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Don’t sign the dotted line just yet… if the salary figure on your offer letter seems too low, it probably is. Fifty-eight percent of hiring managers say they leave some negotiating room when extending initial offers, according to a recent survey by CareerBuilder.com. The survey, titled "Paycheck 2005," was conducted from August 10 to August 22, 2005 of more than 875 hiring managers.
Most hiring managers are accommodating when a candidate asks for a better offer, the survey found. Nearly six-in-ten say they will extend a new offer once, and one-in-ten will extend a new offer twice or more if they really want the candidate. Thirty percent of hiring managers say the first offer is final.
"Attempting to negotiate a better offer is almost always in a candidate’s best interest," said Richard Castellini, Vice President of Consumer Marketing and Senior Career Advisor for CareerBuilder.com. "In fact, nearly one-in-ten hiring managers say they think less of a candidate who accepts the first offer. Salary negotiations demonstrate a candidate’s determination, persistence and recognition of the value he/she brings to an employer."
Castellini offers these tips for helping candidates negotiate a better job offer:

• Prove your worth. Thirty-four percent of hiring managers say highlighting specific accomplishments and results is the most convincing way for candidates to negotiate a better offer.
• Have strong references. Nearly one-in-three hiring managers say they consider a candidate’s references first in salary negotiations. Be sure the former employers and co-workers on your reference list are prepared to give glowing reports of your work.
• Know the market. One-in-ten employers say knowing average salaries for your position and market is the best way to get an edge. Online salary sites, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and industry Web sites are great places to start.
• Leverage your position with care. Thirteen percent of hiring managers say showing an offer from another company and a willingness to walk away is an effective way to negotiate. But be careful with this tactic. It has serious potential to backfire and cost you the job completely.

Survey Methodology
The survey, "Paycheck 2005," was conducted from August 10 to August 22, 2005. Methodology used to collect survey responses totaling more than 875 hiring managers for this study involved selecting a random sample of comScore Networks panel members. These Web Panel members were approached via an e-mail invitation, which asked them to participate in a short online survey. The results of this survey are statistically accurate to within +/- 3.31 percentage points (19 times out of 20).
About CareerBuilder.com
CareerBuilder.com is the nation’s largest online job network with more than 20 million unique visitors and over 1 million jobs. Owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:GCI), Tribune Company (NYSE:TRB), and Knight Ridder, Inc. (NYSE:KRI), the company offers a vast online and print network to help job seekers connect with employers. CareerBuilder.com powers the career centers for more than 700 partners that reach national, local, industry and niche audiences. These include more than 165 newspapers and leading portals such as America Online and MSN. More than 30,000 of the nation’s top employers take advantage of CareerBuilder.com’s easy job postings, 13 million-plus resumes, Diversity Channel and more. Millions of job seekers visit the site every month to search for opportunities by industry, location, company and job type, sign up for automatic e-mail job alerts, and get advice on job hunting and career management. For more information about CareerBuilder.com products and services, visit www.careerbuilder.com.

In honor of the holiday season, I give you my new favorite Geekmas Carol, The Twelve Days of InDesign. Click the links to re-visit some of your favorite posts from 2008 (or discover some you might have missed).

Feel free to sing along!

On the twelfth day of InDesign, my guru gave to me,

Twelve Podcast Transcripts

Podcast 85 Transcript
Podcast 84 Transcript
Podcast 83 Transcript
Podcast 82 Transcript
Podcast 81 Transcript
Podcast 80 Transcript
Podcast 79 Transcript
Podcast 78 Transcript
Podcast 77 Transcript
Podcast 76 Transcript
Podcast 75 Transcript
Podcast 74 Transcript

Eleven Burning Questions

How do I do that?
Can You Turn Off Color Management?
What If InCopy Went Away?
What the Heck is Going On in These Text Frames?
Why Don’t Arrow Keys Work Next to Blank Fields?
Why Can’t I Get Dot Leaders to Line Up?
CS4’s Application Frame: Yea or Nea?
What’s My Resolution?
How Can I Align Double Digits in a Numbered List?
Need to Build a Calendar in InDesign?
Should You Use Mac or Windows?
Which Preferences Are Application Wide?

