How to handle salary negotiations for a new job

I do not like job ads that insist on getting a salary request along with a resume, and I usually ignore them. I figure they're cheap.

In an interview with a potential employer, however, the subject of money will come up and the employee wannabe will feel at a disadvantage. Penelope Trunk, founder of Brazen Careerist, a professional social network for young people, offers advice on dealing with this situation. If you're asked how much money you want, don't answer, she says.

You have no idea how much this position is worth to the company. The person interviewing your knows the firm’s bottom line, so he or she they should tell you how much the position is worth to the business.  So you politely say that you’d like them to decide how much the position is worth to them and offer that wage.

The first person to give a number sets the benchmark. If you set it too low, you’ll never know. If you set it high, they’ll tell you. But you don’t want to risk going low.

Any interviewer who will not give you the first number is not being fair. They can give you a ballpark for how much the position pays. They have a budget. No position is approved without a ballpark budget. So get that number before you give a number. If the interviewer insists on you giving a number, ask yourself if you want to work for someone who wants an unfair advantage from the beginning.

She offers ten ways to say this here.

Sites the help you get hired

U.S. News runs down several.

Facebook: OK, this is more of an app than a site. But this site allows you to mix work with pleasure and mimic more natural and traditional styles of networking. Presumably, you have hundreds of friends all over the country and most of them have listed their current and past employers in their profiles, or "Info" tabs. If you use an application like that offered by SimplyHired, you'll be able to search for jobs where your friends work and ping them for extra information on the company, or ask for the name of the person who's hiring so you can contact them directly.

Careers at Alltop: This aggregator of topical RSS feeds puts an army of well-known career bloggers right in front of you. Career expert Anita Bruzzese might give you a lesson in how to network without hating it. Career coach Marty Nemko will teach you how to cope with self-loathing. The folks at Careerbuilder's Work Buzz blog will keep you updated on companies that are hiring. While you're there, you might check out other Alltop pages relevant to your work.

Fistful of Talent: Reading the posts on this blog is like listening to a lunchroom full of human resources professionals, hiring managers, and recruiters talk about their likes, dislikes, and strategies. You'll learn things like how recruiters find candidates online, the kinds of questions they like, or their worries about the recruiting process. Sample tip: "A while ago, [SimplyHired] instituted a LinkedIn button. It used to be hidden under their 'more' options, but now it has a prominent display at the top of your job search results. So if I run a search for a recruiting job and connect my LinkedIn network I can quickly see who I 'know' at all of the companies that return posting results. And guess what? Now there's a Facebook button."