Compensate. Um My role has given me a really unique viewpoint on the way that women approach interviewing on salary negotiations and how women in particular manage their careers. Um What I love about recruiting is it really allows me to be a student of human behavior.Um And people never ever cease to amaze me. So let's talk a little bit more about salary negotiations and how this became a passion of mine. Um You know, I was one morning, I was getting ready for work and I heard a statistic that absolutely stopped me in my tracks. An anchorwoman said that only 7% of female MB A graduate negotiate their starting salary. Well, over 57% of male MB A graduates negotiate. Think about that the other way, 93% of women don't negotiate their salary at that point. So, you know, that morning that I really started thinking about the impact that that has over the lifetime of a woman's earnings. Um On average, we know that women earn 83 cents to every dollar that a man earns. And we know that that date is really normalized for the role. So female program managers make less than male program managers. Uh female software engineers make 83 cents compared to their male software engineer colleagues. So, you know, if you think that they make less in salary, then you also think about those 3 to 5% raises and then that 15% increase when you change jobs. Um it, it has a huge lifetime impact. Let's think of it this way. If you're early in your career and you start your first job and you take out a loan for 5 10 $15,000 and think of it. That's the money that's represented by the amount of money you lost because you didn't negotiate. And then if you take that money and you add another 3 to 5 percent in every year and then you add in that additional money every time you don't negotiate when you change jobs. It has a huge impact that loan that you took out early in career because you didn't negotiate becomes literally hundreds of thousands of dollars by the end of your career. So I cannot emphasize enough that this is super important. The other part that makes this been more impactful as we know, at least in the United States that women are regularly the heads of household or they're gonna be single mothers. So we're also much less likely to invest, you know, we're spending our money on school uniforms and diapers and, and, and tennis shoes rather than buying or investing in, in the stock market. So, um every dollar that we make is super important. Um So let's talk a little bit more about this, you know, um I, I had all this brainstorm and, and I was thinking, and so that particular day I went to work and it just happened that I had three offers to negotiate. Um The first offer was to a man who'd been working as a contractor for a different company. And so he'd been being paid on an hourly rate in his new role, it would be full time salary job. So he would be, um, have vacation and benefits and things like that. He'd have to take a cut and pay in our initial conversation. I was very clear with him. I said, ok, this role pays 100 and 20 K, not a penny more if you're not happy with that, don't interview. So he said, oh, yeah, Jenny, no, no problem. So it goes through the interview process. We get to the offer stage. I say, hey, guess what? We're ready to extend you an offer at 100 and 20 K. He said, well, can't we do 1 25? I was furious. Um But I also had a duty. So I went back to the hiring manager and I said, look, you know, um I told the candidate, I doubt we'll get a change. But let me talk to the hiring manager when I talked to the hiring manager. He said, well, let's give him a small win. And so we did extend an offer at 100 and 22 K. So data point in the back of my mind, right? Um So, you know, my next offer was to a woman who was leaving a managerial role in, in a different industry and coming into an individual contributor role. And when we initially talked her compensation expectations were really at the top of our range, but it was doable. Um And you know, she went through the interview process and when the hiring manager came back to me to extend an offer, it was below what we were expecting it to come out, both the candidate and I um and you know, I was disappointed um but I went to the candidate and I express gave her the offer and not only was I disappointed in the offer, but when I extended the offer to her, she began talking about, oh, well, these are the financial cuts that I can make in my life. She also began explaining to me the gaps in her skill set. Um and then she accepted the offer. Um and not only that, but she sent me a really nice thank you note. Now, my heart was broken because I would have been more than happy to go back to that hiring manager and fight for a better offer for her if I'd had a business case or if that's what the candidate had asked me to do. You know. So then I had my last offer to the day and, you know, this was to a woman who'd been working in a state institution. Um So she was moving to a software company. I knew I was going to be able to give her a nice big increase. And in prepping for it, I talked to the hiring manager and we agreed to a number, but we also agreed that if she negotiated, I could give her an extra five K, we wanted her to be happy. We really wanted her to join. And we also were giving her a big raise in order to get her in line with what the market was for her skill set. So I extended the offer and as we were talking through it, she asked me about, you know, was there flexibility to take her kids to school in the morning? And she asked me about benefits and I'm sitting there hoping with every fiber of my being that she would ask, hey, is that the best that you can do? Is there any room to negate? And she didn't? Now some of you might be going. Ok. Well, why didn't you just give her