Has anyone had any experience of negotiating a higher starting salary at Deloitte (experienced hire)? They’ve only matched my current salary which is slightly disappointing. I’m very interested in working for the firm but believe they should make my switch worthwhile financially.I explained this and they said there’s probably nothing they can do. Do they have a policy not to negotiate?Any advice on how to walk the fine line of being assertive without upsetting them would be appreciated.

It depends on your background as to whether they'll move. Are you moving from Industry or from another consulting fi0rm? If the latter, what firm? Also what level, Senior Cons, Manager ....

You report Deloitte said "there’s probably nothing they can do".I presume you mean HR or your recruitment agency.HR have no interest in you, only in the process, at such a large co. A basic rule of wage negotiations is to talk only to the person who has the power to set / change your salary. If you have been offered a job, someone in your business area likes you and wants you to join. That person (or their manager) is who you need to speak to.If you are willing to stay where you are rather than be taken for a mug (so to speak), you are in a strong negotiating position. If you went through an agency, it might be worth calling them and getting them to reiterate your demands to Deloitte, just to push the point as much as possible.As a matter of interest how do they know what your current salary is? Did you tell them and, if so, did you inflate it at all?Good luck

Is it 'ok' not to disclose current salary details to firms when they press you? Whats the story here?

Being genuine can work here. Are you actually prepared to turn the offer down. If so, turn the offer down and see if they come back with something better. In terms of dealing with the recruiter, you should have a handle by now as to whether the recruiter has any influence or is prepared to fight your corner. Make a judgement call here. If it is a reasonably senior role, you should by now have a direct line to your potential manager and you can play this card as a last resort. Also, assess the company. A few years ago, when the market got tougher and redundancies were commonplace, it was those who had pushed too hard at the start who lost their jobs. Realistically, things are looking quite stable now so if you want this to be a longer term option, you need to push through any channel you realistically can. You need to understand the system. Sometimes ,you cannot increase the basic salary because this would take you into a different grade but you can secure various add-ons (sign on, guaranteed bonus, additional allowances of various kinds, hardship subsidy for excessive travel...). You should have an inside track by now through which you can find out the gradings and understand what can be achieved.

you may want to check out the following thread 21612: underwhelming offer

Bit of a deviation here, but what would be the deal if you had been offered a job somewhere through a recruitment company, and turned it down for whatever reason (salary not good enough for example), only to apply again off your own back later on? Surely this would mean that you could negotiate a considerably higher salary as there would be no fees to pay. Do recruiters have some kind of protection against things like this? I’d imagine they must have, but what if it was for a very similar job a month later?

The usual contract specifies that if the company employs anyone who they interviewed/whose CV they reviewed as part of the recruiter-led campaign within the following 12 months, then it is a recruiter-hire at the standard rates. This applies whether or not the person is employed in the post originally advertised.

Responding to "Mike Control's" addition to the original question, recruitment agencies will always have in their T & C s a clause that means a success fee is payable should you be hired within X months of them introducing you, regardless of whether this is for the original role you were put forward for. So your approach is probably not going to work unless a year has passed since you were offered a position through the agency. At which point you'll probably have to go through the whole interviewing saga again.On a related point, this isn't going to give you much negotiation room either. Conceding to a higher salary demand lands the employer with an ongoing higher wage bill - and runs the risk of others at your level learning you've negotiated a "special deal". If they've saved £15k in recruitment agency fees you might be able to negotiate a modest signing on bonus, but steering clear of recruitment agencies isn't going to put you in a stronger position for negotiating your actual starting salary. In fact quite the opposite - recruitment agents will know the range of salaries the employer is prepared to pay to get the right person, and as their commission is directly related to your starting salary they are incentivised to help you secure the position at as high a salary as possible.As regards the initial post - all the major firms have salary ranges that they pay for any given level within the firm. Research what these are and you'll then know if there's room for negotiation or not. If you're already at the upper end of the range then Deloitte couldn't hire you without essentially bringing you in at a higher level than you were originally being hired for.Hope this helpsTony RestellTop-Consultant.com

Tony as ever makes a good point. There is a lot of talk about recruiters' fees and the perception that you can get more money if you go direct. The only instance where this might apply is if you are on a day rate contract but even then a good recruiter will give you the 3rd party endorsement to get your rate higher. IN terms of permanent hires, the recruiter's fee is quite insignificant when it comes to the overall cost of hiring you, not least because it is a one off fee. Only in very exceptional cases will a firm worry too much about a recruitment fee and this would certainly not be the case with a major employer - they spend more on stamps!

Another endorsement of headhunters -- I've always managed to negotiate a better salary via a headhunter than I could on my own, despite the fact that the employer had to pay a fee.

This is not always true but a lot of the criticism of Head-Hunters/Recruiters comes from grads or grads with a couple of years of experinece, who are less good a sniffing out the good from the bad and less marketable as candidates. This tends to means that they end up dealing with weaker recruiters or being lower priorities for the better ones.

A good headhunter will know how and when to push back on an offer for a candidate, and when to advise the candidate that pushing for more in the offer will jeopardise the offer itself. It's not really a matter of will they, more a matter of can they do so effectively, and gauge when it is or is not appropriate to do so.