Should you hire a "Salary Negotiation" Coach?

I am frequently asked if either I offer, or it's worth it to hire a "salary negotiation" coach. 

While I did used to do this, I don't anymore and I'd STRONGLY recommend ever giving into it, here is why. 

I know how Compensation works, and I have access to private market data – so my old pricing model that I thought was very fair was I’d spend an hour or so looking through the market data and tapping into any internal connections I had with the company to understand their general negotiation principles. I’ve done enough that I am very confident with most large companies’ tendencies and tells and how they negotiate that I was confident in my pricing model. It was a flat fee to check the data and then a delta based on the initial offer and the final offer.

 I was once invited to a Clubhouse and explained my product offering and how I came up with the pricing. Within one month at least FIVE “salary negotiation experts” and companies came into being that had my exact model. 2 of which were from the Clubhouse room and had no experience whatsoever in HR. They just immediately saw that labeling themselves as a “compensation negotiation coach” could lead to quick money with no risk on their side.

 The truth is, with most companies expecting you to negotiate, paying a “salary negotiation coach” is just going to give you a version of my script, but without any of the market data to back it up. If they take 10% on the delta and the difference in TC is 10,000k that’s 1,000 that you just paid to someone who has absolutely no knowledge but is taking advantage of your inexperience that the company would’ve given you anyway.

 Now imagine it was $65k – (I once helped someone do that for a data engineer role) It took 4 hours of extensive market research and two calls with internal HR people to understand why there was a disconnect and why I was so confident to ask for more. That’s $6,500 out of pocket. Even with my experience and expertise, I didn’t think I deserved that much, and I settled for $3500. There are scam artists who will happily take a % of their “negotiation” efforts based on a standard script. If they don’t get you anything, there is no loss to them. If they get you something they take a cut of your money with absolutely no real information or experience to work from. Now I only do negotiation coaching by the hour with either data review, preparing the documents, or walking someone through the offer and comparing it on the market. 

Do not ever hire anyone who charges you a % of an offer for either salary negotiation or job search help. 

 There are several companies that offer their job search services for a % of your offer, or that will help you negotiate for a % of their delta – I can confidently say these are some of the biggest scam offerings and there are enough resources out there that you should never engage with these companies.