Salary Negotiations

In today’s Covid environment employers are risk averse and the steady rise of guarantees has stopped and is being reversed in many areas.
Many factors are involved in getting a desirable salary with a new job, but it’s important to negotiate the best salary right from the start. Only 57% of physicians feel they are fairly compensated for their work, according to Medscape’s Physician Compensation report.

Male physicians are more likely to negotiate for a higher salary than are women. Women physicians, when asked about their skill level with negotiating, reported a mixed range of skills; 28% of women said they were skillful or very skillful at negotiating for higher salary; 33% said they were neither skillful nor unskillful; and 39% said they were unskillful or very unskillful.

Besides salary, physicians may want to modify many other elements of an employment contract. Employers will sometimes accept a limited number of changes that will keep prospective employees happy, although it’s tougher in highly competitive markets to get them to agree to changes.