Formal Education through Childhood - Essay Example

Humans across the world follow a similar social path of spending the majority of the weekday, approximately one-third of the time, in a place of workin order to earn a living. In all developed nations and in most developing nations the developing of humans includes a formal education through childhood, adolescence, and into young adulthood people continue their formal education with a college preparation. These steps are performed in order to gain abilities and skills to become a professional in particular field of study such as business administration, medicine, economics or engineering among many others. The service of professionals has a market value that is measured based on the median pay of professionals with similar educational and professional background which is a baseline that helps a person determining how much labor of a person is worth. This essay discusses various strategies a professional can utilize in the middle of a salary negotiation and analysis the scenario of the person with a salary demand with counter move of the firm mentioning a specific budget for the position which is lower than the professional’s minimum salary demand. The salary negotiation scenario has many alternative solutions the person can choose to gain an upper hand and maximize the salary offer from the employer. The first argument that must be brought to the negotiating table is the employer’s improper conduct of setting up an interview with full knowledge of the minimum salary requirements to then bring a wild card of an alleged company budget for the position. The time of a person is worth money, the interviewee’s time is subject to the economic law of opportunity cost which stipulates that the value of a person’s time can be measured by comparing what the person could be earning if he were doing something else (Varian, 2003). There are online sources that allow a person to determine their market value based on multiple variables such as experience, education and geography. The website Salary.com provides in depth free reports about thousands of job profiles. For example an accountant with cero to two years of experience is categorized an Accountant I; this category for professionals living in the state of Florida has an average salary of approximately $37,000 per year (Salary.com, 2008). In the salary negotiation scenario the person with the salary demand should have based his initial minimum requirements on the median salary for his profession based on a verifiable source. When the company came with the salary budget claim the professional can immediately reference that the minimum salary guideline was based on industry average standards for similar professional services implying that a lower offer would be a low-balling offer. Another strategic choice the person should follow is to make a countermove after the revelation of the budget deficit and summarize the qualification of the person aligning the pitch with the specific skills that are required to perform a good job based on the job specifications. If the person is in a position and willing to accept a lower monetary offer the individual should not reveal this information to the employer and instead should start negotiating for fringe benefits, non monetary rewards, future salary increments to compensate for the lower initial offer, stock option, car allowance, year end bonuses, extended vacation time, and retirement plans among other benefits. The choices a person has in a situation in which the employers starts with a low initial offer are extensive since in reality the entity with the need for a specific professional service is the corporations and in today’s knowledge economy qualified labor, especially those candidates with a college education are becoming scarce which positions the workers at a competitive advantage. The individual has many doors open to find suitable work; patience is the key to optimizing salary offers. The firm chooses to create a conversation environment in which the lines of communication opened up to internal matters of the company relating budgeting of pay for positions. This is the perfect opportunity for the person to indulge in the corporate structure of the company as far number of managerial positions, supervisors, employee per department to then use that information to inquiry about the pay of employees in the company based on job requirements, experience and educational background. The fact that the person was able to defend himself / herself well and express good negotiating and verbal expression will impress the employers and will increase the hunger of the employer for the person’s professional services. Self confidence is an essential trait that allows a person to win in salary negotiation and any type of negotiation scenario in life. The chances of an individual achieving an above average salary offer are dependent on the knowledge a person has of the marketplace and the ability of the individual of verbally expressing the information forward (Sweeney, 2008). If a job offer is not convenient for an individual due to low pay or unrealistic job specification the only alternative a person has is to reject the offer. Life does not always places a person in situation in which our basic beliefs of what is fair is shared with the people in the opposite end of our conversation. In business everyone is out to win and the employer will try to minimize cost in all places including salary offer. This basic fact means that we should not be surprised with low offers from employers that are the way they operate. The important thing is to come prepare with information about the company, industry, profession and other relevant information that will demonstrate to the employer the person’s professional competence. The way to win in this game is to illustrate to others the type of capacity one has and one’s desired to develop further with the help of others. In a negotiation if push comes to shove and the objective is to work for a certain company due to some intangibles such as the prestige of working for a particular firm then accepting a lower is a personal viable alternative. The person who determines the place and the terms of any work agreement is the person being employed. References Salary.com (2008). Salary Wizard. Retrieved March 24, 2008 from http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/layoutscripts/swzl_salaryresults.asp?hdKeyword=Accountant%20I&rdbSearchByOption=0&c=CA3658012488&hdOmniNarrowDesc=Accounting&hdZipCode=32615&hdStateMetro=243&jobcounter=1&hdSortBy=0&hdJobCode=FA06000001&pagefrom=selectjob&hdJobCategory=FA01&hdGeoLocation=Alachua,%20FL%2032615&countertype=0&key=salel_300&hdOmniTotalJobsFound=17&op=salswz_psr&txtKeyword=Accountant%20I&hdSearchByOption=0&hdLocationOption=0&hdViewAllRecords=0&hdJobTitle=Accountant%20I&hdAjaxDisplaySection1=1&hdAjaxDisplaySection2=0&hdCurrentPage=1&hdNarrowDesc=Accounting&hdJSBoolDisplayAdvertisement=true&totaljoblistnum=17&hdAjaxKeyword=Accountant%20I&hdAjaxKeywordWithOR=#Accountant#&select=2-2 Sweeney, J. (2008). Retrieved March 24, 2008 from http://www.jobinterviewsecret.com/ Varian, H. (2003). Intermediate Microeconomics (6th ed.). Boston: W.W. Norton & Company. Read More