Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
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Hey, folks shown here. We are taking the week off for the thanksgiving holiday, so please enjoy this episode from our archives. In the meantime, we hope you all have a wonderful relaxing food.

Build week will be back doing with brand new episodes for you enjoy. You've heard IT one million times. Just cut out the daily starbucks run and you'll be rich. But more often than not, your financial situation is going to be Better. Aid by fixing was coming into your budget versus what's going out.

If you are safe, you know thirty five years old and you negotiate an extra five thousand dollars for your job, it's not just five thousand dollars because in lifetime earnings, that's several hundred thousand dollars in lifetime learnings. And if you invested that difference, it's even .

more welcome to nerd wallets. Smart money podcast i'm from piles .

and i'm on this .

episode kicks off our nerdy deep dive into what we're calling investing in your income. Another way to say that is investing in yourself by seeking out more ways to make more money.

Yeah you to this at the beginning, but there's just so much advice out there are giving people flag for spending on like straight up Normal stuff, like going there bucks or like getting some talk s at a food truck instead of making them in your kitchen and like, yes, technically all of these things can have a negative impact on your bottom line but like you have to live absolutely and I mean.

we've had a foot in this camp on the show advising people to take a hard look at their expenses and see what they can pair back and effort to get themselves to a Better financial situation. We haven't told people to forgo a morning, but there certainly is a time and place for examining your spending habits. That said, there is another way to affect that .

bottom line exactly, and that is to just make more money. yes.

okay. So alone and you pitch the series to us. What prompted you to start thinking about this?

I've talked about this on here before. Before I started working at nord wallet, I worked at a small company where I was making less than thirty thousand dollars a year with no benefits. So I actually tried to negotiate to thirty two thousand five hundred dollars. And I was told .

that I was.

I know.

how dare I to ask for that much more money ah.

but IT messed me up for like a long time. And to any listeners who have been told something similar, I want to tell you right now that you are not any of those things. I had to check my bank account like every time before I went grocery shopping at that job, and I felt stressed about money all the time. And then when I finally started working at nord wallet overnight, I went from that stressed out lifestyle to being able to save, 不是 man， and a down payment on a house, which was just like a fever dream before then.

And then IT was a reality. Well, we wish everyone could work for node. But for those who are looking for other ways to have that kind of income jump, let's talk about what need to be considering.

Yeah, hon, and and this is not to say that this is easy. These are a little more difficult. They may not happen overnight, but there are some really critical factors that make increasing your income almost imperative.

If you want to meet particular financial goals, if that's buying a house, if you are making a college fun, investing for retirement, these are all the things that you usually do after you fill out your emergency find or you paid down high interest that and cover your data date expenses. And by those metrics, IT just makes IT really hard for a lot of people who ever get to the point where they can afford to save and invest for those long term goals. And for a lot of folks, increasing their income is literally the only way they're going to of be able to afford to invest for retire.

right? And increasing your income can also be far more productive than reducing expenses, particularly for those who don't have many expenses left to cut.

Yeah exactly. So here's an example. If you are making fifty thousand dollars a year, the money you actually get on your paycheck after taxes.

And generally, this is without state taxes, and everyone's tax situation is different. But that would come to about forty two thousand dollars a year, or thousand four hundred and ninety five dollars per month. The average monthly mortgage payment in the U.

S. Is one thousand seven hundred and sixty eight dollars. Now, factory groceries, bills, car payments and other necessities. And the truth becomes something that we already know, which is just that life is really expensive, and most of us are not making enough to cut IT, let alone say, over the future, or just like you know, make enough to enjoy life and take a vacation ever .

now and then yeah and the average millennial O S about sixty five hundred dollars in credit or dead and in the more than three thousand your daily coffee habit and getting rid streaming services simply cannot make up the differences here. And these numbers aren't new, but there sometimes presented with little information about what we can do about them. Increasing your income is one of the biggest ways you can make a dent in those numbers.

exactly. So over the three part series, we're going to talk about how you can get started increasing your income, some concrete steps you can take regardless of whether you want to change jobs or not, and what you can start to do once your income dos increase. We'll be talking about everything from serving up your linton profile to working with a career coach, negotiating and mother that's for a razer, your current job or a salary bump up at a new one.

all right. But we want to hear what you think two listeners to share your thoughts are on ways to boost your income. Leave us a voice mill or text the nerd hot line at nine o one seven three zero six three seven three as nine nine one seven three zero N E R D or email a voice memo to podcast at net 点 com。 So ala, who are we hearing from today?