Ten Keyboard Shortcuts

InDesign CS4 Keyboard Shortcuts Posters Available
Make a New Document Fast with a Keyboard Shortcut
InDesign1200 Brings Shortcuts to Life
Navigate to Page Objects with Keyboard Shortcuts
No, You Can’t Use F Keys for Style Shortcuts
Scale Graphic and Frame in CS3 with Shortcuts
Activate Last Used Field Shortcut
Control Panel Keyboard Shortcut
Keyboard Shortcut for [None] Character Style
Top 20 Command/Control Clicks

Nine Tasty Text Tips

5 Cool Things You Can Do with GREP Styles
Type Any Unicode Character You Want in InDesign
Nested versus Next
The Case of the Missing Characters
Yes Virginia, There is a Translate Feature
Auto Numbers and Bullets Pick up Local Formatting
Sequential Numbering Inside Paragraphs
All Caps Isn’t Really Uppercase
Small Caps vs. OpenType All Small Caps

Eight Awesome Font Facts

CS4 Font Installation
Creative Suite 4 Bundled Font List Posted
What’s The Deal On Font Auto Activation?
CID Identity H Fonts are Back?
Preview Applied Fonts
Font Priority in InDesign (What’s It Really Using?)
Applying Expert Fonts to Numerals with Nested Styles
InDesign’s Font Manager

Seven Posts on Printing

Adobe Creative Suite 4 Print Guide Available
RGB to CMYK (.0)
Printing Documents 2-Up (or n-up) on a Page in InDesign
Screen Artifacts on Transparent PSDs in Exported PDFs Can Be Deceiving…Most of the Time.
Preventing 4-color Blacks in PDFs
Viewing Transparencide
Set a Swatch to Overprint

Six Tricks For Layouts

How to Mirror a Layout
Merging Multiple Text Frames Into One
Move Everything From One Layer to Another
Auto-Reflowing Images in a Grid
Transform a Frame Into a Grid of Frames
Setting Inline Object Offset Numerically

Five Goodies, Free

Free Guide to InDesign Special Characters
Free InDesign Video Tutorials
Free Selection to PDF Script from Auckland
New Free Tip of the Day Plug-in from Blatner and DTP Tools
Free Layout Zones Add-On is Incredible Productivity Tool

Four Posts With “Sighs”

Typesetting Math in InDesign
Amazon.com Leaks CS3 Information
Leopard 10.5.3 Fixes Some Navigation Services Crashes
The Case of the Disappearing Text

Three Angry Rants

The Useless Drop Shadow Button
Don’t Use PICT. Please.
The Gradient Panel Is Such a Drag

Two Funny Films

Taking InDesign on Holiday
InDesign Music Video, by Johnny Encore and the Acrobats

and A Search Engine That Actually Works!

All in all that’s 78 posts, which is less than one-quarter of 361 (and counting) great posts from 2008. So the search engine truly is the gift that keeps on giving.

Happy holidays to all! May your days be merry and bright, and may all your kernings be tight!

