Negotiation skills

Q. Discuss a time when you have had to negotiate.

Q. When have you had to bring someone else around to your way of thinking?

Somewhat linked to your ability to deal with conflict is your ability to negotiate (both can involve working with others to achieve a compromise), and this ability can be essential throughout your career. It’s important if you’re a lawyer negotiating contractual clauses or settlement agreements, a consultant negotiating deadlines, a director in an investment bank negotiating fees with a client, a start-up negotiating costs with suppliers, prospective employees negotiating the terms of their employment, and so on.

How can you demonstrate negotiation skills? 

“Negotiating” can mean many different things. It might mean trying to secure a price reduction or better terms, but it can also mean bringing someone around to your way of thinking or persuading someone to pursue a particular course of action. Above all, it involves trying to achieve a compromise. With that in mind, reflect upon your prior experiences and try to identify times where you have worked to achieve a compromise or influenced a particular decision. For example, have you negotiated the price or terms of corporate sponsorship for a club or society, or have you negotiated the price of a team’s kit, equipment rental or access to facilities?

When discussing your ability to negotiate, perhaps highlight some of the techniques you used to achieve success. For example, you could highlight that you took a cooperative and collaborative approach, with the aim of negotiating “with”, not “against” the other side. An approach that focused on interests rather than positions and power tactics, in order to draw out areas of commonality and compatibility. As part of this, perhaps you asked open questions to promote active discussions – and listened attentively so that you could try to understand where the other side was coming from – in order to source the information needed to propose solutions that everyone could get behind. This kind of example could help to show your awareness that in a negotiation, information is king.