Negotiating a Pay Rise in a New Job

This year, we have put together 2 salary negotiation eBooks to help you with this challenging subject: Up Your Game, Up Your Pay! and Get Paid Right, From the Start. To help you get started and to move you along your way to getting that pay rise we've laid out a series of blogs (all to do with salary negotation) to give you some food for thought. In this particular blog we are concentrating on where you need to start your thinking if you are considering changing jobs and want to increase you pay whilst you make this move.

It’s important to begin salary negotiations for your new job with the end in mind because without knowing what you’re aiming for, it’s hard to achieve anything. If you’re clear in your mind, you’ll be clear in your approach. For instance, decide whether these negotiations are just money-based or if you’re also thinking about other benefits and aspects such as equity, hours, holiday time, travel and so on.

A lot of us relate our value to the money that we’re earning but in actual fact there is a range of areas and issues you should be expecting your employer organisation to cater for.  When we talk about economic return it’s not just about salary but also about other elements such as pensions and performance-related bonuses. When you’re negotiating, it’s also important to think about what is easy to get. Some HR departments will just give you what they think is cheaper to give away but what can actually be of value to you.

Identify who it is who’s on your side in salary negotiations. The two key individuals to target are your recruiter and your potential future boss. If you are going via a recruiter, it’s in their interest to make this match work, so you can almost use them as an intermediary through which to ask for what you want.  The recruiter is always going to be with you, because frankly, your successful entry into the employer company is a financial transaction from their point of view that they need to come off.

Also try and identify where the power is in this brokering process. In smaller companies, for example, your future boss will typically be the budget holder and will decide who gets paid what. In other cases, with larger employers, there will be an HR department that makes the major decisions on wages, decisions over which your line manager will have very little influence over.  Even in the case of a larger organisation, where your immediate boss is an intermediary rather than the decision-maker, if you’re the one that this boss wants, they’re really going to be pulling for you in negotiations.

So if your new employer has an HR department, should you focus on building a relationship with that department or your line manager in order to facilitate salary negotiations? If you know your value and you know your uniqueness, your boss will know you. They may well have been the one to initiate contact with you in order to precipitate the whole process of you joining their team and organisation. This is a relationship that’s hopefully going to be there for some considerable time.

The boss is also, with respect, the only one who’s going to fully understand and respect your value. HR doesn’t do that. It’s really your line manager and you who are going to bond around the technical capability that you bring to the table, to the workplace, day-in and day-out. Whether it’s going right or it’s going wrong, your relationship with your boss will always be the most fundamental relationship in your working life.

Similar salary negotiation articles:

• How to Negotiate a Pay Rise
• How to Ask for the Salary You Deserve
• Salary Advice: What Should I be Earning?
• Salary Negotiation eBooks