On November 10th, the Career and Professional Development Center hosted a Salary Negotiation Workshop with Rob Studivan. Rob is a Senior Corporate Recruiter for eClinicalWorks; he graduated from Nichols in 2019 with his MBA and MSOL.
At this event, Rob spoke about what you should really look at in a job offer from a company. He explained how an offer with a bigger salary might not be the best one to take. He showed an offer with a base salary of $65,000 and benefits such as health insurance with no deductibles and a low premium rate and a 5%-10% raise potential. Another offer he showed was a base salary of $85,000, health insurance with a single deductible of $5,000 and a higher premium rate along with only a standard 3% raise potential. When comparing and discussing these two offers, everyone in the room preferred the first offer.
After deciding what job offer students preferred to take, they were challenged to decline the other offer. Rob made it clear that saying no is going to be uncomfortable for most people but it does need to be done, especially if the company is not the right fit for you. Rob brought two students up to the front with him and gave them a word they needed to use to decline the offer he was going to give. The first student gave a great example by politely declining the offer and saying no. The second student had the opportunity to negotiate more paid time off. He told Rob how he was going to need to take time off and Rob came back saying how much PTO they provide and asking how much the student needed and offered a few more days. With that information, the student was able to accept the offer and take time off early on.
Another thing that Rob made a point of was to always answer an offer and to do in it in a polite manner. You should never ‘ghost’ a recruiter or company, and you should always be polite in case you want to work there in the future. Everyone knows someone and there are connections everywhere – and they all talk to one another!
With all the information and advice provided to the students such as reading an offer closely and deciding which would be best for you, how to say no or negotiate an offer, and to how to decline politely, many important lessons were learned.
The CPDC Team would like to thank Rob Studivan for coming to campus and giving the students great advice on salary negotiation. Thank you to the students who attended and participated in the event.
