It can be difficult, when you are in the job market, to know if the salary you are being offered is fair and if it is too risky to ask for more. Yet you have got to stand up for yourself when it comes to salary. If not you, then who? So there are a few salary secrets that can help you understand the situation a little bit better either when you are being offered a job in a down market, or when you are considering asking for a raise.
First of all, familiarize yourself with the typical salary range for your position, taking into account your education and experience. There are many online resources for computing expected salaries, and many are free. These are excellent tools for understanding where your salary falls in the generally acceptable range.
Many feel, in a recession, that it is out of the question to ask for a raise. Many folks just feel lucky not to lose their jobs. But there are ways to ask for a raise in a recession if you are willing to do a little effort. According to a survey from the Society for Human Resource Management, 80 percent of HR professionals say that employers are still willing to negotiate salaries. So if you are able to research and know your market worth and point out your various achievement, it is worth the effort to ask for a deserved raise. Remember- it is more expensive to replace you than to give you a reasonable raise!
Because of fluctuating market conditions, new hires often earn more than more experienced personnel. This isn’t an intentional slight by the management, it is simply a matter of hiring managers doing what need to be done to staff the office. If you suspect that a new hire in the same position is being paid at or above your level, then come prepared with current salary data to approach your manager with a request for what you deserve.
Always remember that your performance doesn’t decide your pay. What things (and workers) cost is simply a matter of supply and demand. It is determined by the job market, the location and cost of living there, your years of service to the company, the size of the organization and its budget, and your education level. So even if you are performing at an incredible rate, your salary may remain low because of a lack of higher education. That doesn’t mean you have to sit back and take it, it simply means that if you think you deserve the pay of someone more highly educated because of your experience and history of service, then you will need to make a strong case for your boss to give you a raise against company policy.
Asking for a raise is always stressful, but especially so in a bad economy. However, that is no reason to shy away from asking for what you deserve and, increasingly, need. As the economy goes south, inflation will cause your monetary needs to go up. Meanwhile your company may have much more in terms of funds than they want you to know. Most bosses are authorized, at year-end, to give employees some kind of raise. It could be anything from three to five percent. So know that when that evaluation comes around, if you are offered any raise at all, you can probably bring the percentage up a bit to the high end of the range, especially if you are armed with evidence of all your good work throughout the year as well as typical salary ranges for comparison.
These days, technology in the schools is a big catch phrase when it comes to education innovation. Technology workers are needed to establish networks in schools and maintain them as well as to train school personnel, and students, in the latest technology. Are you looking for a new career away from the suit-and-tie corporate world? If you decide to look into schools, you may find a rewarding career, but be prepared!
If your office has a system, such as ID cards or passkeys, or even, heaven forbid, clock punching, that allows you entry and determines your work hours, it may soon be switching to something fancier: a facial recognition time clock combined with a door lock. These gadgets, which cost under five hundred bucks, do a 3D scan of your face when you arrive at the door and take in all the information. What time you got to work, what time you left work, what mood you were in (probably), how many pimples, new stress lines appearing, and your taste in clothes. Luckily, it doesn’t make comments.
Dharma. Many of us have heard the word in discussions of eastern philosophy, but few understand the importance of its meaning to people of all professions. Dharma is personal responsibility combined with one’s social, familial, or professional duty—all with the concept of equilibrium or balance in mind. In Chu’s book, Thick Face, Black Heart, she describes the inherent importance of dharma to those seeking success in any realm.
Dharma—or duty in the interest of balance—is an interesting subject that brings up a lot of complicated issues. By the way, that definition—“duty in the interest of balance”—is mine, but it’s taken from the ideas put forth in Chu’s book, Thick Face, Black Heart. Chu just defines it as “duty,” but all the examples she gives illustrate how duty, performed rightly, leads to balance.
Job hunters in today’s tough economic climate have to take extra steps to stand out from what is essentially a sea of eager applicants for each and every corporate position. The paper resume is still a helpful tool, of course, and should be composed professionally with the latest resume-writing techniques. The cyber resume, however, is another tool available to intrepid college graduates who seek to stand out.
It has been determined that at least forty percent of successful executives describe themselves as introverts. How can introverts lead some of this nation’s most prosperous companies? How can they head board meetings and gather with top-level managers from various companies to operate all the complex—and often very social—work of a large corporation?
Interoffice politics can be such a bore. If your office is like mine, there are those managers who are so disorganized you spend a great deal of your free time simply wondering how they could have possibly got into such a high level position. Then there are the customer service representatives who have to field calls from irate clients. Because they are under so much stress, they can tend to rub others the wrong way, always insisting that their clients “get what they want.” So how does an honest, hard working technology professional or computer programmer survive in such a climate?
Does your office suffer from organizational woes? I’m not talking about the typical corporate problem of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, of marketing not communicating with sales, and the technology department being at odds with the customer services reps (yet again!). I mean a more physical type of disorganization. The kind of thing that aggravates you just that teeny little bit every day—not enough to both mentioning or to justify action.
Office workers in disproportionate numbers have been meeting lately in an unlikely place: the chiropractor’s office. Are you one of them? Once the docs have diagnosed patients with kyphosis, lordosis, subluxations and a host of other spinal ailments, they will likely ask what the patients do for a living. Invariably they hear, “a desk job.”
