Re: Offer Letter

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

Yes, I was referring to James' government job, though if you're
dealing with a large multinational conglomerate things are likely
to be similar.

I don't agree with the advice to not discuss salary during the
interview process.  The whole idea of asking candidates for
their salary requirements is to determine if you can bring
them in for the amount budgeted for the position.  Except
for some very small companies where there's a founder
who owns 50+% of the place personally, when most
companies sign off on a req they establish the target for
salary and have better things to do than nickel and dime a
candidate down to the last two or five grand.  In my last
couple of interviews when asked I named a sum that was
the low end of acceptable to me (and was 8-10% more
than what I was making at the time) and told them that
anything over that was a reasonable place for us to begin
negotiation, and in both cases the company's first offer
was 10% or more over it.  It's conceivable that they might
have been prepared to go another 1-2%, but I also have
better things to do than nickel or dime.  In a case where
my stated starting sum is less than what the company has
budgeted and they don't have the ability or the will to come
up, I prefer to just cut the discussion short as quickly as
possible and get on with my life.

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Poshedly, Ken" <PoshedlyK -at- polysius -dot- com>
To: "Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>; <vrfour -at- verizon -dot- net>; 
<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Sent: Monday, January 08, 2007 5:25 AM
Subject: RE: Offer Letter


Gene,

I assume that your reply is specific to the apparently fictional
government job described by James.

But how to handle non-gov situations and those where budgets are not so
carved-in-stone?