How many times have you found yourself in this situation? You’re talking to a potential client about a project. She likes your ideas, you like her. It seems like a go. The conversation turns to compensation and comes to a screeching halt. Many creative professionals wither at this point because they’re not sure if they should set a set a price or ask “What’s your budget?”
Most negotiation experts agree: Nothing so determines the outcome of a negotiation as who makes the opening bid.
Bold Moves
In most cases, setting your price is to your advantage. A well-prepared, confident opening demand sends the message that you’ve done your homework and makes it clear you’re a professional who knows how to play the business game.
However, if you’re going to go first, you have to get it right. A ridiculously low offer may indicate a sense of urgency, and the prospect will smell either desperation or ineptitude. If your offer is too high, it sends a signal that you don’t understand market value or that you have an inflated sense of yourself. Either way, an ill-conceived offer can be perceived as insulting and can stop a negotiation in its tracks.
Another adverse effect of a poor opening offer is that it tends to invite an insulting response, which can polarize the transaction. To continue negotiating after this, you’ll have to retract your original offer. You’ll lose face and your prospect is likely to become less flexible as well.
In some circumstances, you might choose to let the prospect make the first offer. If you suspect the prospect has set a budget that’s higher than the fair market value, why not let her take the first stab at a dollar figure? You can also gain a lot of information by allowing the prospect to go first. Her bid will give you an idea of the company’s starting point, leaving you room to negotiate up without taking a large risk.
But in most cases, it’s a mistake to wait for the other guy to set a price. A competent opening proposal creates powerful psychological and strategic advantages. It puts you in the driver’s seat for the entire negotiation, and it provides a strategic advantage by allowing you to draw the first line marking the “reasonable ballpark.”
As High As Possible
In business school, one of the most commonly taught maxims is this: “The negotiated settlement is quite often approximately halfway between the first two reasonable offers.”
The key, then, is to set your reasonable offer as high as possible. Say you have a print project that includes a number of brochures and collateral sales materials. Because you’ve done your due diligence and proper estimating, you know that your reserve point (the point at which you will go no lower) is $10,000. Your prospect has a reserve point also, at which she’ll go no higher. Of course, unless you have inside information, you don’t know that reserve point.
Because you’re both experienced professionals, you know the fair market value for the job is somewhere between $13,000 and $18,000.
Your choices:
1. Start with your reserve price ($10,000) with the hopes that the low price will entice a quick yes. Bad move. You have no negotiating room should the prospect want to negotiate. More importantly, you’ve signaled that you don’t value you own time and expertise, or you don’t know the fair market value of your work. You may ultimately receive only $10,000, but it shouldn’t be because of a first offer.
2. Bid at the low end of the fair market value ($13,000). Still not a great move. Again, you afford yourself little negotiating room and you’re not instilling confidence in your counterpart. However, there may be times to be price-aggressive in a negotiation:

• You’re just starting out in the business and you feel you must compete on price.
• You desperately want this client for the long-term and consider this project a loss leader. (But be aware that you may be setting a low price structure for the entire relationship.)
• You know what reputable competitors have bid for the same job and you know you have to competitive.

3. Bid at the high end of the fair market value ($18,000). The downside: You’ll probably never get paid at the high end of fair market value as the negotiation will likely knock the price down a few thousand dollars.
4. Bid significantly higher than the fair market value ($25,000). Unless you’ve received clear signals that money is no object, this is a hard position because it leaves little room for your negotiating partner to maneuver. And because you’re way beyond fair market value, clients may think you have an inflated sense of self or disrespect for the client’s budget.
5. Bid slightly higher than the fair market value ($20,000). It’s modestly higher (11 percent) than the fair market value but not insultingly so. It shows confidence on your part but leaves room to negotiate a settlement within the parameters of the fair market value.
If you choose #5, you’ve set the opening demand above fair market value, so an insultingly low counter bid of $10,000 is unlikely. A client who’s good at negotiating will counter offer at $13,000 or perhaps $15,000.
If you figure that the negotiated settlement will most likely be the difference between your $20,000 offer and the client’s response of $13,00 to $15,00, you’ll end up with a compensation of somewhere between $16,500 and $17,500.
Now imagine if you had let the client start the negotiation with a bid of $11,000 and you went through the same process. Your counter offer would have been $16,000 or $18,000, and the final negotiated settlement (splitting the difference) would have been somewhere between $13,000 and $14,000.
By making the bold move of starting the negotiation, you came out ahead some $3,500 to $4,500. More importantly, you’ve created a win-win situation. You and your client both have reason to believe you negotiated well, you’ve remained within the boundaries of fair market value, and you maintained mutual respect.
Not every negotiation is as clear cut, but the dictum nearly always remains true: Don’t be afraid to start the bidding and do so from a position of strength. You can drop you price later if need be, but don’t sell yourself short from the start by giving the power of price to someone else.

