Negotiating a raise is often stressful and confusing. It shouldn't be. In this series on salaries and raises, I'm going to talk about some tips on how to view your salary, what you should be paid, and how to talk to your employer about it. And if you are an employer, you should be using the same criteria to evaluate the salaries of your employees.
In this post, I'm going to explore the concept of your personal market value. This is the first thing you should think about when negotiating your salary. Your market value is what you could realistically get paid if you switched jobs today.
One sure-fire way to find out your market value is to go on a few interviews. Just going on an interview doesn't mean that you have to take a job. It can, however, give you a good idea of what types of jobs are available and what the salary ranges are.
When you go on an interview to help you determine your market value, you should keep a few things in mind. One, it's probably unethical and unproductive to talk to direct competitors of your current employer. They may just want interview you to try to extract information about your current company anyway. Two, make sure you talk about specific job duties and responsibilities. This is an important consideration when comparing one job to another. Three, when asked for your salary requirements, you should tell your interviewer what you want, but then ask if your figure is in the right ball-park and have an honest discussion about it. Don't argue. Listen to what they say and try to understand their reasoning about it.
Going on an interview periodically can give you valuable information. This practice should not be viewed as disloyal by either you or your employer. In fact, you should discuss what you learned with your employer. If your boss is smart, he or she will welcome the discussion or at the very least approach it with and open mind.
If its not practical for you to go on an interview, some other things you can do are: call a recruiter, a job placement agency, or the career counseling department of a local college. Any of those them can give you an idea of what people like you, with your experience, can make in your region of the country.
It's also a great idea to foster a mentor relationship with someone outside of your company. Salaries and raises are great topics to discuss with a good mentor. There are a lot of people out there who have been around the block a few times and who are interested in helping younger or less experienced people become more successful in their field. If nothing else, try to find someone in your field who you respect and who is willing to discuss your career with you periodically over coffee. Ask around. You will be surprised at how many people would love to give you advice.
There are also a few things that are NOT effective when trying to determine your market value. These generally include taking shortcuts. Just like most things in life, the value of the information you get corresponds to the amount of effort you put into getting it. If you try to take a shortcut and just read a website or ask a few friends, the information you get will likely not be nearly as helpful as the knowledge you gain by doing the footwork on your own.
If you have good friends and a loving family, they probably think very highly of you and are pre-disposed to tell you that you deserve more money, that you are the greatest thing since sliced bread, and that if your boss doesn't give you more money then you should tell him to take this job and shove it where the sun don't shine.
While they may be right, that really doesn't give you any helpful or specific information to use when talking to your employer. Talking about salaries with friends can also sometimes lead to hurt feelings.
Another common short-cut is doing salary research on the web. A lot of websites publish minimum, maximum, and average or median salaries for different jobs. These sites are not a bad place to start your research, but they aren't always the best way to determine YOUR market value. They often take their data from a region of the country that overlaps, but doesn't exactly correspond with the region you are searching in. It's also difficult to make sure that your job title means the same thing as the title listed on those websites. In other words, just because you have a certain title, doesn't mean that you do the same job as someone else who is getting paid more at another company.
A few final words on asking for raises in general. You also have to take the financial state of your company into account when talking about raises. It may not be financially feasible for your boss to give you more money right now. If you can help your boss understand your market value, but there is no more money to be had at the moment, you then have to make a decision about whether to stay or whether to move on. You shouldn't wait forever, but patience and loyalty are often rewarded.
Part of your job is to help your employer understand your value to the company and what you should be paid. If you have done this well and continue to deliver value to your company, any good boss will fight to pay you what you deserve.
In upcoming posts on this subject, I'll explore some other things to think about when negotiating a raise:
- Your Replacement Cost
- Your Value to the Company
- Things NOT to Say When Negotiating a Raise
In the mean time, tell me what you think. How do you determine your market value?
Photo credit, AMagill
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