Three Tips to Prepare for Asking for a Raise
Asking for a promotion or an increase in salary can be extremely intimidating, especially if youhaven’t experienced it before. The following three pieces of advice will guide you through the process of asking for a raise.
Do your homework
There are countless resources available to see what people with your experience level and background are making at similar companies, including Salary.com, Glassdoor, and Payscale. Make sure the percent increase you ask for makes sense for the level of experience you have and what you bring to the table.
2. Make a case for yourself
If you are doing the job you were hired to do well, that’s not enough to justify a raise. One of the best ways to understand if you should get a raise is to take the job description for the job you were hired for and rewrite it to reflect your current job responsibilities. If there is a drastic difference between what you were doing before and what you are doing now, you can use that to justify the increase in salary.
Be sure to leave emotion and anecdotes out of the conversation and focus on factual evidence of your value.
3. Be patient
If you are asking for what you’re worth, you should be a little nervous! Asking for a raise can be really intimidating, but don’t be frustrated if you don’t get the answer you want right away. If you don’t get a definitive answer, just be sure to follow-up and get a commitment from your manager about the timeline for when you’ll hear back.
No one teaches you how to ask for a raise, so it may take some trial and error to understand how to navigate this process, but it’ll be worth it.