Negotiate Your Next Salary or Pay Raise in 3 Easy Steps
Money can be a difficult subject for women to discuss in the workplace. How can women successfully negotiate salaries and pay raises? Boni Candelario sat down with Fervent Wellness founder, Aliah Davis-McHenry, on the latest episode of Live Fervently to discuss how women can get paid what they are worth.
“It's a great question and it's a question that a lot of people struggle with in different levels of their career,” Boni explained.
Boni is an organizational development consultant, trainer and executive coach at Yale New Haven Hospital System in the Institute for Excellence. In addition to her work at Yale New Haven Hospital, Boni runs a leadership coaching boutique called Know Your Worth and helps women create action plans on topics such as re-inventing their careers, handling an industry transition, and navigating internal politics and conflict. Her mission is to help women and men create action plans on topics such as re-inventing their careers, handling an industry transition, and navigating internal politics and conflict.
Here are Boni’s tips to negotiating salaries and pay raises:
STEP ONE: Do Your Research
Do your research when you're thinking about negotiating a salary or even when you're thinking about applying for another position. The more research you do, the better and more confident you'll be when you're sitting down and talking with a recruiter or with your boss. Sites like Payscale and Salary are helpful in comparing what you’re currently making or what you want to make in the position and where you are geographically.
STEP TWO: Know Your Range Versus A Hard Number
Employers ask directly on their application for your desired salary. And though that's off putting, you can’t leave it blank. Salary negotiations bring up fear and inadequacy issues. It's best for you to be comfortable with a range versus that hard number, because their hard number can lock you in, and you don't want that. You want room to negotiate. When you're thinking about a range, think about the lowest number— the amount that will keep you comfortable and able to pay your bills. You’ll be able to survive but you’re no entirely 100% happy with it. The high number is the scary number for most women but you are very unique and you have specific skill sets, specific experience that you bring and you can showcase in an interview and justify your desired salary. Go a little higher than that number, even if it's an amount that you've never made before. This is why it is a scary number, because a lot of times it makes people scared and say “If I got that, I'd be so scared.”
STEP THREE: Never take the first offer.
When you are in a position to negotiate back and forth with your boss or with your employer or the prospective employer, never take the first offer. A lot of it is a power dynamic and when you take the first offer usually of the other side of that negotiation, whoever that person is, they're throwing out a little number. It's really just to test the waters. And if you take that, you're really saying that you're not very confident to negotiate. That employer or that recruiter, they're actually expecting you to negotiate. They expect you to come back and say, let me think about that and let me get back to you.
Let's say that number that they threw out is a good number. You're happy with it? Always sleep on it and ask when you can get back to them, usually within 48 hours. Continue to do your research, talk to your family, and make sure that this is the right thing for you.
There is more than salary when you're thinking about negotiation. Think about a paid time and the vacation time. Can you negotiate that? Think about working from home. Is that important to you? There are a lot of employers that are now helping with student loans. See if that's something that they can work with or maybe they have a program that you could be a part of. Consider the entire package.
For more tips to help you find your purpose and get what you deserve, listen to The Career You Deserve: Boni Candelario On Finding Your Purpose and Getting Paid What You Are Worth.