Negotiating your salary can be beyond anxiety-inducing — especially if you haven’t been at your job for a full year. But it’s a whole lot easier if you can really make yourself invaluable to your company. Here’s how one woman did just that!
Making it work is brought to you by wealth simple which gives everyone access to simple affordable investing on cruise control many people expect to simply do a good job and hope it eventually results in a raise but in reality getting paid what you’re worth takes a little more than that in 2014 i was hired on as a senior account manager at a highly regulated and
Bureaucratic utility company it was a 16 percent salary increase compared to my old job as a payroll accounting analyst and it was still really early in my career so it was pretty good pay for that time but i kept believing i was worth more and wanted to prove myself i devised a strategy that would get me a raise and i hoped that i would get at least $5,000 more
I ended up with $10,000 more instead here’s how number one i built relationships the first month on your job is absolutely critical it’s not just about learning the job but also building trust with your coworkers if someone doesn’t like you or finds you arrogant that feedback will get back to your manager more quickly than you might think i spent that first month
Working very hard by putting the hours in to learn the job but i also asked every co-worker out to lunch i learned about what they did and ask them about the most difficult parts of their job and they were more than happy to share i took mental notes of their pain points and made sure to jot them down when we got back to the office then every morning i made an
Effort to do a quick 5 minute chat with everyone number two i made tangible improvements once you get the hang of your job you can find ways to improve it question the status quo if something has been done one way for years just because that’s how someone before you did it does it really mean it’s the best way two months into the job i started seeing ways that
I could improve upon my position by creating dashboards to track metrics and macros to automate some of the work for instance my boss wanted to show upper management what was going on in the organization and how many things our team was resolving so i told him i’d work on a dashboard that would summarize all the data to allow our leadership to easily understand
The work okay i know what you might be thinking i’m not that technical well neither am i i took one coding class in college and it wasn’t for help from my engineering boyfriend at the time my probably would have flunked coding 101 the internet here is your best friend i googled the things i could automate piece together code and kept testing it until it finally
Worked i wrote a code because there was so much data in excel and it would be too much work for us to analyze the data manually therefore the code would automate some of the repetitive monthly work for us the automation was done in excel via a macro and i just created a few buttons that would automatically update the dashboard on a monthly basis also since i
Had built relationships already i asked a few co-workers who knew some coding to check my work for me being new everyone was more than willing to help number three i helped others remember that list of coworkers pain points from my first month in the third and fourth month i started working on them with the extra time available from my automations i worked with
My co-workers to figure out the root causes of their issues then we came up with solutions together and i made sure that i kept my word to help i consistently communicated and involved them in every step of the process i always made sure they were okay with the changes i was making this is really the key to success not only had i built personal relationships but
Now i built working relationships where they trusted me and since i saved them time this positive feedback would be shared with everyone else including my manager by the fourth month everyone was impressed with what i was able to do and how i helped them my manager had heard all the stories and was happy that he took a chance and hired me i waited until i knew
That he was in a good mood one day walked into his office and started to explain my situation i talked about all the great projects i’d completed and he completely agreed with everything i had to say at the end i asked if i could receive a raise for my good work optimistically he told me that he would think about it and see what he could do i patiently waited and
Two weeks later he came back and said he was able to get me a ten thousand dollar raise i was absolutely ecstatic i thanked him a lot and reassured him that i would continue my good work he nodded and said you deserve this in the end i took a risk by not asking for a five thousand dollar increase specifically and letting him figure out the dollar amount luckily it
Worked out in my favor if you do have a specific number in mind you can share it with your manager they may say i can’t get you that much but here’s x instead always remember to thank them and show your appreciation sometimes you can negotiate when you get a new offer but always remember that the company and hiring manager are taking a risk on you so you may not
Get what you want or deserve right away but know that you can make more opportunities to ask for more money once you have proven yourself and the timing is right there are times however where nothing will work because there is an economic downturn or the company isn’t doing well document all the work that you’ve done and save it when things are starting to do better
You can refer back to the document to make your case good luck negotiating a raise is one of the best things you can do for your financial life when you learn to be your own advocate you feel more in control of your own future and with a company like wealth simple you can start investing more easily than you might think wealth simple is online investing that’s
As simple and human as it gets in just five minutes they’ll build you a custom portfolio to fit your personal goals and timeline just answer a few easy questions and they’ll manage your money for you on autopilot set it forget it and let your money grow in the background you can turn on automatic deposits as well as set up a smart savings account with higher rates
Than big banks for your shorter term goals you’re writing your next great adventure or that handbag you need they also have a socially responsible portfolio that invests in green stocks and companies that support gender diversity the fees are much lower than big banks and tfd viewers will get their first $10,000 managed for free with no minimum deposit check them
Out at wealth simple comm slash tfd or use the link in our description there are no account minimums and it only takes a few minutes to start no excuses
Transcribed from video
How I Negotiated A $10,000 Raise Just 4 Months Into My Job | Making it Work By The Financial Diet