Listen in your browser: InDesignSecrets-147.mp3 (15.4 MB, 27:27 minutes)

• Newsbits!
  • New Social Media sharing links on InDesignSecrets.com
  • Catch AM’s Hardcore InDesign workshop at the HOW Design Conference in June
  • AM is talking EPUB at the Chicago InDesign User Group next week
  • Print & ePublishing Conference: Larger, and new sessions added
• InDesign CS 5.5: Why is it important for Adobe? What’s new?
• Moving custom InDesign settings between computers
• Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: 6-Up
  

In our last column we discussed some of the important extra features you need to consider when choosing a camera — secondary features that make shooting easier. Now we’re going to take a look at some of the design characteristics that you should consider, as well as some of the extra, “frillier” features that you might see different vendors proffering.
Camera Design and Viewfinder
You should already have given some thought to the size and design of your ideal camera. Do you need the flexibility and better image quality of a larger SLR? Or do you need a small, pocketsize camera to ensure that you’ll always have your camera with you?
If you’re now trying to decide between a few cameras with similar features, then considering some essential design characteristics will help you make the next cut.
Obviously, a camera should be comfortable to hold and provide easy access to essential controls. One of the most important basic design features to consider is the camera’s viewfinder. Most point-and-shoot style cameras offer both an optical viewfinder and an LCD viewing screen.
Unfortunately, most vendors don’t put a lot of effort into their optical viewfinders. As such, the typical optical viewfinder will not provide any display of the cameras settings, and will most likely only show about 85 percent of your actual scene. (By optical viewfinder, we mean the simple rangefinder viewfinders provided by most point-and-shoot cameras. The true, through-the-lens viewfinders provided by an SLR are not susceptible to the problems discussed here.) This means that your final image will have a much larger crop — will show more of the scene — than you saw in your viewfinder, while shooting. In addition to creating extra post-production work, this means that you’re effectively throwing out 15 percent of the pixels your camera is capturing. After spending all that time fretting over how much resolution you need, having your viewfinder crop 15 percent of the image away is a bit frustrating. In addition, optical viewfinders don’t always provide terrific clarity nor do they show the effects of any lens extensions or filters you might be using.
An LCD viewfinder, on the other hand, usually provides 99-100 percent coverage of your scene, displays the effects of any extensions or filters, and provides comprehensive feedback of all of the camera’s settings. However, LCD screens can be difficult or impossible to see in direct sunlight, unless they’re exceptionally bright. Some LCD screens use trans-reflective technology (which uses reflected ambient light instead of a backlight to brighten the screen) or anti-reflective coatings to improve bright light performance, but even these screens can be compromised when shooting outdoors. (In addition to problematic bright-light shooting, LCD screens can also be difficult to use in very dark situations — the image presented on-screen will simply be black.)
Because each system has drawbacks, the ideal solution is to have both optical and LCD viewfinders. Very tiny cameras, though, usually don’t have room for an optical viewfinder and so will only provide an LCD screen.
Whatever arrangement your candidate cameras have, you’ll want to spend some time evaluating their viewfinder options. Obviously, there are differences in the way you use an LCD and optical viewfinder. If you prefer holding a camera up to your face to block out the world while you’re shooting, then you’ll want to lend more weight to the optical viewfinder. If you appreciate the flexibility of an LCD viewfinder — the ability to shoot over your head, or at waist level, for example — then you’ll want to carefully consider LCD quality, and the construction of its screen (is it fixed, or positioned on a rotating mount).
Today many cameras, especially cameras with telephoto lenses, offer electronic viewfinders — essentially an eyepiece viewfinder with a little LCD screen in it instead of an optical system. These systems are basically the same type of viewfinders that you find on a video camera, and they offer many of the advantages of an LCD screen viewfinder — good scene coverage, and thorough status displays.
