The Fastest Way to Get A raise in Any Industry

Your number one wealth building tool is your income, and to increase your income you need a paid raise. That being said, going to your boss and asking for a pay raise can be intimidating, but if you strategically sit back and put together a plan you can get a pay raise this year. In addition to this article, you can grab my eBook, The Guide to Getting a Raise in Any Field, to help you further prepare for asking for a raise. 

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The average pay increase in 2023 was 4.6% and was infused by the labor market conditions and inflation pressure. People were getting pay raises because inflation was up, but there is a difference between inflation and wage growth. As of October 2023, inflation was reported at 3.2% and wages grew by 5.2% - so wage growth was outpacing inflation. So ,how can you ensure you get yourself a pay raise in your current job?

Understand The Market Value of Your Skills

What is the market value of your position and skills and do you know exactly your market value of your particular value and skills. Market value means the average salary of someone in your position and level of skills and experience for your particular location. That being said, in today’s digital world of remote work, you have to gauge both where you work and where the company is. Your boss will likely go by what the cost of living is for you, and what the average salary is where the company is based. Most of the time, your boss will meet you in the middle, somewhere in between your cost of living and the average salary where the company is located. 

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This is why it’s important to do your research and what your market value is. There are a few websites that can help you do this research and prepare to ask your boss for a pay raise: Glassdoor.com, Payscale.com, and LinkedIn Salary. With these three sites, you have to sign up and put in your current salary information in order to view others’ salary and skills from other people, and you can communicate with other people to see how they got to their current salary. 

Document Your Achievements and Responsibilities

I want you to record your significant achievements, successful projects, and additional responsibilities you’ve taken on. I want you to document what you’ve taken off your leadership team's plate and what areas have you stepped up in that’s taken the weight of your leadership team. There’s a structure to documenting these, and here’s what that looks like:

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• What was the date and the season at the time
• What exactly did you do
• How to did benefit the leadership team and the company 

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Create a portfolio or list of all the things you’ve done that have had a positive impact on the organization as a whole. This is not you bragging or being boastful, this is you documenting that you’re doing your job at a level of excellence that has allowed your leadership team to do their job better by taking things off their plate. 

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Prepare for the Discussion

Here is the thing that I think a lot of people mess up on when asking for a pay raise; you’re not preparing for that conversation, you’re only preparing to tell them who you are, what you’ve done, and what value you bring, but have you really prepared for the discussion? 

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There is a certain way to talk to your leadership team, and you need to know their communication style and how they’re going to respond to your presentation. This means that based on what you’re presenting, you should already know the follow-up questions they’re going to have and how they’re going to respond to have those questions answered. 

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At the time of the discussion, you should already be giving them the wins, and the improvements and with those improvements how they turned into wins. As you’re preparing for the discussion, you should be positioning yourself from a grateful standpoint. Emphasize that you’re grateful to be a part of the team while being clear and confident on why you deserve the raise. 

Addressing Performance Feedback

Start understanding how to accept the feedback you get from your leadership team, use any feedback or review your get from your leader as a positive case study. If you can really understand how to use the reviews you receive from your leadership team, you can build a case study as to why you deserve a raise and what you’ve done for the company. 

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This isn’t going to be easy, it’s going to be hard. I want you to be positive and accepting of the constructive feedback you might receive during the negotiation part of the discussion. Most of the time your boss will give you feedback on places you need to improve upon, and you might get caught off guard, but you need to write that down. 

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A good leader is going to make you uncomfortable sometimes, but performance feedback from your leadership team is going to help you improve your performance and then you can leverage that to help you negotiate your pay raise. If you listen and apply what they’re telling you, you’re more likely to get that pay raise. 

Connect Your Achievements to Company Goals

This is not a time to brag or be boastful about who you are and what you’ve done, it is a time to show what you’ve contributed to the team and how that’s helped the company get closer to their goals and create an impact. What did you do to contribute to the company’s overall success of hitting goals, or did it help the company maximize the opportunities that the company had?

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There is a way to present your achievements that starts with the company’s goals and works downwards to what you’ve done, instead of looking at what you did and making that align with the company goals. The specifics of presenting your achievements this way is outlined in the Guide to Getting a Raise in Any Field eBook I have, and it’s going to be incredibly helpful. 

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You have to present to them, when you’re going to get a pay raise, what as a team has accomplished, and because of what the team has done it’s helped the overall company reach X goals. Just because you show up and do your job, doesn’t mean you deserve a pay raise, you need to show the company what you do that goes above and beyond to make the leadership team’s job easier and takes weight off their shoulders that aligns with the company’s goals. 

Set Realistic Expectations

You’re not going to get a $100,00 pay raise in one year. When we break it down, a pay raise for the average American is 4.6%, in 2023, which is why you need to do the proper research to set realistic expectations. 

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You need to go into the discussion prepared and possibly to compromise on your initial ask. You want to ask for a raise a bit higher than you want, but your boss will come down. From your boss’s perspective, a $1,000 pay raise is not only $1,000, instead it may end up being a $1,200 pay raise on the company side because of employee tax. You have to justify to them why you’re worth that full $1,200 pay raise, not just the $1,000. 

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What is the raise you're asking for, why are you asking for it, and are you willing to compromise and have the conversation. If you’re willing to have that conversation and compromise, and set realistic expectations you’re going to get that raise. 

Let’s Recap 

Asking your boss for a raise can be intimidating, but because your income is your number one wealth building tool, it's necessary to do so. 

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That being said, you need to make sure you’re doing your research and do diligence to understand the market value of your position and skills, what the average salary for your positions, skillset, and experience is, how what you’ve accomplished as directly benefited the company and taken weight off the leadership team’s shoulders, understanding your leadership team’s communication style, and noting your achievements and presenting them in a way that shows gratitude and impact. 

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It’s not going to be easy, these conversations are hard, but negotiating and asking for a raise is critical to increasing your income to help you build wealth and secure your financial future.

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