Hi Muneer!

You're probably not comfortable bragging about yourself—most people aren't. That's usually a good thing, but there are times when it's essential.

The most critical and valuable step when negotiating a job offer is sending your counter offer. And, aside from the actual amount you're counter offering, the most important component of your counter offer is the "Why I'm awesome" paragraph.

The magical "Why I'm awesome" paragraph

Here's an example:

You might have noticed that it's a really long paragraph. Compare that paragraph to all the paragraphs in this email and you'll see it's longer than any of them.

It's also really braggy. In almost any other context, you probably wouldn't want to talk about yourself this much because it could be annoying.

But in this context, it serves three very specific purposes.

1. Making your case for your counter offer

When you counter offer, it helps to remind the recruiter or hiring manager how you'll add value to their team. In particular, you want to remind them that you'll help solve real problems and achieve real goals.

This paragraph is how you do that just before you tell them how much you're asking for. Here's how the email should read:

"I appreciate your offer although I would like to talk about the base salary. The reason I want to talk about the base salary is that I'm particularly valuable to your team—here's how. And here's the base salary that would make me comfortable."

Reminding them that you'll be a valuable asset to the team will make them more amenable to adjusting your offer to the higher end of their budget.

2. Providing a forwardable summary of your value

A lot of the time, the person you're negotiating with will not be the final financial decision maker. That means the recruiter or hiring manager may need to go back to Finance or someone else to get approval for a higher salary.

When they do that, the ultimate decision maker will likely ask "Why?" because they'll need some justification for paying you more than they initially planned.

The recruiter will either have to make up their own explanation or they can just pass your summary along by forwarding your email. Your summary will almost always be better than theirs, so you're the one who can make the best case for additional salary.

3. Overwhelming them with value

But why is this paragraph so long?

Because you don't actually want them to read all of it. You want them to start reading about why you're awesome, get half way through the paragraph, roll their eyes and say, "Ok! I get it, you're awesome! What's it gonna take to get you on the team?!"

Then they might skip down to your actual counter offer, already thinking about how they can make it happen.

This isn't just theoretical

Let's wrap up with a short quote from a client who was a little skeptical it would be effective:

That HR rep approved an additional $10,000 base salary for this client because of that one paragraph. It's powerful, and it works.

So when you're asking for more, make sure you include a strong description of the value you bring to the role.

How to write the "why I'm awesome" paragraph

Ok, but how do you write this paragraph?

This is a key step in the counter offer process. It's extremely important, but not complicated because you're just summarizing things you already know from the job description and your interviews so far.

To bolster your value-based case for your counter offer, you need to articulate why you are a uniquely good fit for this particular role.

First, you'll think about the main ways that you will bring value to this role. Think back on your interviews so far, and specifically the things that seemed important with respect to how well aligned you are with this role—what were the things that most resonated with your interviewers, your hiring manager, the recruiter you have been talking to.

All you need is a few (3–4) bullet points describing how you will bring value to this role and what impact that value will have on your new team and the company writ large.

For each bullet, there are two main components:

• The skill or experience you have that is valuable to this team or to the company in general.
• How that skill or experience will benefit the team by either helping accomplish its goals or by helping overcome challenges they’re currently facing.

So you'll write out three or four bullet points that containt each of those components. Here are some examples:

Examples

1. I have 10 years of experience with algorithms applied to voice controlled devices, and I will bring that expertise to this project to help accelerate the time to market significantly.
2. I have five years of experience building internal tooling that was used by our entire organization, so I will help the team build customer-facing tooling and dashboards that are easy to use, and help facilitate customer discovery of new, useful features.
3. I’ve been working in Agile organizations for 10 years and am a certified Scrum Master, so I can help the team implement Agile methodology and show the team exactly what to focus on and what to avoid.

When you're finished writing up the bullet points, you mash them up into a paragraph with some light editing. And now you have a solid case for your counter offer.

Sometimes it's ok to talk about why you're awesome, and this is one of those times!

All the best

Josh