How do you know when you are in a negotiation?

I attended a half day seminar last Tuesday on "Negotiation In the Workplace", presented by Michael T. Colatrella & Tony Picchioni, Ph.D. I was comforted to hear that negotiation is something that can be mastered with knowledge and practice. For some people, though, this was a gift you naturally inherited. For others, this was picked up when you were younger, negotiating with your parents for a later curfew. I contribute mine to the latter. However, what I thought was negotiation really just turned out to be getting my way.

Since taking over the hiring process at LevelTen, I have quickly learned how hard it really is to find good help. Since we are a continually growing interactive agency, our hiring needs of late have been extremely demanding. First is a visit to the usual job boards Monster, CareerBuilder, Yahoo HotJobs, Craigslist, Creative Hot List, Dice, and our own job board.