K
Kathleen Martin
Guest
Meet Shannyn, a 35-year-old social media specialist based in San Antonio, Texas. Now more than a decade into her career, Shannyn has been through the salary negotiation process many times. We sat down to talk about the differences between her negotiations that were successful and those that weren’t. And the ways in which those different outcomes often had nothing to do with her. Here's our conversation edited for length and clarity.
I consider myself to be an ambitious person.
Though growing up, a lot of young women are trained to be ambitious, we're told to be ambitious, we're encouraged to - you get out into the real world and you really aren't embraced for that a lot.
And figuring out how to advocate for yourself - to figure out how to balance ambition with 'being a team player', 'earning your due', 'paying your dues'. And then also saying, “No, I actually deserve more than what I've been given," can be kind of overwhelming.
I took a couple of jobs out of grad school and really struggled to advocate for myself. As a new grad you are trying to get your foot in the door. You're trying to build a name for yourself. You really want to find a good company and work your way towards something a little bit more substantial.
I took less than I deserved thinking, “Oh, well, I'll get my foot in the door, pay my dues. They'll see what I'm worth and then they'll pay me what I'm worth. I'll just really prove myself.” And that did not work out for me very well.
I had two jobs that I took either on the promise that I would get more work later, meaning, "Hey, we'll have you work part-time. We'll evaluate you after six months, we'll give you a full-time gig. It will be awesome." That did not pan out.
I took a second job for less than I wanted, advocated for more salary, went back and forth and they're like, "Sorry, we just can't afford that right now. But in six months we absolutely will be able to afford that. We'll evaluate your performance and pay you what you've asked for now." Against my better judgment, I took that job offer and regretted it later.
About three to four months in you start to see from the people you work with that they're miserable. That they're not able to pay their bills. That they're not getting the advancement that they were promised too. Because if they'd made this promise to you, you know they've made it to other people too. Like, "Oh, just take less hours, take less pay. We don't want to give you this much vacation time, but you know, after X amount of time, if you really work hard, you'll get it."
But you start to see it across the company that nobody is getting the promises that were made.
So after about three to four months it became abundantly apparent, looking down the pipeline to my six month evaluation, that if they weren't honoring other people's promises, they weren't going to honor mine.
Continue reading: https://ambition.bulletin.com/salary-negotiations-that-worked-and-those-that-didn-t/
I consider myself to be an ambitious person.
Though growing up, a lot of young women are trained to be ambitious, we're told to be ambitious, we're encouraged to - you get out into the real world and you really aren't embraced for that a lot.
And figuring out how to advocate for yourself - to figure out how to balance ambition with 'being a team player', 'earning your due', 'paying your dues'. And then also saying, “No, I actually deserve more than what I've been given," can be kind of overwhelming.
I took a couple of jobs out of grad school and really struggled to advocate for myself. As a new grad you are trying to get your foot in the door. You're trying to build a name for yourself. You really want to find a good company and work your way towards something a little bit more substantial.
I took less than I deserved thinking, “Oh, well, I'll get my foot in the door, pay my dues. They'll see what I'm worth and then they'll pay me what I'm worth. I'll just really prove myself.” And that did not work out for me very well.
I had two jobs that I took either on the promise that I would get more work later, meaning, "Hey, we'll have you work part-time. We'll evaluate you after six months, we'll give you a full-time gig. It will be awesome." That did not pan out.
I took a second job for less than I wanted, advocated for more salary, went back and forth and they're like, "Sorry, we just can't afford that right now. But in six months we absolutely will be able to afford that. We'll evaluate your performance and pay you what you've asked for now." Against my better judgment, I took that job offer and regretted it later.
About three to four months in you start to see from the people you work with that they're miserable. That they're not able to pay their bills. That they're not getting the advancement that they were promised too. Because if they'd made this promise to you, you know they've made it to other people too. Like, "Oh, just take less hours, take less pay. We don't want to give you this much vacation time, but you know, after X amount of time, if you really work hard, you'll get it."
But you start to see it across the company that nobody is getting the promises that were made.
So after about three to four months it became abundantly apparent, looking down the pipeline to my six month evaluation, that if they weren't honoring other people's promises, they weren't going to honor mine.
Continue reading: https://ambition.bulletin.com/salary-negotiations-that-worked-and-those-that-didn-t/
