Skip to main content

How much am I worth – and how do I know this?

A boss of mine awhile ago used to say “Bargain hard at the beginning [for your salary] and then I don’t want to hear from you again.”

 

But one of the difficulties new professionals have is finding out what their target rate (annual salary, daily rate) should be so you can do that negotating. So here are some ways to try to gather more information.

 

There is something called the 260 rule that some US government agencies use to calculate someone’s daily rate. It gives you a good rule of thumb. The 260 rule says – take your annual salary and divide it by 260 days and that will give you your daily rate. So, if you’re employed and wanting to consult (which means you now have expenses such as health insurance), you can try to adjust your daily rate upwards to cover these additional costs of being an independent consultant. (Note that, even though you have these additional costs to bear, not all US agencies’ contracting officers will allow you this increase.)

 

If you are an independent consultant and are being offered employment in a company, companies’ salary scales may place you lower than you might expect – and sometimes considerably less than your daily rate would be. Why would this be, you wonder? It is often because employer benefits are generally thought to be worth about $10,000 so that is “added” to your salary when the hiring manager and HR look at the consultant rate you’ve been making and compare it with the grade level and salary range for the job.

 

Job postings (except for the federal government) generally don’t include a salary range for the position (because employers need and want the flexibility to negotiate salary depending on your salary history). And no one is comfortable sharing an exact salary number even with a best friend. You can, however, ask a mentor, professor, or senior colleague if they are comfortable giving you a salary range for a certain type of position. Benchmarking positions in a range at least will give you some idea of what the position should be paying.

 

But remember – just like airline seats, someone you think is doing equivalent work to you may be making more than you – and someone else may be making less.

Posted via email from suegriffey's posterous

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mentor: Barbara Rawlins, Monitoring and Evaluation Team Leader, Maternal and Child Survival Program

Another feature of this blog is bringing you advice and perspectives from people who mentor, by answering 3 questions.
Here are Barbara Rawlins’ responses:
What are mentees looking for? · Career guidance · Technical advice · Moral support · Advice on how to negotiate politically-sensitive or controversial situation
What 1 piece of advice do you give every mentee you work with? Figure out what they want to do (in the long term) and what steps they can take to get there
Why are you interested in mentoring? To support younger colleagues, especially women, to help attain their career goals
6 comments
Read more

Guidance on Mentoring: What is Mentoring?

This brief guide focuses on defining different aspects of mentoring, whether for an individual or for a team, and includes selected reference resources. It is critical that the mentee and mentor both approach their interaction with the same understanding of the nature and scope of the advising that will be offered. This brief guide can serve as a reference for both parties in arriving at that mutual understanding.
Before delving into mentoring, it’s important to be aware that sometimes the terms “mentoring” and “coaching” are used interchangeably despite important differences between them. There are many resources on mentoring and coaching – and almost as many different definitions for each as well as the similarities and overlap between the two (such as shown in the articles on coaching in the resource list below).Also, most people agree that mentoring is NOT training although a mentor or coach may recommend that a mentee obtain additional training.
What is the nature of the mentoring…
2 comments
Read more

Virtual Conference Attendance Worked: I was Amazed at How Much I Learned!

I suddenly found myself able to attend the American Evaluation Association (AEA) annual conference virtually because I had a relatively open schedule during the conference days of Oct. 31-November 3, 2018 (Wednesday afternoon-Saturday afternoon). I didn’t know until close to the conference time that AEA would have virtual access – and not just to the Opening Plenary.
Thanks, AEA, for the free and excellent streaming access to Presidential Strand sessions!
So I began attending the virtual sessions. And I was deliberate and diligent in engaging with the conference Twitter hashtag #Eval18 (and other variations).
By the 2nd day afternoon, I realized what a full picture I was getting of the conference even though I wasn’t there. Attending tweeters were keeping us updated on all aspects of the conference. And I found myself reading threads and going back to the program abstracts to learn more about sessions that weren’t streamed but whose content impressed an attendee enough to write a tweet.
A…
3 comments
Read more