We are going to the doctor for a check up. Shine.

I know what's the copy?

Gonna be, well, hopefully nothing. Today we are talking with the job doctor, also known as has a wait, who spent a good chunk of her career heading up H. R. Departments, mostly for tech companies. She's now founder and C, E, O of the job doctor and author of the unspoken truth .

career success, best coming up in a moment, stay with us. Today's episode is supported by raindrops sport. What makes a leader? Some say it's about confidence.

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Welcome to smart money.

Hello, thank you for having me in this series.

We are really focusing on ways to increase your income and kind of any me form. So what would you say is the easiest way that people can increase their income?

Well, I think they need to be very mindful that they are their best advocate for making money. The companies, not onna, magically go in and decide that they need to pay them more money because the companies always going to air on the side of they'll take as much as you will give. So making sure that you're advocating for yourself is probably the greatest way that you make money.

And you mean that in terms of salary ation or like looking for another job.

yeah salvy negotiation, asking for money, which is uncomfortable for people to do sometimes understanding what the value of your role is at the position that you're applying for versus just going with the first thing that people ask. I mean, a little bit of discomfort on the front end of negotiating in behalf of yourself really has a massive impact on the back end.

If you are saying no thirty five years old and you negotiate and an extra five thousand dollars for your job, it's not just five thousand dollars because in lifetime earnings, that's several hundred thousand dollars in lifetime earnings. And if you invested that difference, it's even more. So you need to look at a little bit differently and say, every penny that I can negotiate on behalf of myself is the new basis for which other offers come in and other raises is based off of and IT really does have accumulative effect that significant.

I wanted go back to something that you said about increasing the value where your but you know some people may have tried to negotiate or they've hit a financial ceiling for some ways, but how can you get extra experience at your existing job? For example, if you want to role in management in the future, maybe take on a mentor to a work towards that. For people who who negotiating isn't really on the table right now, how can people get some of that extra experience?

First, you have to know what to ask for. One of my recommendations is that you mimic a top performer plan. Companies typically put people in this nine box, and they have these top performers.

And nobody knows who they are except the top performers. They get all these extra things. Some of those extra things are exposure to experiences which are very valuable to you that may be sitting in on an executive meeting and just seeing how things Operate. And the thing about corporate amErica is your manager needs help. There's always is more to do than people to do IT.

And so if you ask for your own top performer plan, you can actually ask for and be very directed with manager to say, can I give part of a presentation in this executive teams meeting? Can I run this little piece of a project that is holding us back that we need to get over the finish line? Can I sit in and listen to how a meeting Operate? Can I help develop a dashboard for our department so that we can show progression in some of the key objectives? So there's lots of different ways you can do IT, but the key you have to ask because most managers are not really great at putting together growth plans for people.

They've got a lot of people and IT gets very markey what they need. But if you actually go to your manager and interact and say, can I do this one thing? Can you help make this one thing happen? Or these two things happen and your odds go way up and your credibility goes up in the organization, your visibility goes up and therefore your promotion ability goes up.

I love what you said about visibility because I think that is so, so important, especially a lot of people are now working in remote environments and so you don't really get that face to face time. And so what are some ways that people can kind of increase their visibility, kind of like you said, talking about a presentation, but just ways to get exposure? And then how does that value you come back?

Well, let's start with something that think people might find interesting. I've studying on hundreds of promotion meetings where they decide who gets the promotions that year and almost without fails like a broken record. The people that don't get the promotions, people will say what they sound great, but I don't know who they are.

I haven't worked with them. One of the big keys to getting the promotion is visibility across the organization and being able to collaborate well with other departments. And it's really important that when people know you, you have a greater chance of getting the promotion and when you intersect with them.

