How to Negotiate Salary: A Practical Guide

What happens on the other side when you counter

I have spent about ten years in HR and recruitment, which means I have usually been somewhere inside the conversation your counter sets off. Knowing what that conversation actually is explains most of what follows.

The hiring manager normally has the last word, but it is rarely their decision alone. It is usually a dialogue between HR and the manager. And if what you are asking for sits outside the normal range, a third party joins: the rewards or compensation function, whose job is to keep pay coherent across everyone already employed.

That is the practical reason a well-argued counter moves quickly while an aggressive one stalls. You are not testing one person's generosity. You are deciding how many people have to be brought into the conversation, and how far outside the existing structure they are being asked to reach for you.

The mistake that costs the most money

Most candidates accept the first number they are offered, either from relief at getting an offer at all or from a real fear that negotiating will cost them the job. In a legitimate process it almost never does, and a calm, reasonable counter is a normal part of the conversation rather than a confrontation.

Whether there is deliberate room built into that first number varies a great deal from company to company. Some do leave space to move. But the direction of travel is against it: as pay transparency rules take hold across Europe, more employers are making a genuine opening offer based on what they have benchmarked you to, rather than a deliberately low one with negotiating room folded in. If you are dealing with one of those, a large counter is not meeting an expectation. It is asking them to walk away from a benchmark, which is a much harder thing to approve.

The financial stakes are higher than a single negotiation might suggest. A salary difference at the start of a role tends to compound through every raise and future offer that gets benchmarked against it. The five-minute conversation at offer stage is one of the highest-leverage conversations in an entire career.

What the rules now say, if you are in the EU

The shift toward benchmarked opening offers is not only a change in fashion. It has a legal driver, and it gives you two things worth knowing about.

Directive (EU) 2023/970, the pay transparency directive, gives applicants the right to receive information about the initial pay or its range for the position, based on objective and gender-neutral criteria. The directive says that information should be provided so as to allow an informed and transparent negotiation, whether in the job advert, before the interview, or otherwise. In other words, you are entitled to ask for the range, and asking is not a faux pas.

One honest caveat about timing. The deadline for member states to write this into national law was 7 June 2026, and implementation has been uneven, with a number of countries still behind. So how much of this is enforceable where you are depends on your country. The direction is settled even where the local law has not caught up, which is why more employers are already benchmarking rather than leaving negotiating room.

When it comes up, and when to raise it yourself

Never bring salary up yourself in the first interview. That conversation is usually about the work itself, and introducing money into it signals that you are focused on something other than the job.

Be ready for it anyway, because it is arriving earlier and more often than it used to. Being asked in the first conversation is now common, and the old advice to simply deflect has aged badly. Having no answer reads as unprepared, which is a worse impression than a considered range would have made.

• Prepare a researched range before the first interview, even though you do not intend to raise it. You may not get to choose when the question arrives.
• If it comes very early, it is reasonable to say you would like to understand the role better first, but follow it with your range rather than leaving the question hanging.
• Negotiating from a stated offer is still the stronger position, so let the offer come first where the process allows it.

How to counter an offer

A vague counter ("could you do a bit more?") is easy to dismiss. A specific, evidence-backed one is not.

1. Give a realistic range rather than tying yourself to a single figure. It can sit at the high end, as long as it does not put you out of the game entirely. The widespread advice to name one exact number is, from where I sit, the weaker play. It removes your room to move without buying you anything.
2. Sanity-check the range before you say it out loud. An ambitious ask is fine. An unrealistic one works against you, because it suggests you do not know your own market. Online salary tools, your trade union if you belong to one, and former colleagues in comparable roles will each give you an indication. Use more than one of them.
3. Back it with something concrete: market data for the role and location, a competing offer if you genuinely have one, or specific experience that exceeds what the role typically requires.
4. Frame it as enthusiasm, not ultimatum: "I am genuinely excited about this role. Based on my research and experience, I was hoping we could land closer to [number]. Is there room to work toward that?"
5. Stay quiet after you make the ask. Silence after a specific request is uncomfortable, and it is doing useful work. Resist the urge to fill it by immediately lowering your own number.

“The strongest negotiating position is genuine enthusiasm for the role, paired with a specific, well-supported number. Neither works as well without the other.”

Beyond base salary

If base salary genuinely cannot move, which is sometimes true at larger companies with fixed pay bands, the rest of the offer often still can.

• Signing bonus, which is frequently more flexible than base salary because it does not affect long-term pay bands.
• Equity or bonus structure, where applicable.
• Start date, additional vacation days, or a remote/flexible work arrangement.
• An earlier compensation review, for example at six months instead of the standard twelve, if the initial number cannot move but growth potential can be accelerated.

When the answer is no

Sometimes there genuinely is no room to move. Decide beforehand what you will do if that happens: walk away, accept as is, or accept while asking for a specific, scheduled review. Knowing your own answer in advance keeps the conversation calm rather than reactive if the number does not change.

A firm, polite no from a legitimate employer at this stage is not a red flag on its own. Regularly rescinding offers over reasonable negotiation attempts is rare and, when it happens, is itself useful information about the company.