You’ve been working in your current position for a few years, and you know your stuff. With your background and education, you feel like you are ready for a promotion, or at least a raise. Talking to your boss about a raise or promotion can be uncomfortable, but it doesn’t have to be. Do your homework first to make sure that you can make a good case for yourself.
Read on for some tips to help you get that raise or promotion:
Know what you want
What are you trying to achieve? A higher salary? A better title? More responsibility? Figure out what you want before you ask for it. Talk to colleagues and peers about opportunities for growth within your company, and what the requirements are for consideration for these roles. You can even search for a comparable job description and use that to make the case. Using the job description to anchor the conversation can help you to talk about how your skills and experience make you a worthy candidate.
Know your worth
What is your value to the company? Talk about what you have learned and accomplished while working for them, and the qualities that make you an excellent team member and colleague. Be prepared to talk about not just your hard skills, but also your soft skills, such as communication and reliability.
Know the numbers
Demonstrate to your employer that you have done your homework. Your efforts to gather data to support your ask, show them that you are basing your request on real numbers and not just emotion. Your conversation should be supported by facts…facts about you, the value you bring, and real salary data. Check out websites such as Salary.com or Glassdoor.com to see what other people in your field and geographic area are making for a salary. These websites allow you to search by occupation, education level, geographic area, and other factors to help you understand what your skills are worth in your area. Most employers know that if they want to keep their top performers, they are going to have to keep them happy. It is possible that your employer isn’t aware of what other companies and competitors are offering their employees, so the information that you provide, can help them to make proactive staffing and salary decisions.
Know how to compromise
Most of the time, you aren’t going to get everything you want. Before starting on this path, take the time to think about what is most important to you, and what you might be willing to give up. You can start by asking for everything you want and give up some of those extras during the negotiation to get you what you want most.
For example, if you want a promotion, a raise, and your own office, you might need to be willing to share an office to get what you want – the promotion and the raise. Be flexible and ready to demonstrate why you deserve it.