So that the first thing is that having that exposes really important one of the first practical things that I would do in a job is to go talk to the people, intersect with my role and say, tell me, what do you expect that of this? What are the problems that I am helping solve for you? And where are your pain points? And I would get very, very aligned with what those people and constituents need, because the job on paper is not the real job.

IT never is. And this helps you determine what the real job is and how you win. More importantly, how you align yourself to win. So I would be having those conversations at least twice a year because that's what's going to point you toward how you actually work on the things that are going to get you promoted in a company and how we're going to get visibility for you and what you do.

I think about that a lot where I work in terms of even just posting on slack and making sure that I post regularly in the channels that my boss and my boss is boss, and even my boss, boss, boss are because that visibility is so important. So they say, oh, I know who this person is, I know what they're working on, you know they're doing X, Y and z. So what are some other ways to make sure you're getting that managerial attention that could potentially to a race or a promotion?

I'm a big believer in planting seats in an organization with other managers and other places in the organization so that you know what's coming. Managers are planning, you know, six months, eight months in advance, sometimes a year in advance of what they need and what's coming.

And you need to be talking with them, oh, how are you going to be evolving? What are the big problems you're trying to solve? What are big initiatives? And things are going to help you, over the next couple of years, move into the next level of efficiency? And when you understand those things, then you get a Better idea of how you fit into the echo system, and you also get a Better idea of maybe where you want to go in the future.

And then you can begin to after the kind of experiences that you need, so that you will be somebody that they can pay attention to. I would absolutely treat your company like a big homework assignment. And I would be trying to listen to the quarterly reports, listen to the CEO.

You know, what are the big objectives that were trying to accomplish? And IT helps you establish that narrative. Because if I get mad, when people come and say, you know, I interviewed, but I didn't work very good and I don't think they understand my value. And I say, you know, if you don't understand your value proposition, I promise you the company won't IT really is your job to figure out what your value proposition is. And in order to do that, you have to have information.

So when you go into those meetings, it's so hard to kind of know what your value is or what people call your market value. So how do we figure that out? Like how do you essentially see if there are space to grow in terms of pay in your existing role? How do you figure out what you should be getting paid? Well.

that's a lot of different questions. Let me start with value proposition. And first of all, it's kind of a big word, but how do you know what value you bring to an organization? This is a really hard thing for people.

But if you think about leverage, that's what you want to have, is leverage to get what you want. Leverage at its core is I have what you need. And so if you can define what is that, that I see the company needs, where are they going and what have I done so far, that shows I have that skill.

And you can then turn IT into numbers. I was able to come into my department and move the middle on these particular criteria, then you have more leverage. But what most people do is they say i'm really good at working with customers. Well, that of itself doesn't mean anything. But if you say my customer service scores are twenty percent higher than most of the other people in the department, or I was able to decrease call time by ax and increase customer satisfaction by ax, then you actually have something that the company understands and you're speaking their language. So part of your job in determining your value proposition is saying how my solving problems for the company and then how do I turn what i've done into metrics as as I tell people, you should go to work every day and be measuring if you don't have a department metric that tells you am I doing good or am I not doing good, figure out what IT is and start measuring things because those numbers becomes so critical to how you position yourself for a company.

There's two things figuring out what the company kind of need from you and what you can bring to IT. And then obviously, what can the company do for you?

Well, your your market value, it's like a house, you know when we put a house up for so we don't have some need perfect numbers to what its value is. What we know is that other. Houses sold at this amount that were similar and the same is true with compensation.

What other companies are willing to hire. This rollout is a pretty good indicator that you can bring that helps determine the value of role. But the other thing that you have quite a bit of control over is being able to tell the company, here's how I solve the problems in my last company and here's how save them for you.

So for recruiting, for example, is just take a general example. If I said i'm a really good recruit and I was able to manage recruiting team and filled two hundred positions in a year, that doesn't know itself mean anything. But if I understand that a company has low resources and they don't have a lot of money to put toward to recruiters, I could say in the last company, I turned every employee into a recruit in our company because we didn't have a lot of fans.

And we rolled out this employee referred program that made every employee recruit and IT increased the number of applicants that we were bringing into the company months over by sixty percent. Then all of the sun, the company goes scrappy. I need scrappy.

