What to say in the salary-negotiation call for your first real job offer

You have the offer letter open in one tab and a text thread with three friends in another, all of them saying some version of "just negotiate" without telling you what that means in practice. Here is what it means in practice.

The offer number is a floor, not a ceiling

Companies build salary bands before they build job postings. A role gets approved for, say, $58,000 to $72,000, and the first number a recruiter says out loud is almost never the top of that band — it's usually the bottom third, because the recruiter's job is to close the hire at the lowest cost that still gets a yes. This isn't hostility. It's the mechanic of the job: recruiters are often evaluated partly on how far under budget they land hires. When you accept the first number without a counter, you're not being agreeable — you're handing them their KPI.

The number matters because most first-time negotiators either counter with something vague ("I was hoping for more") or something too small to register (a $2,000 bump on a $60,000 offer). Neither moves anything. What moves something is a specific number backed by a reason, delivered once, without apologizing for it.

The one number to counter with

Use 10 to 15% above the initial offer as your opening counter, unless you have hard data — a competing offer, a documented market rate for the role in your city — that says otherwise. On a $65,000 offer, that's $71,500 to $74,750. Round it to a clean number: $72,000.

This range works because it sits inside most companies' approval room without requiring a new sign-off from someone three levels up. A jump from $65,000 to $95,000 gets refused on principle, even if the market would bear it, because it forces the recruiter to escalate to someone who wasn't planning to think about your offer today. A jump from $65,000 to $72,000 usually gets handled by the person already on the phone with you.

If you have a second offer in hand, skip the percentage heuristic and use the actual number: "I have a competing offer at $76,000, and I'd rather join this team — can we get closer to that?" A real number from a real offer beats any formula.

The four sentences

Say this once, clearly, and then stop talking. Silence after a counter is not a mistake — it's the ask doing its job.

"Thank you for the offer — I'm genuinely excited about the role. Based on the scope we discussed and what similar roles are paying, I was expecting something closer to $72,000. Is there room to get there? I want to make this work."

Four sentences: gratitude, the number, the direct question, the signal that you're not walking. Nothing about your rent, your student loans, or how badly you need this — none of that is the company's problem, and bringing it up shifts the conversation from market value to sympathy, which negotiates worse, not better.

What happens if they say no

There are three real outcomes, and only one of them is actually "no."

They counter your counter. Most of the time, you'll hear something like "we can do $69,000." This is not a rejection — it's the negotiation working as designed. You can take it, or ask once more: "Could we meet at $70,500?" One more round is normal. A third round starts to cost you goodwill for a shrinking amount of money.

They hold the line on salary but move elsewhere. Signing bonus, an extra week of vacation, a three-month review with a built-in raise conversation. These have real dollar value — a $2,000 signing bonus is $2,000, full stop — but a scheduled compensation review is worth pinning down in writing, because "we'll revisit it" without a date attached usually means never.

"I understand if the base can't move right now. Could we put a compensation review at the six-month mark in writing, tied to specific goals?"

They say no and mean it. Some roles genuinely have zero room — public sector jobs on fixed pay scales, small companies with one number and no flexibility. If they hold firm after one counter and one follow-up, you have two options: accept the original number, or walk. Walking away from a first job over a $5,000 gap is rarely the right call unless you have another offer lined up; walking away from a role that dismisses your ask without a single word of explanation tells you something about how raises will go once you're inside.

The mechanic to remember: a company that negotiates with you before you've started is showing you, honestly, how it will negotiate with you after.

Open the offer letter again, write down the number 10% above what they gave you, and read the four-sentence script out loud once before the call — not to memorize it, just to hear how it sounds coming out of your mouth.