Salary Raise Tips

Whoever researched employment, the output is always the same - salary negotiation is forever the hardest part. Well, now there is Hirin.co to make your working life easier. So let’s see how to discuss financial growth and what to do before the big talk.

How to increase your market value?

Even if you can get the task very quickly, it is better to allow at least a month for the next 3 steps. Perhaps, you will formulate certain things in the first evening during your trip home, but then you might want to mull over them again to add or delete something.

Audit

It sounds a little bit … bookkeeperish, but schools of personal and career development advise treating your career as a project. At least for the sake of an experiment, it is worth trying.

Audit of your work activities, like responsibilities, projects, goals, achievements and tasks, is a very useful practice. Write down the key parameters (even on paper in a column) and see where you fall short. For auditing, you can use any tool from specialized career planners to mind maps and other diagrams. Select separately points that can be optimized.

As a result, you will get a list of what, why and what for you are working. If overwork is an inevitable part of your work history, put down a time span near every task block. Perhaps you neglect delegation or it is time to hire another specialist because the current staff is unable to put the project across. And, perhaps, rituals like a cargo cult consume too much time: once it started as something necessary, but now it is simply dragged from project to project.

Another object of the audit is you. Likewise, write down your key competencies, skills, and achievements to get something like a resume framework.

As a result, you will learn bottlenecks (where there are not enough people or resources), optimization points, your portrait of the specialist.

Look around

This is a pretty good practice, not only before the start of negotiations but also once every six months. It is real simple:

• Find relevant job openings;
• Research senior and leading specialists (if you start as a junior, you can focus on the middle-level specialists);
• Carefully read the requirements.

Yes, partly the descriptions, alas, will be disconnected from reality. During a coffee break at a meeting or conference, you can hear stories about how someone was hired only partly meeting the vacancy requirements. But a sense of your position in regard to requirements can greatly simplify the conversation.

As a result, you will get a list of what is worth improving and learning in the days ahead. Or, at least, dip into.

Asterisk task

Let’s be realistic, far from every manager is interested in staff development. When an approach “when you are drowning, you are on your own,” prevails, it’s worth sketching out a plan for your own development. Yes, truth be told, this should be on a team lead and HR. But a frontline employee needs it no less - otherwise, there is a risk of lifting up your head in a couple of years and discovering that you are still designing layouts.

It is difficult to do without a look with a distant eye. Therefore, it is worth finding a mentor, consulting with industry-colleagues, or involving a career consultant.

As a result, you will get a development plan for the next 6-12 months. In the worst case, it will come in handy when future job application.

How to talk with your boss about a salary raise?

The best time for such a conversation is after you have passed over the next stage of qualitative growth. If the company has a culture of regular evaluation (performance appraisal), then such negotiation can be scheduled for the next meeting.

How NOT to do?

Here are typical salary negotiation blunders. Such phrases may seem logical in the eyes of the employee, but in negotiations, they play against the one who wants to be promoted. So, you should not say, “I want more money, because …”:

• I have a difficult life situation;
• My rent or mortgage rate has raised;
• I will have a newborn;
• Everyone gets XX$, but I still get X$;
• Ivan had a salary raise, but I didn’t have;
• Otherwise, I will leave the company.

Format

The golden rule of management is to consider everything in the company context. Accordingly, when you raise the issue of promotion, present it in the context of your contribution to the common goal.

For the junior positions, collaborative plan creation does work as well for achieving the desired figure. The request, in this case, may sound, “I would like to receive N. What do I need to do for this?” Besides you need to discuss when your results will be assessed. In some companies, reviews are unschedule, but goals-bound.

Structure

This is an approximate structure. During the conversation, you can add or delete something depending on the context. In addition, you will have comparative work done that will also help in the argumentation.

1. The following tasks are ready at the project and the next stages are nearing completion.
2. These things and my acquired skills will allow the company to move faster and more efficiently.
3. In this regard, I would like to ask for N salary increase.

Example:

• Over the past 6 months, under my guidance, project A was implemented, which will allow the company to abandon the outsourcing alternative, which will save an approximately X.
• I plan to implement […] for high-speed performance. It will allow us to carry out twice as many operations in product A in 4 months.
• In this regard, I want to ask for N salary increase.

Next steps

Salary or position discussion must be surely formalized. Send a follow-up email to all participants with the main points that the parties agreed on. Thank for the meeting and new opportunities at the very beginning. Briefly highlight the action plan and deadlines. Based on deadlines, it will be appropriate to remind the participants about the second conversation.

After the raise is approved, do not rush to relax and plan how to spend the negotiated amount. Sometimes there is one more step in the process and that is to carefully remind about the decision, as the approval doesn’t always equal money on your account. It is worth sending a polite request, coping all the involved.

So, wish you easy negotiations and successful outcomes!