Unfortunately, most of these mechanisms are not very good, offering poor detail, and an image that freezes when the camera is focusing. If you’re considering a camera with an electronic eyepiece viewfinder, be certain to try it out thoroughly on both wide-angle scenes and those with fine detail, to assess whether or not you can work with it.
Although LCD viewfinders can provide a lot of detailed information about the camera’s status, having to turn on and look at the LCD screen can be a bit of a hassle if all you want to know is how many exposures remain on your card. So, a separate LCD status display can be very handy. Since very small cameras usually don’t have room for a second status LCD, they’ll use their main LCD screen to display the camera’s current settings.
Shooting Performance
There are many different characteristics that contribute to a camera’s overall performance, and you’ll want to consider each to determine if the camera is going to be able to keep up with your shooting habits, or if you’re going to be frustrated by missed shooting opportunities.
The most frustrating performance problem is shutter lag — a delay between the time you press the shutter release and the time when the camera actually captures an image. Shutter lag is much improved on newer-era cameras, but a bad lag can still cause you to miss shots. Pay particular attention to the camera’s shutter response when testing. (You’ll want to be certain you’re using the shutter release properly, a topic we’ll discuss in a future column.)
After shooting, a camera needs to do a lot of computation to process the image and store it on the media card. Most cameras offer a memory buffer that allows the camera to stash away a few images for processing, while you continue to shoot. But, if you overrun this buffer, your camera will be hung up with processing chores, leaving it incapable of shooting new images. Buffer size and processing speed inform how quickly a camera can recycle itself and prepare to shoot.
Though you can try to precisely measure and time these factors, the easiest way to test a camera’s performance is to shoot as many images as you can in rapid succession. Keep shooting until the camera is finally hamstrung with processing and refuses to shoot. Then take note of how long it takes before you can shoot an additional shot.
If the camera offers a burst mode — the ability to shoot a series of images quickly, as with an auto-winder on a film camera — then do some burst shooting until the camera runs out of buffer space.
Simple tests like these will give you an idea as to whether a camera can keep up with your shooting needs — a valid question if you’re planning on shooting sports, wildlife, or other subjects that require the ability to shoot rapidly.
Video and Other Features
Many digital cameras offer exceptional macro features that allow you to shoot within one or two centimeters of a subject. Whether or not you expect to do a lot of close-up photography, a good macro mode can be handy for product shots or other situations where you need to shoot a smaller subject.
Because you can’t rip out a camera’s image sensor and replace it with one that has different color characteristics, many cameras do offer the ability to alter the camera’s color and image characteristics by letting you change the how much saturation, sharpness, and contrast your camera produces. Though these controls aren’t usually super-refined, they can be enough to bias the camera more to your personal taste, or to better tailor it to specific shooting situations.
If you’re interested in shooting video, you really should buy a video camera. Nevertheless, many newer digital cameras now offer very good video modes and can output full-frame (640 x 480 pixels) QuickTime movies with sound at 30 frames per second. Though no substitute for a video camera, these modes can be handy for capturing short clips. Curiously enough, still cameras with these features usually do a better job of shooting video than modern video cameras shoot still images.
One of the great advantages of digital cameras, of course, is the ability to review your shots in the field. As such, you’ll want to pay a little attention to a camera’s playback options. Look for a camera that offers the ability to zoom and pan around an image, as well as a thumbnail display of a series of images.
More Bells and Whistles
Finally, there are a number of other specialized features that can be very handy for particular shooting habits or needs, ranging from auto-bracketing to time lapse and remote computer control to automatic noise reduction. Some of these features may feel like mission creep — after all, you buy a camera to take pictures, do you really need voice recording? Nevertheless, you might be surprised how handy some of these extras can be:

