After you’ve completed the interview process and have received the verbal offer, the next stage is negotiating the exact job offer details which includes your salary and all other factors contributing to your total compensation. This will be handled almost entirely in the absence of anyone who interviewed you. It feels a little weird, but this is so that the negotiation process is as neutral—i.e., as beneficial to both parties—as possible.

This is the one time that I’ll say that a best practice is “Always negotiate”. Even for summer internships. Here are some tips:

Tip #1: Be prepared to be asked about salary in your first call

You are definitely going to be asked about salary in your first call. Be mentally prepared for this. I would highly recommend against saying any numbers. As academics, we don’t have a good understanding of what is possible. Especially with big tech. Do not risk accidentally underselling yourself.

Here are some strategies:

  1. Ask what is included in the total compensation package. You will very likely need time to review your finances and compare how you are being compensated now (even health insurance is a form of compensation!)
  2. You can also ask them directly what range they are able to offer you
  3. If you are offered multiple assignment locations, ask if there is a base salary difference between locations. Location assignment across different states can have different salary bands due to different cost of living.

Tip #2: Ask what is negotiable

Sometimes things aren’t negotiable because they are standardized across interns and hourly rates for contractor roles. (I’ve even heard that some full-time consultants have standardized pay across leveling.) Or maybe you’re already being offered the top possible salary—woohoo!

But most times, at least some things are negotiable. Ask if it’s possible to negotiate. You can be humble and say “This is my first internship in industry. Is it standard to negotiate in this process?”

Or ask what is possible to negotiate. This will be more common for full-time job offers. Here are some things that could be on the table for negotiation:

  • base salary
  • restricted stock units (RSUs) or stock options (or percent equity for a startup)
  • annual year-end bonus (AIP = annual incentive percent. The exact percent is also sometimes negotiable.)
  • sign-on bonus
  • relocation bonus (if you need to relocate for the job)
  • health benefits
  • number of PTO days
  • educational reimbursement
  • start date
  • severance package

At bigger companies, it is likely that your talent partner will be the one who initially shares your job offer and will go through the negotiation process with you—not your hiring manager. This was relieving to me, because negotiating is socially very difficult for me and I would have felt nervous possibly getting off on the wrong foot with my hiring manager. (But, also, I had interned with my hiring manager and knew that she wanted me to be fully satisfied with my job offer.)

Tip #3: Understand the difference between who you are negotiating with

There are 3 types of negotiator roles that I’ve come across so far:

  1. Talent Partners at big companies — oftentimes larger companies have full dedicated teams for acquiring talent. These talent partners do this full-time and are working within the constraints of company allocated budget.
    1. The best way to negotiate is to help them negotiate on your behalf by laying out the exact business impact that your position brings and your specific expertise with fulfilling that role. (You can read about my experience attempting to do this below.)
    2. Talent partners are often assigned at the org level, so your talent partner will likely not know your hiring manager.
    3. Expect the process to be rather efficient because they are already aware of the majority of their constraints. There is less back-and-forth here, so be prepared to make decisions quickly.
  2. HR at medium to small companies — more commonly, the negotiation process will be handled by HR. This person will likely be in direct conversations with your hiring manager to get approvals for anything that you are negotiating. I’ve noticed that there are basically double in the interactions here: you ask for something, they need to ask approval, they update you on the request, etc. I would recommend treating all interactions delicately but with confidence too. Too many interactions starts to feel socially draining.
  3. External recruiters are most often used by small early stage companies like startups — These companies often outsource to recruiting agencies to attract top-talent, especially if they do not yet have bandwidth or resources to hire HR yet. These recruiters are paid by the company if the candidate is hired. It is in their best interests that you are getting the best offer possible so that you accept and are hired. Don’t undersell yourself, but you can be more honest about needs and timelines with these recruiters (if you like them). There is also the “double the interactions” problem as with HR but I find that it’s a less delicate because recruiters most times do not know your hiring manager on a personal level.
    1. See this other post on External recruiters & recruiter calls for more details.

Tip #4: Ask what your timeline is for getting back to them

Take at least 24 to 48 hours to reflect on the original offer. This time is to celebrate getting a job offer out of academia. Once you get over the elation or disappointment:

  • Ask your industry friends for feedback
    • They’ve probably negotiated job offers before and have good advice
  • Especially ask your former lab mates who are in industry for feedback
    • These lab mates likely have similar training and therefore, are a standard for the starting salary at which your academic background can be valued. There is wide variability between companies (and especially roles), but you can negotiate for something higher if you notice that your lab mates are being valued at higher salaries at other companies. This not the same as having a competing job offer, but shows that your value is at least that same level at those other companies.
  • If you have mentors at the company that you are considering, ask them for feedback
    • They can offer advice about what your target company values. These values (such as research expertise at “world class” institutions) help you define what is possible to leverage in your negotiations.

My experience

When I got my job offer, I was told that only my sign-on bonus was negotiable but that I’d need to make a good case because I was already being offered the top amount for everything else.

After talking to my friends, former lab mates, and company mentors and reflecting on which arguments I could use, my main strategy was to:

  • Request lost income for the postdoc role that I would have started the day after my defense, because the start date offered to me was 4 months later
    • Note: my postdoc role was honored as a competing job offer. Especially at large research companies/org, this is honored because they are genuinely trying to attract academics who may have otherwise pursued tenure track roles. Even if postdocs are not highly paid, the negotiation is about your professional growth opportunity.
  • Request that the educational reimbursement be moved to my sign-on bonus, because I did not have tuition or course materials to reimburse from my last academic institution (i.e., grad school)
  • Request an overall higher sign-on bonus, because:
    • I had completed 3 internships at that company and therefore, had already had an established history of impact and expertise
    • I am a subject matter expert (SME) on topics to my job, because I have published in relevant high-impact journals. My (written) qualifying exam also counted as a master’s thesis that was relevant to the role.
    • I had conducted research at world class R1 institutions
    • I was moving to the Bay Area and cost of living is expensive

Most of this, I cannot verbally ask for with a straight face. I’m way too socially awkward for this.

I leaned into this and ended up writing a 1-page proposal for a higher sign-on bonus. I wrote out my publications, universities that I worked at and collaborated with, cited my sources for Bay Area cost of living, and calculated my postdoc lost income. I had an exact dollar amount broken down by request type.

(It was originally 2 pages, but an industry friend helped cut it down but removing all my fluffy gratitude language.)

Then I presented it via screen-sharing on my next video call to my talent partner, who was very amused at my academic personality. At the end of the call, she said she’d try her best and I sent her a copy of my 1-pager. (This aligns with the “help me be able to help you” logic). Sure, she said that she’d never seen this before, likely because other people are better at negotiating than me.

But it worked. I was able to more than double my original sign-on bonus. My company even rounded up a bit to an even number, which was a couple extra hundred dollars.

AI was not used to write, edit, or brainstorm this post. All mistakes and em dashes are my own.