the money? You have to understand. I was working for a publicly traded company. We wanted our employees to have a fair compensation. But also I was an employee, I was a shareholder in the company. I ethically could not give away five K unless she asked. You know, so that night I was really troubled. Um, and I did what most Southern women do. I called my mama and the first words out of my mama's mouth were, hey, Jenny. Have you been being a good girl? You know, my mom begins every call with be a good girl. Have you been being a good girl? Um, you know, and that brings me to good girl syndrome. So I don't know if you'll recognize this, but I think a lot of us were raised to be good girl. So what good girl syndrome says is that you wanna appear sensible and in control, you keep silent, um or quiet, you try really hard not to rock the boat. You really have an intense self pressure to do things, right? The first time to focus on keeping everything tidy, to not make a mess, to focus on living up to people's expectations, maybe a fear of disappointing others. You know, good girls often smile too much and we don't even mean to. So, you know, we're taught that good girls are compassionate and warm and cheerful and so soft spoken and loyal. Um We're given a a lifetime of subtle subconscious cues that really give us a double edged dilemma, right? Good girls um are seen as pushovers. People take advantage of us. Good girls work so hard to please everyone that we can hurt ourselves. You know, we, we don't always, are, aren't always transparent with our colleagues. We self audit. Um, you know, good girls are reluctant to say no and, and, and quite frankly, as a recovering good girl, you can be exhausted. So, you know, the good news or the bad news is my mom and I aren't just making up, you know, good girl syndrome in the way that, that people perceive us. You know, Stanford University reported that desirable adjectives for women are often, you know, you're warm, you're cheerful, you're soft spoken, you're loyal. Um Those are all qualities of good girls. On the other hand, when they talked about what men are desirable, it's all this independent, assertive, dominant, decisive, you know, so it's um unfortunate that sometimes we feel like we have to be soft. So, you know, I'm still really reeling with this whole concept of good girls of, of how does it work of, of women negotiating salary. So I called one of my recruiter friends and I said, you know, um iiiiii, I appreciate you. I I've seen you be fierce. I know that you're smart, you're strategic, you're strong. Um And I'm seeing this pattern where women are not negotiating, I heard this statistic. Um you know, I'm in awe of you and your communication skills and your ability to go toe to toe with executives. What are you seeing with women negotiating salary? And she said, Jenny, she said it happened to me um, and, and I couldn't believe it because this woman is so fierce. And she said, yeah, she said the last time I was extended an offer, I know that I'm paid about $30,000 below what the market rate for my skills are. And I said, oh my gosh, I can't believe that you did that. I said what, what happened? She said, you know, I was scared. Um I really wanted this job. My kids are about to go to college, college. Um So it broke my heart to think of this woman that I see as a lioness that I have seen absolutely advocate for others, but she wasn't scared to advocate for herself. She's a good girl. So what do we do about this? Let's talk about some real life tools and techniques that you can use to then take fear out of the equation and, and have tools so that you can negotiate salary. Um You know, the, the first thing is to realize that it's a business deal, it's not personal. Um And the second thing is to realize that, you know, recruiters are fun. They're interesting. They're gonna laugh at your stories but they're not your friends. Um So be very thoughtful and careful and strategic about the information that you recruit, you reveal to them. How ever do remember that recruiters can turn into an advocate for you? So the way that you're gonna do this is you're gonna maximize your likability during the interview and offer process. You're gonna look for opportunities to highlight um things that you love about the company ways that you can impact the organization. You're gonna send thank you notes and emails. You're gonna stockpile compliments. Hey, here's something I noticed that I love. You're gonna share all those subtle niceties that the recruiter has done with senior leadership so that the recruiter goes, oh, they value me. I look good. It makes you look good and it gives you leverage. When you get to the negotiation table, when you're in the interview process, you're going to spend every minute building a business case so that you can review that at awkward time. You're gonna talk about the skills that you bring to the table, how you can drive revenue, how your superpowers fit into that open role. You're gonna stockpile stories about your best accomplishments. You're gonna have your references or your refers, be prepared to talk and tell those stories that you want and you're going to try to gather as much data as you can so that you can say things like I ran $10 million projects at my last company and I saved 20% on each of those. I can do that here as well. So once you've established the value um when you're at the offer stage, then you can do what I call building bridges. That means you start with a good thing. It sounds like this it sounds like I really want to work here but, and then you move to the gap that you have to cover. I would like to see XY or Z um And then you end with, you know, but I really feel like I can add to the team. This is how I can make a difference. Um So that's