If you’ve ever been on an interview and held your breath until the final offer only to be disappointed, please, read on.

One of the most annoying things about the job hunt has to be hoping that they will make an offer commensurate with what you believe to be your worth.  Not only your worth but what the company has actually budgeted for the position.  But how do you know what they have actually budgeted for the position?

You Ask!

Men ask for what they want twice as often as women do and initiate negotiation four times more.  Men, socialized in a “scrappier paradigm,” learn to pursue and energize their goals at work and home. The two key elements are control and recognizing opportunity. – Amazon Review- “Women Don’t Ask”

Here’s your opportunity!  Take control by asking upfront!

For example, let’s say your current salary is $55k and market salary for your position is actually $65k.  The company you plan to interview with budgeted the position between $65k-75k but negotiates between $58k-$60k with you.  o_O  I don’t know about you but that would grind my nerves.

Let’s go:

1.  Break The Rules:  Show Me Yours And I’ll Show You Mine. Ask upfront for the budgeted range for the position.  This way you get them to break one of the first rules of salary negotiation.  This seems innocent upfront because after all, they don’t know if they will make you an offer but you get this information ahead of time so you know whether it’s worth your time to close the deal.  They give you their number first and you know whether it is worth your time to interview and jump through hoops for the position.

2.  Waste Less Time. You waste less time by doing this during the first call with the HR person/recruiter.  What is the point of interviewing for a position slated to pay you 5-10% less than what you’re paying now?  This also holds them to their word.  Get them to name a range and you gain the advantage when it’s time for negotiations.   However, if you’re unemployed and desperate for work, then you may want to take it no matter the offer.

3.  You Have The Advantage.  Take It. They want you, remember?  There is no unwritten rule that says you can’t ask first before you actually interview.    It actually makes more sense to do so rather than being disappointed and exploited in the end when it’s time to talk money.

4.  Maintain salary integrity. Taking a job making less than what you’re paying now shoots you in the foot down the line.  During this economy it is understandable why employers may low ball potential employees, but don’t give them a reason by taking a lower salary now. Why? A future employer may look at your salary history and see that you took less than what you were making previously and offer you less thinking you’d be willing to take a hit “for the team”.

I understand this goes against the grain in salary negotiations, but really, how many of you have gone the safe route only to be disappointed?  You have bills to pay and if you know ahead of time the market range and budget for the position you walk in informed with a stiletto up on the negotiations.

Here are some interesting statistics from the author’s website, Women Don’t Ask:

Women Don’t Like to Negotiate

• In surveys, 2.5 times more women than men said they feel “a great deal of apprehension” about negotiating.
• Men initiate negotiations about four times as often as women.
• When asked to pick metaphors for the process of negotiating, men picked “winning a ballgame” and a “wrestling match,” while women picked “going to the dentist.”
• Women will pay as much as $1,353 to avoid negotiating the price of a car, which may help explain why 63 percent of Saturn car buyers are women.
• Women are more pessimistic about the how much is available when they do negotiate and so they typically ask for and get less when they do negotiate—on average, 30 percent less than men.
• 20 percent of adult women (22 million people) say they never negotiate at all, even though they often recognize negotiation as appropriate and even necessary.

Women Suffer When They Don’t Negotiate

• By not negotiating a first salary, an individual stands to lose more than $500,000 by age 60—and men are more than four times as likely as women to negotiate a first salary.
• In one study, eight times as many men as women graduating with master’s degrees from Carnegie Mellon negotiated their salaries. The men who negotiated were able to increase their starting salaries by an average of 7.4 percent, or about $4,000. In the same study, men’s starting salaries were about $4,000 higher than the women’s on average, suggesting that the gender gap between men and women might have been closed if more of the women had negotiated their starting salaries.
• Another study calculated that women who consistently negotiate their salary increases earn at least $1 million more during their careers than women who don’t.

Women Have Lower Expectations and Lack Knowledge of their Worth

• Many women are so grateful to be offered a job that they accept what they are offered and don’t negotiate their salaries.
• Women often don’t know the market value of their work: Women report salary expectations between 3 and 32 percent lower than those of men for the same jobs; men expect to earn 13 percent more than women during their first year of full-time work and 32 percent more at their career peaks.

Have you ever asked about the salary range upfront before interviewing? How did that go over with the recruiter? Did you eventually get the job? Let us know in the comments!