Countering a bonafide offer, post-internship?

Whether to counter or not is so job, individual and job market specific. There is also a huge difference between entry level and lateral jobs.

For entry level jobs, unless your skill is in high demand with a relatively low supply of entrants, I’d be reluctant to push for a few extra dollars. If you found a place where you fit, have already interned and they like you, why jeopardize any goodwill that you have already banked? Where the employee is in a high demand/low supply situations, you will likely have multiple offers and pushing for a few more bucks or benefits will unlikely offend the employer – they probably are expecting it.

Lateral hires are a complete other story and negotiating compensation is pretty common.

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I had never heard of an offer being rescinded because of a request for increased comp until this thread and @blossom’s post. I do agree with @BKSquared and @tsbna44 that context matters and that you need to have a sense of what your value is. That said, here are few considerations if one is making a counter-offer.

First, is how you ask. One would always start with a preamble about excitement about the job and company (but that becomes white noise as it is almost expected and hence does not convey a ton of information). Tact and respect are important. For reasons that I will mention below, it is important to tie the request to something external to your will (no one responds well to a battle of wills and studies suggest that people will reject economically rational demands when conceding to them is an admission that they are in effect submitting to your will).

Why might this matter? There are a number of studies on women negotiating for compensation. Both male and female managers tend to think women who ask for more in the same language that men use as “not good team players” and do not make the same attribution to men who ask for more. All three of the approaches above tend to mute that reaction. One can reduce the chances of that attribution by pegging an offer to external standards of fairness like market value for the same role or by tying it to the function they would be expected to perform for the team (e.g., in this role, I will be negotiating on behalf of the our team; I’m sure that you would want me to use the same skills in negotiating my position) or by tying it to external advice especially for a younger person (although I’m a little uncomfortable negotiating here, my mentor (Sr VP at XXX) has advised me that I ought to be asking for an amount tied to the market comp). One could start it with “Is there any flexibility on compensation as my sense is market compensation for this position for a person with my level of experience ranges from X to Y … .” If they say no, one can then ask about a signing bonus and other aspects of compensation. While this advice is important for women, I believe that the same advice is helpful for men as well.

In my experience, if one is careful and has a decent sense of the market and says, “My research suggests that someone like me in this kind of role would be paid between X and Y, and where in that range is dependent upon Z and W. I’d be comfortable in the upper half of the range because … . Does that match with your sense of the market?” In my experience with at least a few such negotiations, the recruiter or agent has almost never responded with a description of the market, but immediately offers more. Admittedly, this was in the tech world, rather than engage on the market, they would just increase the offer (not clear whether you see the same effect in a weaker market).

Second, there is what you ask for. It should be tied to clear external standards. “You should pay me more because I am worth more” does not work. The amount requested should not be wildly out of the ballpark, especially in a weak market.

Third, there are a lot of ways that companies can compensate people. In addition to salary, there are signing bonuses, equity/options (for a startup primarily), flexibility on remote work, developmental training, location, title … . The most important is entering a situation in which you are going to have a good chance of being successful: right staff, right reporting relationships, sufficient budget, etc. (most of which are not easy to do for a first year person).

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Good points, but IME these all apply to experienced candidates switching jobs. Candidates (like OP’s daughter) starting their very first job typically have little bargaining power, except for maybe requesting a slightly better relocation package.

At many firms, including mine, the starting pay package for interns being hired into full time roles is fixed based on the location and type of role.

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But can that salary differ because you are familiar with the intern vs a hire that did not intern for you ? In my mind that’s the only thing they could possibly leverage.

Partly true, but my primary experience came from a startup that advised job candidates negotiating compensation. The focus was tech sector and related (supply chain, etc.). We worked with those fresh out of school as well as those a few years in. On average, we increased comp about $10K. It helped new grads quite a bit, but a) it was a hot market and a lot of these folks were CS or data science or adjacent; and b) some companies said, “this is what we pay the new grads.” We sold the company and it got absorbed as an ancillary service in a bigger company so I have no idea how they are doing now.

But @DadOfJerseyGirl, you are right. If one job candidate is absolutely equivalent to the others from an employer’s standpoint, they are equivalent to pure commodities and hence there should be no negotiation (if you say no, I’ll go to the next one). As @tsbna44 points out, if you have less uncertainty or lower training costs for an intern you have worked with relative to someone who has just been interviewed, you would expect there to be an increment of value between the familiar, trained intern and the fresh grad. An employer might, as a matter of policy, pretend that the differential is not there.

I have been retired a few years, so I might not have the pulse of the environment today. I was an engineering manager and hired many new grads out of college.

We had a set amount that we offered new hires. There was some differential based on the college that the person got their degree from. We paid more for MIT, etc.

I had a few ask for more money and I discussed it with HR. The answer was always “NO”. We never rescinded an offer because they asked for more money, but we did discuss doing so.

