The Actions Required To Get The Salary You Want

Asking for a raise in this economy? Are you nuts Zale?

On the good side – there are lots of opportunities even in this economy. There are companies that are hiring.

On the down side – there is lot of competition in the job market.

For top performers there is opportunities. And since you are reading my site you are one.

Most people have a real problem getting paid what they think they deserve.

I know that I had that problem. I  remember working for somebody, waiting for a salary review. And if I got a raise I was happy, and if I didn’t well, lets not go there.

I remember going for job interviews and being happy with what they offered me.

The problem was not the company, the problem was me. I did not take any actions to control my salary. I worked hard, i did my job to the best of my ability, but I did nothing to manage my salary.

And when you think about it, that was pretty dumb.

And its just not me. I know that many of my students have the same problem.

Each of us of has a different variation on it. The most common is that many of us do not have a clear idea of what we want. Its vague. Brian Tracy calls it “Living on Someday Isle” 0r “Someday I will ….”

I hate “Someday Isle”. I think its important for a person to know what they want. Its important for them to get what they want. Its important to know that we are getting paid what we are worth.

If we are unhappy with our pay, and 57% of us are, then we need to take an action about our salary.

We need to control our salary.

Some of the actions we need to take are:

• Find out if we are being paid a reasonable salary for the work we do.

• If we are underpaid – learn to negotiate to get the salary we should be getting.

• If we want to earn more – learn what actions we need to improve our value.

The CEO and CFO large companies know how to negotiate their salary.

But what should a person in middle management or at the early stages of a career do?

Here is a short list of things:

• Learn when to negotiate
• Learn how to negotiate
• Learn what you worth is

Here are a couple of more tidbits of information

• I know that when people have worked for me, they never negotiated the salary. And guess what, I had left a little bit in reserve for them to ask for. That way, they would feel happy and I would feel generous. But, they never asked for it.
• Salary is connected to the value an employee brings to the company. But only sales people think about this. If your job is tied to profits of the company, and its understood that way, it gives you more leverage to ask for a better compensation package.
• The compensation is not just about salary, its about the entire package including training, benefits, hours, location, vacation.
• Your salary negotiations affect your future salary, your self-esteem, and the value of your work.

This was a short summary of a Webinar put on by Ivy Executive by Sabrina Zook, an expert in the field. 

Sabrina is  Adjunct Professor – New York University and worked for 14 years at JP Morgan, ending as a VP Human Resources there. Sabrina has an MBA Columbia Business School, Human Resource Management and Management of Organizations and was Beta Gamma Sigma Business Honors Society.

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