It's critical that you are always conscious of the four stages to getting the job offer. That way you will be able to adjust your job search and negotiation strategy to each of them:
- Prospecting: Finding employers who have a need or want for your talents and skills. This is why tailoring your resume and application to their needs is so critical. Applicants just want a job, they want to fill a position. You want to fill a need.
- Qualifying: Can they afford you? Committing all of your efforts, talents and skills to a company is a business, not a religion, or a social service. You can’t afford to spend time with employers who can’t afford to pay you what you’re worth.
- Desire building: Making them want you more than anybody else. If you try to close the employer on taking you to the next level before you have built desire, you are simply trying to force the employer to buy something that they don’t yet want. Trying to force the employer to hire somebody he/she does not yet want is hard work. Even if you get hired, it doesn’t lead to a satisfactory working relationship – it leads to an employer who feels tricked or pressured into hiring you.
- Closing: Getting the decision from the employer, whether that decision is to move you from a telephone interview to a face-to-face interview, or to send you for an interview with the decision maker, or to make an offer to you or get your counter offer accepted.
(See CLOSING TACTICS Card)