New Negotiator

Money, benefits, and vacation should be negotiated at the end of the job interview process after a candidate has received a written job offer. The written offer should be viewed as the beginning of the final phase of the hiring process. 

More than likely, given today’s job market, the written offer will come after a series of interviews; both sides should have used these sessions to figure if there is a fit between them. For the candidate, these early round interviews are tryouts, and the beginning of how an “internal reputation” is created. Or not. 

The candidate will probably be asked during this process what his (her) expectations are concerning the big three of money, benefits, and time off.
It is incumbent upon the candidate to handle these issues skillfully, i.e., not spilling your beans prematurely. 

The candidate is free, of course, to handle these inquiries unskillfully, going ahead and spilling their beans, and then finding out their “openness” leads to a decreased amount of respect, followed closely by a commiserate decrease in the amount of the big three of money, benefits, and time off.

Unskillful is as unskillful does.

Assuming that a candidate has handled himself with a modicum of skill, the written offer is then negotiated point by point. How the candidate handles this will, to a large extent, determine their “internal reputation” at their new workplace. Handle it well and good things begin to come right away; handle it poorly and be perceived a just another employee.

Needless to say, there is lot of uncertainty surrounding the whole process. Welcome to the world. Every candidate will both feel and deal with the uncertainty. Offers accrue to those with skill.

The real life example of most entry level, or non senior-level jobs will come with a fairly narrow range of money, etc is valid to a point. But, the wise candidate still wants to be seen as skillful, as competent, as a standout from all the other candidates because the first level is just that; the first level. There are more levels to come. If you’re not skilled at the beginning, when do you become skilled?

The job interview process is fraught with uncertainty, isn’t it. How a candidate deals with fear and uncertainty will vary from person to person. If you’ve done a lot of job changes in your career, the process is less burdensome that it is for someone who going through it for the first time in a long time.

In both cases, I think the best antidote is preparation. Preparation means research and planning. 

Research the company where you’ll be interviewing. The web will provide a rich array of reports, press releases, announcements, and stories in the press. You can scour the neighborhood, and talk to the neighbors of your target company. 

If you’re interviewing at a public company, the public document disclosure rules and regulations will provide you with a mother load of information, more than you can ever read or hope to take in. Read the secondary documents as well as the annual report.

I suggest mining the past extensively. The current problem, the one you’re interviewing to fix, was probably proceeded by another, earlier problem that was equally urgent, equally mission centric, and equally difficult. How was it resolved? Who were the key players in the remedy? Will they be interviewing you? 

This leads to researching the executives (and others) that you’ll be speaking with as you as move through the process. What have they said publicly about their company and its mission and values? How does that information dovetail with the job you’re interviewing to fill? When making the point that you understand their problems, it’s always a good idea to cite the words, thoughts, and values of the top leadership. You’re demonstrating competence. You know what’s going on.

The chairman’s letter, in a public company, is usually a gold mine of useful information.

Research itself can alleviate a lot of the fear and uncertainty that goes with the interview process. It gives something to focus on besides your own feelings.

Share what you’ve discovered with someone who’s opinion and judgement you trust. Ask them to listen critically. If your thinking is off base, find out before you get to the interview.

Next: Planning

This question appeared on Quora. I answered it like this:

Your questions should grow organically from your research. Your questions should be grounded in “their world” that is, the world of the hiring firm. They should explore the gaps that exist between the hiring firm’s stated mission and its reality; that’s where the pain is; that’s where your opportunity lies. That gap exists or you wouldn’t be there. You want to open it, and show it to them.

You should make your case for yourself skillfully. This is done by asking great questions with a known intent. It is not done by making a presentation that is, at best, hit or miss. It is not done by bragging about what you’ve already done. It’s done by listening mostly.It’s done by pointing to where and how you fit, how you fill the gap, and allowing them to connect the dots.

Remember, you’re negotiating your authority as well as your salary and benefits. It’s your authority that will either allow you to do the job or prevent you from doing it. It is much more important than money or benefits.

This approach uses fewer cute tricks and more hard work.

• Having and demonstrating need. Indeed, screaming it with all you say and do.
• Not doing your due diligence, i.e., research. This is in-depth research, done several times to discover, verify, confirm, and nail down what is going on at the hiring firm. It is academic. It is factual, anecdotal, personal, and thorough. You can not possibly wear it out or do enough of it. Get help. It’s too important to be left to you alone.
• Talking too much during the interview. Yes, you read that correctly.
• Making assumptions and proceeding apace.
• Making a presentation.
• Operating from your own, limited, perspective only. True north is “their” world.
• Closing
• Failing to uncover the decision-making process. Who, when, why. This is difficult; its difficulty does not relieve you of the onus of trying to find out who, when, why. Be tough; keep asking.
• Not finding out what happens next.

