I Asked for SGD 4,200 and They Offered Me 3,400

I graduated from NUS in December and started applying for marketing roles in January. My lecturer told me the going rate for a fresh grad in marketing was around SGD 4,000 to 4,500. So when I got to the offer stage with a mid-sized agency in Tanjong Pagar, I asked for 4,200. They came back with 3,400. I didn't know what to do. I'd never negotiated anything in my life. My mum said just take it. My friend said hold out. I spent three days going back and forth in my own head about it.

What actually happened

I ended up asking if there was flexibility. That exact phrase. "Is there any flexibility on the base?" The HR person said she'd check. Two days later she came back with 3,700 and a review at six months. I took it. Honestly? I still don't know if that was the right call. The thing nobody tells you about salary negotiation when you're 22 is that you have basically zero leverage. You have no track record. You have no competing offers — unless you're in tech or finance, and even then it's not guaranteed. You're sitting there trying to sound confident about your "market value" when you've never actually been in the market.

What I'd do differently

If I could go back, I'd have applied to more places first. I was so relieved to get one offer that I didn't want to risk losing it. But that desperation is exactly what makes you accept less. The other thing — and this sounds obvious but it wasn't to me — is that the initial number they give you is almost never the final number. They expect you to push back. I thought pushing back was rude. It's not. It's just how it works. I'm six months in now and the review did come with a bump to 3,900. So I'm getting there. But that initial gap still bugs me sometimes when I think about it.

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