I'm a company that doesn't have a lot of money. I need creativity. Look what that person was able to do in all of a sudden, your leverage went up, which means your compensation problem goes up because you have what the company needs.

Yeah, I think it's so important to think about what are the problems that need to get solved here and sort of apply yourself to those and be multiple and and be able to say, I can help you with that. I feel like that goes so far and feeds into the visible thing that we are talking about earlier, because then you become known as someone who can fix problems.

Is everything. Because on resume? Again, one of my pet peeves as a resume will say, say, you take an H. R. Person and they say, on twenty five year professional who has been able to manage talent management, training and employee relations well, every single resume says that.

But the minute that I can tap into, how do I solve the problems? And I say, i'm the person that you'd hire if you need to go so fast and put in place infrastructure so that you can go public or so that you can have a high major recognition strategy. For example, if I say that, then i've just tapped into how to solve a problem that that particular small company needs so much of that.

This is difficult to do and every company is different. And I think it's so important to get help and support along the way as you're trying to not only be Better in your role but be making more money. So what can you tell me about how you can use mentorship to further your career and help you increase your income? What can mentorship look like? And how do you find a mentor?

I think every single person needs to have not just a mentor. They need to have a hand full of mentors and is available to everybody, most people. The mistake they make as they they think they need to go up to somebody and say, will you be my mentor when, in fact, the best mentor ships that I know of are where you identify people who have really good skills sets in an area.

For example, everybody should have a that they can look to for how do you manage people? How do you get conflict over the finish line, and how do you do IT in a way that's productive rather than destructive? Everybody should have a mentor around data and data analytics, our presentations and how to give a good presentation or run a meeting.

You should identify people who do that well. Watch them. You don't even need to ask what you be my mentor. Watch them. Watch what they do in that area. And then, for example, before you go give a meeting, say, i've been watching you, you get really good presentations and i've tried to use some the principles I see that you realize.

Will you take a look at this presentation and tell me what you change? Can I just give IT to you, spend ten, fifteen minutes to run over the high level. That's how you have mentors that make a difference for you.

As you find people that do good things, you watch them very closely and then you ask them when the time is right to help you make sure you have done that thing, right? And I think that's available to everybody. You don't have to have a company program to do IT. You don't have to have somebody necessarily saying they're be your mentor. Just pick people, watch them.

So he doesn't need to be nearly as formal as what a lot of people think of when they think of entering a mentorship relationship. IT can be as simple as I said, you do this that IT. Can you help me with this one presentation exactly?

Or this one conflict? I have a high conflict situation. And this is how is thinking of handling IT? How would you do IT exactly? I think that far more .

productive to that point. Voucher a mentorship and mentoring relationship is different than working with career coach. But how can you find a career coach um who can maybe help you and how do you navigate that search? There's obviously a widespread of what people charge for career coaching services. Are there are any certifications that people should look for when IT comes to working with a career coach to kind of make sure they're working with someone who knows their stuff?

You know that there are plenty of different certifications, but I don't think that one is necessarily Better than another. I think is a lot like finding a regular therapist. You need to find somebody that you vibe with.

You need to find somebody who's been around the block and have some experience. Probably my biggest beef with a career coaching as an industry is that a lot of people with five years of career experience are calling themselves a career coach. You need somebody who has seen lots of situations in lots of different circumstances and watched how those situations play out. And I think when you have somebody that has either been in your industry or has been around the block for a while there going to be able to give you a much Better idea of the different choices that you have and more importantly, the likely different outcomes of the scenario if you handle the different ways. But somebody with five years of experience simply doesn't have enough experience or enough behind the scenes in really high stakes situations to be able to give, I think, information that is really, really helpful or useful.

And so aside from a lack of experience, is there anything else to kind of look out for in this industry?

I would find people that know my industry, for instance, tech is a different flavor than blue color. If if I took advice from a career coach that's a high tech career coach and i'm in a blue color environment, that advice not going to play as well because there's just different flavors to different industries. So you try and find somebody that's the best match to the environment that you are working in, I think. And then you make sure that, that person has a lot of experience as well.

Is there anything that I didn't ask you about that particularly important for people to think about if they're trying to increase their income in a role, but they're already in?

