How to Negotiate Your Salary
I was recently speaking to a new PA graduate who was just offered a position in general surgery. He was looking at his impending student loan payments and wanted to know how to negotiate a higher salary. It is a common question and a lot of people don’t know where to start or what to ask for.
My first question to him was “how much are you currently making?” Negotiation is all about leverage. If you’re not currently working and don’t have a salary then you don’t have a lot of leverage to ask for more. If you are working then you can use your current salary as a baseline.
If this is your first job out of PA school or you are not working currently it is important to know what others are getting paid. There are a few resources for this, the AAPA has a salary survey available to all members, the NCCPA does a survey as well and you can also look at the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. If you know how much everyone else is getting paid you can use that to help you negotiate.
Your leverage in negotiating for higher pay is also about supply and demand. Do you live in a large city near a PA school that has tons of options to hire a new PA? Are you looking at job in a rural area that has only one applicant for the current position? Have they been looking for someone for a long time and need to fill the position soon? If you’re the later, you have more leverage to ask for a higher salary as they need you, more than you need them.
If you’re currently working as a PA and want to negotiate a higher salary it is important to know your worth. How much money are you bringing into your current practice? The best way to know this would be to find out how many workRVU’s you’re generating. I have also heard of some practices looking at the amount of collections. Of course this can vary greatly depending on what type of practice you’re in and where you might be going. Out-patient internal medicine will have very different numbers than orthopedic surgery, and your value to a practice might be more than workRVU’s and collections if you are able to make the surgeon more productive.
When you’re negotiating it is important to think creatively. Are there other ways you might be compensated besides your base salary? Maybe the base salary is lower than the median salary but they have a great bonus plan. If you can bonus well then the base salary is less important. How about time off? Can you work your schedule so that you have a four day work week? Time off can be just as valuable as getting paid to work. A lot of places are willing to pay a sign on bonus and often you can negotiate a higher signing bonus to help you get on your feet when you’re first starting off or help with moving expenses. Your base salary is only one component of what you should be considering in a new job.
Usually things like the cost of the medical and dental plan, retirement, disability and other benefits the company might offer are set for all employees and are not as negotiable, but if you’re applying to a small private practice they could be things to look at as well.
The most important thing is that you have to actually initiate the conversation about your desires. Starting the conversation is an important step. If you feel like the offer is lower than what you think is fair you have to be able to say that. I recently read an article about a hiring manager who offered a lower salary expecting the applicants to ask for more. If you don’t say that you think the salary should be at a higher level they probably won’t offer it.
Negotiating your salary can be intimating but if you do your homework, know what the standard is and know what you are worth, you can go into any negotiation feeling confident in asking for a salary that you feel is fare. Of course if you don’t start the conversation, the hiring manager probably won’t. If you’re confidant in the numbers you’re asking for and have good reason to back it up the worse they could say is “we’re not able to give you more” and at that point you can decide if it is a position you want to take or not.
