OK sure, jobs are scarce but you can and should know how to negotiate salary in an employers market. Skeptical? Good, keep reading. First and foremost, you absolutely must know what your skills and experience level are worth on the open market. A quick salary survey will shed some light on where you're at on pay-scale.

Once you have a good idea of the FMV (fair market value) of your job title, skill set and experience level then you should devise a salary negotiation strategy, based on how well your employment background maps to the job you're interested in. In an ideal world, if you're a perfect match for a position and you have a niche skill set, you can charge a premium for your services. For everyone else, you absolutely must have a cutoff, whereas you don't invest time in applying to jobs where your background is below that cutoff percentage. Let's say, for example your cutoff is 70%, which means you must meet 7 of 10 job requirements to consider that job as a viable employment opportunity.

Now that you have established your cutoff, you should set up a graded scale to measure the importance of important job attractiveness aspects and job requirements based on job's attractiveness and how well you align with the requirements. For example, commute time, vacation time, healthcare benefits, stock awards & incentives, bonuses and company culture are more of the attractive elements of your prospective employer. As for the requirements, examples include - veteran experience in your field, entry level experience, mid career level experience, work schedule requirements, travel requirements, out of pocket expense management requirements, education requirements and certification requirements. Put this all together and you have a pretty good lens on how well the company looks to you and how well you meet the requirements of the job.

When you have this altogether in your nice neat little package than you are best positioned for salary negotiations, either directly with an employer or with a recruiter. I can't stress the following enough. Employers and recruiters want to know why you think you should be paid what you are asking; if you can't explain why in an articulate manner than you are shooting yourself in the foot. Also, keep in mind that employers know the woes of salary low balling and simply won't get involved in that. At the same time, everybody likes a discount right? We all do. So if you aren't a 100% match, which most candidates aren't, then you should be open to backing up from your salary expectations within the range you established, as described above. Also, be aware that you need to know your salary negotiation strategy down packed BEFORE you start engaging with recruiters and employers directly, since salary negotiations typically take place on the front end. The reason being is that an employer doesn't want to get sold on you during a job interview only to learn their budget can't accommodate your salary expectations.

In short, negotiating salary in an employer's market is something that you have nothing to be fearful of. In fact, you absolutely must know how to handle your own, when salary questions come to the table. As mentioned above, if you know the FMV (fair market value) of your skills and have an job match scale, that will provide the fundamentals to holding your on with salary talks. Now, when you get the job, don't forget my Starbucks cup of White Chocolate Mocha either!