By Jamie Scarborough
Yesterday I spent the afternoon role-playing with MBA students enrolled in the Sauder School of Business (UBC). These soon-to-be-MBA graduates were looking to stretch their negotiation muscles as they selected one of 5 employment offer scenarios and reasoned with me (playing their future employer) on areas like salary, benefits and start-dates. It struck me as a really interesting exercise because there is so much nuance – especially for sales people – in striking the right balance between ensuring you get a fair offer, and building rapport with your future boss (you don’t want to negotiate your way out of the offer or into a bad long-term employment relationship!). We have not tackled this topic on salestalentagency.com yet, so I will definitely be writing some advice on Negotiating Your Employment Offer in the next 2 weeks and will add to our Candidate Resources section. I was REALLY impressed with some of the MBA students: smart, enthusiastic, eager to get their careers started… A couple really stood out as future Top Rookies, so I will be following them closely and will look to introduce them to an employer or 2.
I want to thank Ian Christie (a former Monster alumni) for the invitation, as well as Holly Langland (Manager of MBA Careers at Sauders) for being such a great organizer and host. For more information on the Sauder School of Business, click here.