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Along with the thrill of being offered a contract to your favored companies, comes numerous uncertainties. What do these contracts mean? How do I negotiate for more favorable terms? Am I being underpaid? Will I be compromising a great deal of my personal time for the company? To address these common queries and provide a greater insight into generating an ideal contract, the Business Career Development Committee (BizCare) invited student speaker, Shi Yu, and Tech Recruiter from StashAway, Joshua Yap, for the HCS “Planning Ahead” Webinar on 8 February 2023.
Student speaker Shi Yu shared various insights into what we should and should not do when receiving a contract upon the offer. He shared key pointers on what the prospects should take note of and provided detailed examples of real life contracts for a better visualization for the participants. The said examples defined significant terminologies and deepened the participant’s understanding about how to read contracts better along with its relevant terms.
Mr. Joshua provided further insights into how students prospecting for careers can adopt a more strategic way to go about understanding the contracts offered. Knowing that most of the participants are actively involved in career prospecting and finding jobs, be it internship or full-time, our focus will mainly be targeted towards the salary they offer. Mr Joshua advised that we should reach the right compromise by doing what we love and also to negotiate for the best salary. Platforms such as Glassdoors might not always provide the most accurate information on monthly salary as much of the data have already included bonuses and not merely the actual base pay.
Tips provided to students regarding answering the question of expected salary during an interview will be to have an internal salary range for ourselves based on different criteria: (1) our lowest possible figure, (2) our representative figure - how irreplaceable we are to the company, (3) our ideal figure, (4) opportunities for growth/promotion for the company as well as (5) be direct and polite when asking the recruiter what their existing range is for the role offered. Transparency was also one of the key pointers mentioned by Mr Joshua especially when negotiating with recruiters about the pay.
These tips and advice from the guest and student speaker will prove to be essential information to students when they reach the interview stage of discussing the expected salary as well as reading the contractual terms when a specific position is offered. This is especially useful as these aspects are not typically taught in class and many of us might be confused as to how to approach the whole situation.
Post-Panel Opinions from the Audience
“The sharing was extremely insightful as we had a taste of what real hiring managers look out for when we go through the hiring process. In addition I gained valuable knowledge about questions that are harder to ask such as pay increments and working hours. These topics can sometimes be challenging to bring up especially when you are trying to create a good impression. The sharing by the speakers allowed me to have a better understanding of my rights as an employee as well as what to do and what to avoid doing when applying for a job.” ~ Irvine, Y1 BBA