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Job-Market Reporting Thread (2025-26)
Job-Market Discussion Thread (2025-26)

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Negotiating job offer tips?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I've looked through a lot of posts about negotiating on here, but I was hoping to get some more specific advice. First, which kinds of candidate attributes actually matter to admins when asking for a higher salary on the basis of coming in with more experience? I have a couple of fairly fancy research postdocs under my belt, but I'm not confident that whoever I'm negotiating with would be able to appreciate the distinction of getting a "fancy" postdoc by our standards. Do I try to just say that in making my case? I'm worried it'll make me sound pompous.

As another question that will probably be pretty widely relevant, how should we take inflation into account in our asks? I've managed to find a couple salaries from semi-recent hires that seem fairly reliable online, but when I punch that number into an inflation adjustment calculator the number becomes *much* bigger. Would it be unreasonable to try to ask for an inflation-adjusted salary based on past salaries? I'm worried about asking for too much up front and getting told off or even jeopardizing my offer.

Excellent questions, and I'm curious to hear from readers! One reader submitted the following reply:

I think you misunderstand the conditions of negotiation. For background, I negotiated a very modest higher starting salary at my first TT job, and I negotiated some additional raises while in a job, above and beyond the standard merit raises, which occur in a institutional framework. No one is going to give you a raise for a post doc you had – in fact, a new hire from Oxford or Yale has no basis for asking for a higher starting pay than a new hire from Ohio State or Missouri. And even cost of living is a problematic starting point – if the University has a union, or the administration is thinking clearly, they are concerned with compression. They cannot let new hires start at a pay level higher than what those who were hired a 5 years ago are paid now. That will cause resentment. You need a basis for claiming to need or deserve more money. Ideally, you have another offer so you can actually walk away from this job if they do not meet your demands. But try something like excessive moving costs (because you are moving across the country or from another country).

I'm inclined to agree that trying to negotiate by mentioning "fancy" postdocs probably isn't a good idea, but beyond this I'm not too sure. Do any other readers with experience negotiating job offers have any helpful tips or other insights?

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8 responses to “Negotiating job offer tips?”

  1. Anonymous

    I was not able to get a higher salary, but I did negotiate a teaching release and higher start up research funds.
    In terms of the compression discussed above, certainly many universities do/should care about this, but not all do. I recently discovered that I (5th year TT) am paid less than someone who started last year fresh from their PhD. It definitely causes resentment, but I just mention it to point out that some schools may not care.

    Reply
  2. Apples and oranges (are both food)

    Concerning leveraging competing job offers: I’ve learned this season that administrators in deans’ offices at least sometimes (maybe usually?) pay close attention to the type of competing offers you’ve got. So, let’s say you’ve got an offer for a permanent faculty position at Uni A, which will be a 9-month salary (though these are usually spread out over 12 months). Let’s say you’ve also got a higher-salary offer for an academic administrative (or combined administrative & teaching) position at Uni B. In your eyes, these offers are obviously comparable in the sense that it’ll be your sole source of income, and you need to make a living. But in the deans’ eyes, these are probably not comparable, since they’re different sorts of jobs (and thus the market conditions might be different to some degree), and since one is a 9-month salary and the other is a 12-month salary. So, apples and oranges, they’ll say. Again, to you, this doesn’t matter: if Uni B is offering enough oranges to survive on, while Uni A is offering too few apples, well, then Uni A is at risk of losing you. But the deans might not see it that way. Just something to be aware of.

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  3. tttt

    I have negotiated for the starting salary with about 3 tt offers (with 4 in total), and two of them told me that it is impossible. One of the two however offered me something else equivalent to a higher salary, which I accepted. In summary, I think it is pretty hard to get a significant raise through negotiation, and even harder if you don’t have a competing offer. To get even an insignificant raise, neither past positions nor pure inflation considerations are good arguments. But it is certainly possible with other good arguments for your need and merits, like the others suggested.

    Reply
  4. Lauren

    I negotiated a higher salary, but I didn’t get the salary I asked for (I think I got half of what I asked for, plus some one-time summer money thrown in). My dean told me that she couldn’t go higher because the upper limit for all new assistant prof hires in the college was at the final number I was offered, so you will have some deans concerned with equity in that way. But there is nothing harmed by asking, as long as you ask in the right way (I focused on the cost of living and my interest in the job: i.e., “this job is my top choice, but I am concerned by the cost of living…”).

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  5. Bill Vanderburgh

    If you have teaching as well as research experience from the postdocs, you could potentially negotiate a shorter tenure clock. That’s not quite the same as a higher starting salary, but it does get you to the post-tenure raise faster (and that could be bigger increase, at many places, than you could negotiate for a first-year salary).

    Reply
  6. You should always ask!

    Whatever you’d get in an initial offer letter is the minimum a school can offer, so always ask for more (even if you don’t have an competing offer, etc.)!
    If it’s a public university, you could go online to check their most recent hires’ salaries and ask them to match that for you.
    Some schools are unwilling to bump up initial salaries as they’d go up year by year, but they are usually more flexible with summer $, course release, and startup funds.
    Best of luck! And congratulations on the job!

    Reply
  7. Josh

    Your offer probably consists of two kinds of quantities: one-time quantities (e.g., start up funds, course releases, moving funds, iPad/laptops, etc.) and lasting quantities (e.g., salary). Deans have much more flexibility with the former than the latter. Increasing your salary by $2000 ends up costing the college $20K more after ten years (more with raises, actually). Increasing your start up funds by $2000 ends up costing them $2000 more after ten years. So you’ll have much better luck negotiating one-time quantities than lasting quantities like salary. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask for more salary; you should. But expect more significant short-term negotiation wins elsewhere.
    And just to echo others: your fancy post-docs may have helped get you the job, but probably make very little difference to what value is placed on you in negotiations.
    Good luck!

    Reply
  8. OP

    Thanks, everyone, for all of your helpful pointers! 😊

    Reply

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