1. Research the company, the leadership, the industry, the competition, your competition. This is a never ending task, not a one time event. Put at least one additional set of eyes on this. It’s that important.
2. Create an agenda. It’s really a game plan.
3. Prepare your questions.
4. Let the interviewer do most of the talking. This involves skillful means.
5. Be subtle and skillful in how you handle questions and answers.
6. Uncover/discover who will make the hiring decision and when.
7. Allow yourself no assumptions.
8. Do not close.
9. Do not make a presentation.
10. Demonstrate your qualifications and abilities without making declarative statements.
11. Stay focused and disciplined throughout.
12. Take notes.
13. Prove to those interviewing you that you’re listening; it’s a compliment.
14. Make sure you have the basics right and appropriate to the situation: dress, grooming, demeanor etc.
15. Be yourself. Relax. Enjoy. Smile.
16. Trust yourself, your ability, your powers of discernment, your judgement.

At New Negotiator, my work is to prepare candidates for their job interview experience. It’s about preparation. Preparation accounts for 80% of what I do with a candidate.

Preparation begins well before the initial interview with an introduction to the New Negotiator method, its rules, and how the various pieces of the system fit together. 

For most candidates this introduction only serves to confuse them. It’s in the actual working of the system as the interview sequence presents itself that the method begins to make sense.

The New Negotiator method includes:

• The concept of No Need and how it manifests itself throughout the interview stages, and not just for candidates, it applies to hiring firms as well.
• How and when to ask questions.
• The New Negotiator Agenda: used before and after each point of contact with the hiring firm. Five variables, constantly tracked, that throw off clues, tips, and insights. These influence strategy and events in the dynamic process of interviewing. Their effect is cumulative.
• Research of the hiring firm. This is done both by the candidate, and by New Negotiator. This process is ongoing, and doesn’t end until there is an accepted offer.
• The use of strip lines, reversals, blank slate, and okayness as tactical forces during the interview process.
• How to artfully employ the four rules of the system: no talking, no assumptions, no presentations, and no closing.

The result of all this is a candidate with unusual behavior skills that manifest themselves throughout the interview process. Because these skills are reproducible, the drawn out nature of today’s multiple-interview format is used to the candidate’s advantage. The longer it goes on, the more useable data the candidate has.

The candidate who can distinguish himself is the candidate who separates himself from all other candidates for a given position. That is the candidate who will receive an offer. 

The New Negotiator system is geared toward that elusive separation. It is accomplished through behavior that demonstrates subtlety, skill, professionalism, expertise, and discipline.

In an interview with The Observer published today, Helen Mirren demonstrates how to negotiate a very tricky question.

In the process, she shows how the New Negotiator method works. This is happenstance, of coarse, but a nice happenstance never the less.

The interviewer, Tim Owens, writes this paragraph in his excellent story:

“The previous night (before his interview with Mirren), I had found myself watching the compulsive YouTube clip of Mirren being interviewed by Michael Parkinson in 1975. If you had to provide a single piece of footage that conveyed the idea of sexual politics in the 70s, then that interview achieves in seven minutes what it took a whole series of Life on Mars to dramatise. Parkinson introduces Mirren as “sluttishly erotic”. He kicks off by asking: “You are, in quotes, a ‘serious actress’; do you find what might best be described as your equipment hinders you in that pursuit?” Mirren, then 30, and the leading lady of the RSC, toys with a long feather she has bought with her on to the set and, at a stroke, makes Parky look the leering schoolboy. “How dare you?” she murmurs. And then: “Describe in detail what you mean by my equipment.”

Take out the “How you dare you” line, and you have the perfect way to handle a difficult question in any negotiation, particularly a job interview negotiation.

What did Helen Mirren do? 

Good question.

She reversed the question. Reversing a question is a technique that puts the onus of conversation, not to say explanation, back onto the interviewer, often, as was the case here, with stunning results.

 Thus Mirren brilliantly escaped the no-win dilemma posed by tough interview questions.

Anyone can do this provided they have the courage of a Helen Mirren.

Because New Negotiator is a system, i.e., a complete and coherent entity that guides those interviewing through the entire interview process, it has rules.

The Rules Are:

• No Talking
• No Presentation
• No Closing
• No Assumptions

Then there is No Need. No Need is not a rule, it is a cardinal guiding principle upon which everything else rests.

These Rules present conundrums, don’t they?

