Capitulation, Not Negotiation | Career Angles

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As I watch the news about the negotiations about extending benefits for unemployed workers, I’m given the idea by the participants that one side seems to be pushing for capitulation, rather than negotiation. I don’t know that that’s true but there are little cues that I’m picking up on that suggests that.

Entering negotiations requires that you be clear about what success looks like and what failure looks like.

I remember from my time in recruiting which is very much a sales job that I felt a lot of pressure by the two participants that I was working with, the job applicant who had received the offer and the employer who had extended it, to get the other one to give in.

Most of the time, what I was trying to do was to get each of them to move an inch or two closer to one another rather than digging in their heels. Sometimes I was able to do it in subtle ways that made each party believe that they hadn’t given in to the other.

For employers, they want to feel as though they were all-powerful; for the potential hire, they didn’t want to feel taken advantage of.

I remember one very painful negotiation, painful for the employer and painful for me where a potential hire…