Salary negotiation for a non-traditional consuting applicant

Quick background:

-Liberal Arts undergrad degree
-Went straight to a masters program in Public Policy
-During masters program, I worked close to full time at positions that are somewhat related to my current job offer.

The offer:
-I have an offer from IBM GBS, in the public sector side (which is what I'm interested in, hence the Public Policy degree).
-Offer: 70k base + 5k sign on bonus

Does this offer seem fair, or should I negotiate for more (I'm leaning towards more). My real question is how much more should I ask for. I know graduates from my program a few years ago were getting 80-90k +10-15k sign on, but the market for public sector consulting isn't as good as it used to be.

 

So you have no work experience aside from some internship type stuff but you want to negotiate a 70k base in an industry (non-banking or 'high finance') role? Don't think its going to happen. Take the 70k. You could make some off hand remark about the comp level and see what your HR person says but I don't think you really hava a leg to stand on in terms of negotiation.

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses - Henry Ford
 

The position is in DC.

As for work experience, as a graduate student, I've held a full time position at a research center for a year. I'm now working for a federal agency as a full time employee for the past 5 months, and will have a year experience there once I graduate. Both positions require a bachelors degree. So I wouldn't say I have no work experience.

 
Best Response

Just to provide some closure to this post. The very original offer was 65k with 2k signing bonus.

I called my HR rep and said I wanted to make a counter offer. She had me email her my counter and the reasoning for it. She then forwarded that to her boss. I countered with 77k base and the same signing bonus of 5k.

About 3 weeks later I got an email with a counter from them. 71k base and a 10k signing bonus. I decided to accept the offer. My guess is I've pretty much topped out the base for someone with no "real" full time experience, so they decided to sweeten the deal with a bigger signing bonus. Which sounds good to me, cuz now I can afford the 3 week European vacation I've been wanting to take.

Also, I'm not too worried about having "poisoned the well", as IBM is huge and I doubt the HR people are going to be complaining to my managers.

 

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