For instance, how can a candidate go through the interview process without talking?

Good question.

But you don’t really want to the answer to that, do you?

 The old myth that “win-win” negotiation is the royal road to better agreements, an enhanced sense of self-worth, and happiness received another boost yesterday in Forbes magazine.

 This example is particularly pernicious because it is aimed at women who are perceived as less skillful negotiators than men. (That’s not true; but it’s another blog post topic.)

 The author of the article, Lisa Gates, says,

 ”If we are able to reframe the word negotiation as a “win/win conversation leading to agreement,” and we lean into conflict as an opportunity meet and resolve our collective wants, needs and challenges, we can count on transforming and even transcending all that keeps us dithering in quicksand.”

This is the kind of misinformation that is spread in the press when journalists write about topics they don’t understand. 

“Win-win” negotiation does not work because it begins with a faulty premise: in order to reach an agreement you must compromise. No compromise means no deal.

If you start with compromise in mind, sooner or later the chances that you will indeed compromise do up, way up. 

If what you offer has value, is fairly priced, and is in demand, why should you compromise in order to reach an agreement? 

Why begin with that mindset? 

Walking in the door you’re saying, in essence, “I’ll drop my price, lower my standards, do anything in order to reach an agreement.”

Now, you’ve committed a cardinal error: you’ve shown the other side that you have NEED. And NEED is always exploited by experienced negotiators.

To experienced negotiators, “win-win” means “I win-you lose.”

Is that the game you came to play?

In the coarse of any negotiation it may become necessary to compromise in order to reach an agreement. Let the dynamics of the negotiation determine that. 

Don’t start there. If you do, you’ll give away too much.

The Economic Times website has an intriguing article about how companies are grilling job candidates, especially candidates at the mid and senior level,  to “call out their bluff.”

 Here are the relevant portions for job seekers:

 “‘Most of the candidates are well-prepared,’ says Nikul Shah, president, global HR and corporate services, Omnitech InfoSolutions. ‘Their answers are stereotypes and theoretically very good. Only when we grill them on real-life situations are they exposed,’ he says.”

 (Note the existence of the terms “well-prepared” and “stereotypes” in the same paragraph as if they are synonyms. They’re not. Most candidates think they are, hence the popularity of rehearsing “canned” responses to “canned” questions. How do you achieve any separation from the other candidates if you’re giving the same answers as everyone else?)

 Back to the article:

 “Organizations no longer want people who have mastered their theories; they would rather have real people who have suffered failures and worked on them. Candidates can no longer make generic statements like they are ‘analytical’ or ‘team players’ and expect ‘ be hired. Says Sudakshina Bhattacharya, HR head, IL&FS Financial Services, ‘Our questioning is such that the candidate cannot bluff; he has to represent facts and give very specific answers.’” 

 “Interviewers have begun to probe deeper into the candidate’s personality and move beyond the ‘strengths-and-weaknesses’ line of questioning. Multiple interviews, pre-employment testing, scenario and behaviour-based questioning are increasingly used to zero in on the right candidate.”

 This is good news to the New Negotiator Method trained candidate. Why? Because  New Negotiator is all about your behavior during an interview. 

 Behavior,along with activity, is the only thing you can control. 

 It is your behavior during an interview, and cumulatively across a series of interviews, that separates you from all the other candidates vying for that position. Or doesn’t.

 Behavior is more than demeanor.Demeanor is about sitting up straight, looking ‘em in the eye, smiling, and appearing confident,

 Behavior is a demonstration of your ability to handle a situation that is inherently confusing, stressful, difficult, and demanding. 

The question is: Do you know your stuff? 

More importantly: How well can you communicate the fact that you do know your stuff? 

 How effective are you? 

 Ultimately, the candidate who demonstrate effectiveness will get the job.

Given the fact that no one gets a job these days without running the job interview gauntlet, how can a candidate keep track of the shifting sands of multiple interviews with multiple players at the hiring firm?

The answer can be found in The New Negotiator Agenda. 

The New Negotiator Agenda has five items. Keeping track of each of these items, both before and after each interview contact, is a key element of the New Negotiator system.

Of the five elements, two are relatively simple and straight forward. Three are difficult, and require the candidate to carefully think about them. 

These three elements are formulated before an interview event, i.e., a phone call, an email, or an in-person interview. After the interview event, the agenda is revisited in order to gauge accuracy, insight, judgement, and effectiveness. 

Ultimately, it is about effectiveness.

Every candidate seeks to distinguish himself. Only one does, and that’s who gets the job.

