If you get multiple offers, you can play them off of each other. Specifics on that: don't give your current salary to the companies making you an offer; if you

If you get multiple offers, you can play them off of each other. Specifics on that: don't give your current salary to the companies making you an offer; if you really feel pinned into a corner to say a number, use levels.fyi or other market research that supports a very high number for you to give. Then once multiple companies have given you an offer, you can use those offers, or even particularly appealing parts of the offer, to ask for more. My most recent negotiation I had a higher cash comp (but lower total comp) at my 2nd choice company; I told my first choice that if they could beat the cash comp from other-offer, then I would sign on. I was expecting them to drop the equity a bit but they actually bumped that up, too. The line of "I will sign if..." is very powerful, but you should only use it if you mean it. A piece that's addressed less is how to get multiple offers. I treated my job search like a funnel - I talked to as many potentially-interesting places as I could, either through my network or looking back through all my old LinkedIn cold outreach messages (and marking myself "open to offers" there). Then I did maybe 6-7 pre-onsite "interviews" - sometimes this is a technical screen, sometimes this is coffee & in-depth conversation with the hiring manager, depending on company size and how the manager likes to hire. I tried to schedule these clustered together, to keep all my potential jobs at the same stage of the funnel. Then I did 3 full-day onsites within a week and a half - I was working full-time so even that felt like a stretch. I only chose to onsite at places that I was really excited to work at, and where I felt very good at my chances in the onsite interviews. And luckily that resulted in 2 offers so I could negotiate. I did actually try this funnel approach unsuccessfully a few months beforehand - I ended up with only 1 onsite I was excited enough about to take a vacation day for and then didn't pass it, so it's certainly not a fool-proof plan. But, it did work out for me in the end. You can push on recruiters for slow companies if somewhere you're excited about is lagging behind your "funnel" - you can let them know that you've moved to onsite with 2 or more other companies but you're super excited about them so definitely want to get your phone screen scheduled asap; or you heard you're going to receive an offer and will probably need to decide within a week; is it possible to move up your onsite before that deadline? Having other interested companies is a strong signal, and recruiters will pretty much always want to rush you through if they think you're likely to be a "hire" decision from the team.