Negotiation is a skill rarely practiced.

The Chicago Tribune reports.

Always negotiate pay – even on your first job out of college

Over the next several weeks, millions of 20-somethings will don caps and gowns and walk across a stage to pick up a piece of paper that was four years in the making. The lucky ones will land jobs soon — if they haven’t already — to start collecting what is likely their first real paycheck, or at least the biggest one they’ve seen.

By earning their degrees they’re already steps ahead of their peers who opted to start working right out of high school, with the potential to earn much more throughout their careers. But there’s a good chance that most of the grads signing offer letters in the coming months will make a mistake that will eat into that premium and have a ripple effect for decades: They won’t ask for more.

Only 38 percent of new college graduates who started working in the past three years negotiated their job offers, according to a survey of nearly 8,000 college grads by NerdWallet, a personal finance Web site, and Looksharp, a job site targeting new graduates. But the majority of the companies surveyed — 84 percent — said entry-level candidates wouldn’t risk losing their job offers if they negotiated on salary.

And most of the grads who asked for more money, about 80 percent, saw a bump in their offers. “Negotiation is an intimidating thing to do,” said Abbey Stauffer, general manager of education for NerdWallet. “But it’s surprising in that there’s such a mismatch between what employers are offering and what students are doing.”