the way that you're going a good an ask and then a good um and remember when you're negotiating, there's a lot of things that you can uh talk about rather than just salary. So a lot of levers, the more levers that you have in play, the more likely you are to get a win. That's the way it is with any negotiation. So, you know, you can talk about salary bonus, title vacation, sign on bonus and MBO six month review, stock workplace flexibility, tuition reimbursement. There are so many things that you can talk about um in putting multiple items on the table means that you're more likely to get a win. Um You know, if you have a very complex compensation situation, I've had a number of men that will give me a spreadsheet that helps me understand how their compensation works. I can share that with my executive team, not once have I ever had a woman do that. So do put together a spreadsheet if your compensation is complex and do share it with the recruiter, help them understand how they can help you one word of caution here is, don't ever give an ultimatum or leave no room for compromise. On a few rare occasions, I've had candidates push so hard that the hiring manager and I decided that, you know, this is really more of a mercenary rather than a teammate and we've stopped the negotiation process. So, you know, the market out there is not as hot as it used to be. So, just be thoughtful as you're going into the, the negotiation process. You know, here's the hard part is this is a business deal, but it feels really personal. So be prepared for that imposter syndrome or what I call the hoodoos. You know, my momma would say, well, who do you think you are or don't go beyond your raising? Um You know, this is the part that's emotional and it's really challenging. One of my dear friends would, was offered a promotion at her college, but the offer she received was about a 12% raise. That sounds good. Except for the job paid 30 k more in the past, she was crushed. She called me and said, oh my gosh, I can't believe this. And I said, you know what? I know this feels personal but it's a business deal. And so he let's put together a plan. So she went and worked with her hiring man with her manager and they put, put together AAA plan to say, you know, hr thinks that you can't get too big of a raise. But let's focus on the job, the value of the job, what the market looks like. And also the difference, how your skills have grown and at faster than your compensation has now, it was a hard negotiation and it took months and she called me several times upset, but at the end of the day, she was able to get a 20 K raise over what she'd been um in in because she focused on a data driven business case and can't took the personal feeling out of it. Now, for many of us, we only get a few chances to negotiate compensation maybe once a year when you're getting review every few years when you change jobs. And so that can be a muscle that we really atrophy. I want you to think about being good girls, being a steward of their resources and use every opportunity that you can to practice your negotiation skills, maybe at a car dealership, maybe at a tag or a yard sale, maybe getting the best rate on a rental car and upgrade every time you check in to a hotel, you know, any time that you have an opportunity to negotiate something, ask because if you don't ask, you'll never get it. Um Let me end with one quick story. I had a mentee that was negotiating with the new company and she sent me a message saying, hey, there's a 30% gap in the retirement plan. I said, well, you know, go and remind them, tell them about the gap, tell them you really like the role and see what you could do. Well, she told me later that she called them, um, and asked about the, the retirement plan with a huge lump in her throat. Um, because at the end of the day, the offer that she accepted was a full 70 K higher than what she was previously making. Now, that's not gonna happen in every situation, right? But um you know, remember that those five K and those 10-K and that, that 30% difference, all of that adds up and you're never going to ask if you don't know. And good girls do ask for salary increases. Good girls do negotiate because we want to take care of our fiduciary responsibility. So in um ending, let me give you just a few parting phrases that I want you to take away. Um You know, things like, is there any flexibility, is that the best offer that you can make? Could you consider? Could we adjust? So it doesn't even have to be hard. But I promise you if you will just ask those little things do make a difference, you know, uh my niece, um the, the market is a little soft, she'd just gotten her phd and so she was looking for, um you know, starting the interview process. She was at the offer she had one company that was interested in her, they'd made an offer that was at the top of the salary range so that they'd initially given her. And I said, well, you know, do you feel comfortable just asking, just ask, asking if there's any flexibility? And she said, ok, I will. Well, she got an extra five K, you know, over the course of her career, every single dollar adds up. So I encourage you, um you know, to be sure every time that you're in at a situation to lean into the negotiation also, um if you found this topic interesting, there are a lot of really great resources out there um that um are available. The other thing is, is each and every one of you, please feel free to reach out to me on linkedin, Jenny cos I'll be more than happy to help you if you have a situation where you want some coaching or guidance. Um I don't charge anything for it. Helping women advocate for themselves and grow their career is really my personal passion. So please feel free to reach out with any questions.