies

 Eval Criteria 1 (e.g., Interest)Eval Criteria 2 (e.g., Job description)Eval Criteria 3 (e.g., Impact)Eval Criteria 4 (e.g., Learning opportunity)Total ScoreLikelihood
Company 186242010%
Company 225431450%
Company 357482470%

Step 2: Create or update job application materials. Invest time to update your resume, social media profiles (e.g., LinkedIn, Twitter), and stories before you start reaching out to target contacts. Tailor your stories to the qualifications for each job and use the principles and the 5 Cs story framework shared in my last email, “Tell better stories to make more money.” In addition, I highly recommend writing a 500-word article or blog post on a topic related to your target industry. This will help you establish authority, show your ability to communicate ideas clearly, and get the recruiter and hiring manager’s attention. Include a link to your article in your initial outreach email.

Step 3: Kick off outreach campaign. Start with your top 5 to 10 companies. Reach out to contacts in your network who can potentially make introductions into your target companies. Simultaneously email a personalized note to your target company contacts and include links to your LinkedIn profile, resume, and article. Don’t delay your outreach while waiting for an intro from someone in your network. Initiate outreach to all your top target companies on the same day to align timing and follow-up. If one of your contacts later gives you an introduction, it will reinforce your potential value and bring attention to your original email. I recommend a minimum of two follow-up emails if you don’t receive a response. Each follow-up email should be spaced five to seven days apart and should briefly highlight a different story and include interesting new information about your background.

Step 4: Schedule interviews. Group interviews as tightly as possible. Due to the different company hiring timelines and priorities, this will be challenging. Ask each recruiter or hiring manager to share their process and timeline for the hiring decision. Use the scarcity and social proof principles of persuasion discussed above to help drive timing. For example, as long as the timelines are not significantly different, you can mention interviewing with several companies and say that you hope to make your final decision by X date.

Next steps

Use the principles of persuasion and run a tight process to get multiple job offers. And don’t settle for a company’s initial offer. You will never have more leverage than you do at the moment you receive an offer, so that is the best time to negotiate.

To learn more, sign-up for the “High-Performance Playbook” email series (it’s free), where I share the best evidence-based strategies, tactics, and frameworks to advance your career and make more money.