I will tell you that there is a trend that I am seeing that I think is really valuable to understand. There's a lot of change happening right now. A lot of lay a lot of people leaving companies.

But those people who stay through, I call IT a red zone of a company usually have tremendous opportunities that come their way because of the people that live and the gaps that that creates. And even though IT maybe an uncomfortable period of time to try and do more with less, learning how to work through red zones of companies is really teaching you to innovate and is teaching resilience. And that skill set is extraordinary r valuable.

People who stay in companies often end up with the increases and the promotions that they want because of the vacancies. They are laugh. And so I would tell people, don't think that the grass is Greener just by leaving a company through red zone.

I read down be a tremendous gift to you. And particularly people who are OK with taking promotions that are lateral and they learn the ecosystem of a company that has delayed value. While that may seem like you're going back backwards are standing still, if you're not getting big raises, if you understand the ecosystem of a company by working in different departments over time, that makes you incredibly valuable to a company.

And i'm seeing people use that as a career strategy that ends up paying dividends. If you look at in the long term, like before your horizon is huge, even when they leave that company, the ability to understand the different departments and how they work together is something that's very, very valuable. So don't discount the red one of the company and think, you know your brain is going to tell you this is the wrong company, the wrong time.

It's terrible. IT feels uncomfortable. But discomfort doesn't mean you in the wrong company, is simply means you have to learn to do things differently. And IT really is the tRicky for innovation. And if you can stay through that reds, IT can be incredibly valuable to you.

Well, test A, A, K, A, the job doctor. Thank you so much for talking with us today, and we really appreciate your time.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Ala, I so love how you in testa talked about what I is sometimes think of as the theater of the workplace or narrative building around your job. And I don't mean to be flip or administer real work that goes into building any career.

But if you aren't good at presenting the story of your work, building a compelling cast of characters through your colleagues and advocates to support your work and getting people excited about what you are doing, is gona be a lot hard to get those big opportunities in your career. Tesla described IT as planting seeds. And I kind of think about IT as for shadowing, set building and flowing out your narrative arc totally.

And there's so much that goes into what we do IT work and how we can grow and eventually make more money. And if you're looking for inspiration on where exactly to figure out what type of experience you should be getting, try looking at job listings ts, for jobs you'll eventually want, but maybe aren't qualified for now that will klew you into where you should start looking. For example, if you are in a job that doesn't currently give you management experience, but you are looking to work as a manager in the future, you could give informal entropia try.

So try thinking from your future resume is perspective. Try to think from your future resume is perspective. What experience do you need to have to check a box on a job openings list? And how can you get IT now?

yeah. And once you identify what areas you want to get more experience, and there are thousands of online courses you can take for free or for just a small amount of money to exercise those, guess, you can learn how to code. You can learn about A, I, how you spread cheeks, and pretty much anything else you can think of. So think about what courses could help you out in your current role, or help make the case to give you a promotion.

And this is a great time to look at other rules again and see at particular skills they are looking for. If you're looking for jobs and IT support, for example, you can take a google certification course for that. Some companies even offer financial compensation for furthering your education, so be sure to ask your manager if there are any fans avg, to help you pay for their education costs. Does a great call. So alone, I tell us, was coming up an epsom two of the series.

Next up we are going to hear from an expert from lincoln about how to best optimize your profiles so you can make the most out of a job search.

I think that the number one thing that I would say to folks, if you're trying to make your profile more visible and more searchable is over forty person of recruiters say that they are searching for talent based on skills. And so you really have to put your skills in your summary and use skills and skills language for now that .

all we have for this episode. Do you have a money question of your own, turn to the nerds and call or text us your questions at nine o one 777。 That's nine o one 37NERD。 You can also email us a podcast lot 点 com and remember you can follow the show on your favorite podcast APP， including spotify, apple podcast and I heart radio to automatically download new episodes.

This episode was produced by test begin shaan helped with editing Kevin berry, helped with fact checking sybron mixed audio and a big thank you to know about editors .

for all their help. Here's our brief declaimer. We are not financial or investment visors provide for general educational and entertainment purposes and may not apply to your specific circumstance.

Ces, and with that, until next time turn to the nerds.

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