How to Negotiate a Job Offer in an Employer’s Market

Syn­di­cated from RecessionWire.com

By Sara Clemence

Finally, the hours of prospect­ing, sub­mit­ting resumes, attend­ing net­work­ing events, devel­op­ing new rela­tion­ships and attend­ing job fairs have paid off. A com­pany has made you an offer.

Now what?

With hir­ing activ­ity is pick­ing up, many job-seekers face a new chal­lenge: Nail­ing down a decent com­pen­sa­tion pack­age. His­tor­i­cally, hir­ing man­agers and exec­u­tives have told me that every­thing is negotiable—but what about today? Many orga­ni­za­tions have cut salaries, 401(k) matches, com­pany perks and paid over­time. They are being very con­ser­v­a­tive about adding new staff. And with the offi­cial unem­ploy­ment rate at 9.7 per­cent for August, it’s a hyper-competitive job market.

In this envi­ron­ment, you may feel like you’re lucky to get a job offer at all. But you also want to be paid fairly. So how do you cut a good deal? Fol­low these guidelines.

To read more visit www.RecessionWire.com

Time to Buy — Your Way into a Job

By Angus Loten, Recessionwire.com

If you’re look­ing for an employer or want to expand your busi­ness, now’s a good time to make a move.

Thanks to the reces­sion, there’s never been a bet­ter time to buy a small business—provided you’ve got the finan­cial where­withal. There has been a surge in the num­ber of small busi­nesses going up for sale in the past few months, but only half as many have found buy­ers com­pared to the same period last year, accord­ing to BizBuySell.com, an online small-business mar­ket­place. That means it’s a buy­ers’ mar­ket, con­ven­tional val­u­a­tions are out the win­dow and there are bargain-basement prices for investors will­ing to take a risk in a down market.

Among the small busi­nesses that have sold this year, the median sales price has dropped by about 20 per­cent to $160,000 from $200,000 last year, the site reports.

Typ­i­cally, bro­kers and mar­ket watch­ers gauge the value of these deals by divid­ing the ask­ing price for a busi­ness by its annual rev­enue or cash flow. In the past few months, these fig­ures, known as rev­enue or cash flow mul­ti­ples, have dropped dra­mat­i­cally in clos­ing prices, by between 2.5 and 8 per­cent. Until recently, both mul­ti­ples were ris­ing steadily.

To read more go to www.recessionwire.com.