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Day One: Finding Out What To Ask For

The hardest part about asking for a raise, other than actually asking, is figuring out whether you have any chance of getting it, and how much to ask for.  This can be a tough thing to figure out, but there are data points available for you to use.

The first thing to figure out is how much your counterparts at other companies make doing a similar job.  You may think that your job is unique, but I assure you it isn’t.  The first thing to do, assuming you don’t know how much your coworkers make, is to hit up a site like salary.com or glassdoor.com.  If you’re at a smaller company, salary.com is probably a better resource, because it aggregates H.R. data from across the country to determine salary ranges for lots of different jobs.  If you work with a larger firm, glassdoor.com may actually offer you a window into what the salaries are of people in your current company that are doing your same job.  Either way, these numbers should only be used to give you a general idea of what you can get on the open market.

The second thing you should do is figure out if you are a top line employee, a bottom line employee, or a cost center.  A top line employee is someone who actively makes money for their company.  These people have the best chance of getting a raise because it is easy for them to quantify what having them does for the business, because they are bringing it in.  They may be salespeople, or they could be the one providing service to the customer (as in an industry like consulting).  Usually, these people can discuss raises with their bosses on a purely financial level. “I did $5,000,000 worth of business for the company last year and I feel like I deserve a bigger raise,” is something they might consider saying to their manager.

A bottom line employee is someone who saves the company money.  These people have a harder time getting a raise because it’s harder to quantify their value to the company, but it can be done.  These people might be administrative, finance, I.T., or any other of the support organizations within a company.  If they are lucky, these people can discuss raises on a financial level, but more commonly they can discuss raises based on performance.  “I saved your salespeople 200 man hours last year by implementing easier to use sales software and I feel like I deserve a bigger raise,” is something they might say during their salary review.

A cost center is an employee who costs the company money but is (hopefully) vital for some other reason.  These employees have the hardest time getting raises, because it is very difficult to quantify what they provide to the organization that someone else could not.  They might be janitors, office administrators, secretaries, or cafeteria workers.  Usually they are significantly separated from the company’s primary business.  Generally, these individuals can only discuss their personal performance, rather than their impact on others, during a salary review.  “I made sure there were always pencils in the supply cabinet and I feel like I deserve  a bigger raise” is something they might say during a salary review.

Okay, but here’s the kicker – any employee of a company can fall into more than one of those above slots.  A normally bottom line employee, when on a call to help one of the salespeople with their computer, might help that salesperson land a big deal.  It’s a big sliding scale.  Ideally, you should be able to determine your value to the company in monetary terms, but everyone should be able to figure out how much time they are saving the company.  Even a cost center employee could frame their job as a cost savings – without the janitor cleaning the bathroom stalls, more employees would get sick, which can be very costly for an organization.

The third thing you need to do is figure out exactly how much you are worth to the best of your ability.  This has two purposes – it gives you ammo for your inevitable discussion with your manager, and it adds to your confidence that you actually deserve this raise.  That is, assuming, that you determine you are as valuable as you think you are.  If something comes up short, I would suggest taking a step back and figuring out how to increase your value to the company before continuing down this path.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about collecting more discrete performance data to be presented during your salary discussion.

July 15, 2009 | Filed Under Career

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