Once you worked at the job for a while and we got a chance to evaluate your performance, then was some wiggle room for more money. We were definitely a “pay for performance company”.

I liked the “pay for performance” way of doing wage and responsibility growth. I was a good performer and did well for myself.

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Interesting, do you remember how much (%-wise) the MIT premium was?

How many other colleges got the MIT premium or something similar?

Ages ago, when I started work, all new grads from “regular” schools got x. Those from the little Ivies (almost exclusively NESCAC given that recruiting was all in person) got x+5%. Ivies were x +10%. Because x was so low (ages ago), the real differential in $ was also quite low, and usually, at the end of the first 1-2 years, this had been entirely overridden by performance.

As to OP’s question, I have not experienced an offer being rescinded but as an employer, everyone grumbles when new grads (many converting from interns) try to negotiate offers. The company has a pay scale for that level and often, the decision about who should get offers has had its own challenges internally. If it’s truly not enough and you’ll have to turn it down, sure, it’s fair to ask.

Otoh, it’s totally okay to ask when they’ll have their first salary review, what career progression looks like, etc. Overall, unless the offer is way off, I don’t think presenting info on market rates is generally well-perceived. Having another competitive offer is far more compelling, AND you run the risk of being told “take it.”

Someone with some experience can definitely negotiate.

And yes, as @blossom wisely counsels, do this with tact and grace. And if there is something that would be particularly helpful – more relocation, an extra week in a hotel, – that’s often easier to accommodate than a higher salary. Be sure to express gratitude for any consideration given to the matter regardless of outcome.

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It could also depend on how many interns in her same role are being hired. If they give an increase to one, do they feel obligated to give it to all? My daughter was just offered a full-time job from her internship in corporate banking - 5 of her co-interns were also given full time offers. Hers is a fixed offer that is the same from intern to intern (and they DO talk amongst themselves about benefits and compensation).

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I think a lot depends on the industry for both interns and new hires ( as mentioned earlier). Our S negotiated at the edges for intern spots at large companies but never at startups. However, for his first new grad role he negotiated the entire compensation package for all offers. And all offers were increased.

For the same role at the same location - no. The intern already has an advantage because they have a special pathway to a full-time job vs someone applying from the outside. In fact, the majority of our fresh-grad hires are former interns.

That’s interesting. We specifically don’t do that because (in our opinion) that practice is both discriminatory and potentially vulnerable to lawsuits. We have the same hiring standards for everyone and if someone has been able to demonstrate that not only do they meet and exceed those standards, but they are among the best (and therefore receiving an offer) then we are not going to pay more for college X vs college Y.

We may provide different relocation benefits depending on the circumstances, or sponsor someone for a work visa. We don’t provide stock options or RSUs to new grads and the first year target bonus is fixed. After that first year, everything depends on their (and their unit’s) performance.

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Interesting, but definitely not the experience our S had in his new grad job offers. There was negotiated movement in all aspects of the comp package: signing bonus, base pay, yearly bonus, equity, and relocation. This was for a SW engineering role.

Can I ask what industry you are discussing?

Wall Street / Investment management firm (well known name).

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Big difference in tech then.

My bank had 60+ summer interns. We recently extended 35 FT offers with a relatively short response window. We have a targeted “wait list” of others we may go to but it is area of expertise specific.

We are targeting an eventual analyst class of 50 +|- a few.

We will backfill with on campus recruiting (as we interview for next years summer), out reach and word of mouth.

Everyone is offered identical compensation packages that are painstakingly considered versus our peers. We won’t negotiate nor do our peers (at least historically). These offers in total tend to be fairly generous relative to the “real” world and most candidates understand this.

While I am aware of a few offers being pulled it is rare. I have seen more than a few new hires however taint their reputations on the way in and the damage can linger.

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I have definitely seen this as well.

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In the big companies I worked at new college hires had their first year salary charged to HR instead of the department as a hiring incentive. The salary was fixed so the hiring managers couldn’t do anything about that but the start date was often negotiable. If DD would like to take a vacation before beginning fulltime work that would be a fair request.

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The company I worked for did work for NASA and we got lot of applicants. However, HR gave the hiring managers a list of the top 20 engineering schools and told us to favor those grads, especially the top 5 schools. HR never said which schools got a premium, but I suspect it was those top 5. I would guess it was on the order of 5%.

Raises were pretty good in those days, so a good performing new grad from the “lesser” schools could easily be making more money than a poorly performing MIT grad in a year or two.

I add another vote to the reputation being tainted. I was one of those that had that point of view.

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When you are asking for higher salary, the question is based on what? It you don’t have another offer with higher salary and it’s your first job, then how do you convince the potential employer to pay you more? As others have mentioned, some firms make the same offer to every new employees. What I have advised some people is to ask for sign on bonus or additional relocation money because “…”
Frankly I wouldn’t negotiate over few thousand $ if I was really excited about a job.

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