"If information is power, then most employees who enter salary negotiations are holding pea shooters while the boss is encased in a Kevlar vest"Like providing vacation and parental leave, paying higher salaries is not in a company’s short-term (some might say shortsighted) best interest. It is free market diktat that an employer will strive to pay you as little as possible. And it’s annoying gender fact #37 that women are notoriously lousy at negotiating their salaries (which is one reason they earn exponentially less throughout their careers).
The main problem, for all us would-be employees, is that salary negotiations are scary. They are scary because they are not transparent— fear of the unknown, you see. But this is where the handy-dandy internet comes in, and it’s information granting, social networking super powers save the day.
 Now, with websites like salary.com and payscale.com, you can fight back, just like Jessica Morrison, the heroine in a pseudo-recent New York Times article ("Using the Web to Get the Boss to Pay More"), did.
Jessica Morrison wrote advertising copy for Drugstore.com in Seattle. “After five years at the company and several promotions, her title was associate editor even though she had the same duties as a copywriter, a loftier title. She also suspected that at $42,000 a year, she was paid a lot less than someone else with her duties.
She checked PayScale, and its free report that compares her pay with others holding a similar job title said that someone with her experience should be making $50,000 to $60,000. Then she went to see her manager. ‘I was a little nervous going in, but I had done my research,’ Ms. Morrison, 27, said. She got the title she wanted and a raise to within the pay range she suggested.”
Success!
Since salary information from sites like PayScale are only as good as the information you provide, go there and add your data. You can find out just how well you did negotiating your salary. Afterwards, pat yourself on the back or, if you find yourself on the lower end of the payscale, print out that graph and schedule a meeting with the boss stat.
If they went through the trouble of hiring you or offering you a position, the likelihood is that they want to keep you. Yes, you— sweaty palms and all. - Vetta
One person has commented on this article.  1. Pay Scale for DesignersGuest User, UnregisteredFor a long time we've had a payscale in the design/creative realm. The Graphic Artists Guild has long held a payscale to help those of us that choose self employment to keep up with the changing economy. |