• Lens stabilization. This is actually an incredibly practical feature but one found on very few cameras, so we’re listing it here. An image-stabilized lens is able to change certain parts of its optical arrangement on the fly, in an effort to reduce jitter and shake. It’s no substitute for a tripod, but lens stabilization can be very effective at reducing or eliminating the little shudders that are inherent to handheld shooting and that are especially pronounced when shooting at very long focal lengths. (Note that Minolta offers an equally effective solution that works by moving the camera’s image sensor to correct vibration, rather than an element in the lens.) With lens stabilization, you’ll stand a much better chance of shooting sharp pictures at slower shutter speeds, and will probably notice better sharpness in all of your images, no matter what their shutter speed.
• Auto bracketing. No matter how good your light meter, and how experienced and knowledgeable you are, there will be times when the best way to ensure getting a good exposure will be to shoot “bracketed” shots — a series of images shot at slightly varying exposures. Many cameras now offer auto-bracketing features that, when combined with the camera’s burst mode, let you quickly capture a full set of bracketed images with a single press of the shutter button.
• White balance and focus bracketing. Similar to exposure bracketing, these features shoot a series of images with slightly varying focus and white balance, for those times when you’re not sure about your white balance or focus choice. Because getting good focus is particularly difficult when shooting macro photos, a focus bracketing feature is a great tool for the user who expects to spend a lot of time shooting in macro mode.
• Remote control. If you do a lot of studio work, or a lot of self-portraits, a good wireless remote can be very handy. The remotes on some cameras also allow for programmed operation of the camera, facilitating time-lapse photography and other special shooting operations.
• Remote computer control. For studio or fieldwork, the ability to control the camera from your computer can be a great convenience, though few cameras these days are offering this option.
• Voice annotation. If you need to document your shots, being able to record a voice memo with each one can be very handy, although you will pay for this feature with storage space.
• Neutral density filter. A neutral density (ND) filter lowers the amount of light entering the camera’s lens without changing its color. ND filters can be great for opening up more exposure options by cutting the amount of light entering the camera.
• Pixel mapping. It’s possible for pixels on your camera’s image sensor to go bad and get stuck in “on” mode. A camera with pixel mapping can automatically disregard broken pixels and replace them with interpolated pixels.
• Noise reduction. Because noise gets much worse as exposure time lengthens, many cameras offer automatic noise reduction routines that kick in when you select an exposure more than 1 second. These features can be essential for low-light photography.
• User sets. If you find you routinely have to reconfigure your camera for different shooting situations, then you might want a camera that offers the ability to store collections of parameters in sets that can be easily activated.
• Automatic image rotation. Some cameras can sense whether you’re holding them in portrait or landscape mode, and automatically tag the image appropriately. Many image editors and cataloging applications can read this data to automatically rotate your images upon opening.
• Custom tone curves. If you’re shopping for a high-end SLR, then keep an eye out for the ability to customize the camera’s tone curves. This will allow you more control over the camera’s contrast and color response.

Obviously, these considerations don’t need to be high on your list. If you need to get a camera quickly, then you don’t need to wade through all of these concerns. However, if you tend to buy gear and keep it for a while, then you’ll want to get the best selection of features that you can afford.
Next time, the last step: evaluating image quality.

• News: InDesign/InCopy 6.01 update; Bridge Home is foreclosed; New Adobe forums; Twitter update
• World’s Simplest GREP Style (great for non-GREPpers)
• The style hierarchy: Which automatically applied character style “wins”?
• The Eeek-eek-eek awards for our upcoming 100th Podcast: Fill out the Ballot!
• Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Paragraph Spacing Limit
  

• InDesignSecrets Videocast 001 stats and reactions
• InDesign 101: Helping Complete Newbies Get Started
• Hot Button Posts: Creating barcodes, Please check the spell checker
• Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Threshold
  

Listen in your browser: InDesignSecrets-148.mp3 (21.2 MB, 37:06 minutes)

See the Show Notes for links mentioned in this episode.

• Interview with Russell Viers
  • On teaching InDesign, the suite, and his favorite tips
  • The struggles of regional newspaper publishers (his specialty)
• Keyboard Shortcut of the Week: Command-Option-7/Control-Alt-7
• Obscure InDesign Feature of the Week: Select First Range of Same-Size Pages
• Quizzler! With a prize worth hundreds of dollars … listen for details