Job seekers spend a lot of time fretting about salary as they go on interviews and head into the negotiations between receipt and acceptance of an offer.
If you give a number that is too low when asked what your expected salary is, you may be leaving money on the table. Give a number that is unreasonably high, and you may be pricing yourself out of a good career move.
But all that fixation on salary can leave us overlooking other perks and benefits in a job offer. In fact, recruiters say that in a good job offer, salary should only account for about 70 percent of your total compensation, with the rest coming in perks and benefits.
Those perks can often be used as a negotiating chip to find a happy medium between employer and would-be-employee. In other words, salary is still king, but other benefits can contribute to your long-term happiness and make it less likely that you'll be on the market looking for something else when you realize there's more to work happiness than the bottom line.
The best time to negotiate is after you've been made an offer but before you accept a job. Some of these perks, however, are worth asking for no matter how long you've been with a company.
The key to any workplace negotiation is to be prepared. Make sure you do some research about what your company is capable of offering, and only ask for benefits you truly care about.