Across an multiple interview event landscape, the candidate using the agenda begins to recognize patterns of behavior on the part of the hiring firm. These are organizational characteristics that point to the deep-seated concerns of the hiring company.

Their Need. Their Pain.

Once understood, Need and Pain can be used, by the New Negotiator trained candidate, to gain the sought after separation that distinguishes the winning candidate.

 ”Over the weekend our partners in other divisions have confirmed that they cannot achieve their ambitious goals without a healthy and vibrant investment bank alongside, co-operating at every level.” Carsten Kengeter to his UBS staff, trying to save his job.

This appeared in today’s Guardian newspaper:”One of the three charges faced by Adoboli (the trader who lost $2 billion) dates back to 2008, piling more pressure on the bank’s management. The bank is now trying to bolster its procedures. “We are undertaking this work diligently and professionally, without conjecture or finger-pointing,” Kengeter said. “We will deal appropriately with those individuals who were responsible for significant operational and management supervision lapses, and then we must move on.”“

The problem surfaced in 2008. But Kengeter isn’t pointing any fingers. Not him. No conjecture either. Why? Because Kengeter wasn’t curious enough to solve the problem three years ago. Or at any time up to the current crisis. 

Effective leadership, anyone?

Carsten Kengeter is a man with a problem. I’ve written about how “Need” can drive bad decisions in any negotiation. In Kengeter’s negotiation with his bosses, his subordinates, and his clients, his need is clear. He needs to be forgiven. Not to mention his need to keep his job.

But how much forgiveness is there if you’ve had and known about a problem trader and done nothing for three years? And it finally bites you?

Occasionally, business leaders, little children, say the darndest things. Or not.

Here is a statement from UBS concerning their rather embarrassing gaffe of losing $2 billion dollars because they failed to keep tabs on one of their traders:

“While the loss ($2 billion,see above) “is disappointing, UBS remains strong, well-capitalized and committed to serving you,” executives at UBS Financial Services wrote yesterday in an e-mail to customers.”

Now please raise your hand if you think one the top guys at UBS described the loss as “disappointing” to his fellow overpaid cohorts. Thank you. You may lower your hand now.

This statement shows one thing, and one thing only. Weakness. And extreme need. Did I say one thing only? Sorry.

Weakness because the statement quoted above is so obviously from the PR Department. Real people don’t write like that: committees do.

The UBS execs do not have the courage to address their customers directly.

Weak, very weak.

Need because these same execs see that they may be fired for being so incompetent as to allow a thing like this to happen.

Therefore they “need’ to be believed; they are truly sorry, just not for the right thing. They are truly sorry that they are about, hopefully, to lose their high-paying jobs, and the pretty little perks that go along with high-paying jobs: the pretty little perks they’ve gotten so accustomed to. The one they don’t think they can live without.

They have failed in their negotiation with their customers because they are demonstrating need. And a touch of cowardice. Mix it all up. And you’ve got today’s scandal control mechanism going full tilt.

The Republicans intransigence over just about everything political is a good example of a hardened bargaining position, with little or no room for a useful solution.

Polls are showing that most people are fed up with the tactic.

So why are the Republican’s continuing to use it?

Because it works.

When your opponent employs a strategy like this what can you do?

The best method is to have and demonstrate No Need.

President Obama has abandoned that tactic. His needs are visible. They are weakening his position, and undermining the little remaining authority he has.

With diminished credibility, the shrewd negotiation will pull back, and wait. Keep your mouth shut. Because the other side is emboldened, their chances of making an error go up.

Hubris is a funny thing: it can bite you badly when you least expect it.

First and foremost, get your No Need groove back.

That has to be the way candidates look at their interview. Everyone who interviews is viewed, at least initially, as qualified by the hiring firm.

So what can a candidate do to separate himself from the pack?

Focus on the things you can control. You can control your activity and your behavior. That’s all you can control.

You certainly can’t control the process or the people who are running the process. You can’t control the outcome.

What should you do? What types of behaviors will help you?

First, do your homework. The bigger the company, the larger the amount of information available for you to research. Get to know the CEO, and his thoughts about his company. It’s very likely the CEO has spoken, or written, recently about the problems the company is facing. He’ll likely refer to problems as “challenges.”

Those comments, thoughts, and observations are your raw materials to demonstrate that you’re aware of the “challenges” your target company faces.

Refer to that information in your interview. Do it subtly. Do it persistently. Develop questions around those challenges that show your expertise as a problem solver.

Show them what you bring to the table by exposing their problems to them. It’s a sore spot. Irritate the sore spot, and offer a remedy.

Quit being a supplicant; solve the problem.

That’s how you stand out.