Salary negotiations: a guide for scientists

Three researchers and a career coach discuss if there as much scope to negotiate salaries in academia as there is in industry.In either setting, they say, negotiation should not be a battleground. Hiring managers should not take advantage of a beloved future colleague who may have zero experience of negotiating anything, says David Perlmutter, a communications researcher at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, who writes about hiring and salary negotiations. Nor is it like a car sale, adds Jen Heemstra, a chemistry researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, after which the two sides part company forever. “In an academic negotiation if there’s a winner and a loser, then you’ve really both lost,” she says.Perlmutter advises early career researchers to build confidence by practicing salary negotiation with a colleague before doing it for real. “No matter what’s going on, try to be respectful, friendly and positive,” he says.Margot Smit, a plant molecular biologist at Tübingen University, Germany, and Lauren Celano, a careers coach who co-founded Propel Careers, based in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2009, lists non-pay elements to work into a negotiation.This is the fourth episode in a six-part podcast series about hiring in science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.