Salary Increase Letter
Sometimes it's necessary to write a salary increase letter to clarify your position and ask for higher salary. While we at Springraise recommend you do as much negotiation as possible in person, over the phone, through a recruiter, or even an HR rep from the company you're interviewing with--an email can be a powerful way to justify your request for more money. (For FREE salary increase letters, just contact us and we'll email them to you!)
If you must write a salary increase letter, it must achieve two goals:
1. Justify your request for higher salary
Justification of a higher salary request can be difficult because there are few external sources that a company will consider valid to justify your request. There are some great pieces of information that companies do use including salary surveys. These surveys are sold to companies so they can get a sense of what competitive salaries are at different levels. If you have that report, then you have equal ground.
2. Convey that you're willing to walk away from the offer
Positioning in negotiation is key. The ultimate power in a salary negotiation is walking away. Companies spend thousands of dollars to get people in the seats to interview. When they like someone, they WANT that person. If you are that person and there's a credible threat that you'll walk away, companies tend to negotiate. Let me make this clear:
It is cheaper for them to increase your salary than it is for them to keep looking for candidates.
I have hired many people throughout the course of my career and this is generally accepted law, not theory. It's a secret employers don't want you to know! So have confidence and don't be afraid to actually walk away if the salary isn't right.
You're going to see other sites that propose long five paragraph salary increase emails. Don't fall into that trap. Your justification can be short and to the point. Note, and this is VERY important: Don't try to justify your salary increase by using only salary calculators. That will offend the person with whom you're trying to negotiate. Why? Because salary calculators are unreliable and companies believe they already offered you a competitive package.
Your justification must have more meat to it, including your current salary, and whether you would have to take a pay cut. Also, your justification should also include something that will benefit the company AND your manager directly. Give the manager something to look forward to when hiring you at your negotiated salary. If you have the salary information for someone at that company at your entry level, then using that would be beneficial. This is extremely important in winning your negotiation. Just fill out the form below and we'll send you FREE salary increase letter samples! Good luck!
Salary Negotiation Email
Sometimes it's necessary to write a salary negotiation email to clarify your position and ask for higher salary. While we at Springraise recommend you do as much negotiation as possible in person, over the phone, through a recruiter, or even an HR rep from the company you're interviewing with--an email can be a powerful way to justify your request for more money.
If you must write a salary increase email, it must achieve two goals:
1. Justify your request for higher salary
Justification of a higher salary request can be difficult because there are few external sources that a company will consider valid to justify your request. There are some great pieces of information that companies do use including salary surveys. These surveys are sold to companies so they can get a sense of what competitive salaries are at different levels. If you have that report, then you have equal ground.
2. Convey that you're willing to walk away from the offer
Positioning in negotiation is key. The ultimate power in a salary negotiation is walking away. Companies spend thousands of dollars to get people in the seats to interview. When they like someone, they WANT that person. If you are that person and there's a credible threat that you'll walk away, companies tend to negotiate. Let me make this clear:
I have hired many people throughout the course of my career and this is generally accepted law, not theory. It's a secret employers don't want you to know! So have confidence and don't be afraid to actually walk away if the salary isn't right.
First Name:
Email:
You're going to see other sites who propose long five paragraph salary increase emails. Don't fall into that trap. Your justification can be short and to the point. Note, and this is VERY important: Don't try to justify your salary increase by using only salary calculators. That will offend the person with whom you're trying to negotiate. Why? Because salary calculators are unreliable and companies believe they already offered you a competitive package.
Your justification must have more meat to it, including your current salary, and whether you would have to take a pay cut. If you have the salary information for someone at that company at your entry level, then using that would be beneficial. This is extremely important in winning your negotiation.
Also, your justification should also include something that will benefit the company AND your manager directly. Give the manager something to look forward to when hiring you at your negotiated salary. Good luck!
Interest Conflict In The Salary Sharing Space
I've discussed this topic before, but feel the need to revisit it now. Many salary and career sites profess to focusing their services on the needs of a person's career. However, based on their own admissions in their About Us pages, one can learn a great deal about whom each company serves. Over the next several days, I will highlight a few of the players and see where they stand.
Let's start with the juggernaut: Salary.com
From their About Us section:
7,000 Corporate Subscribers | 10,000,000 Employees
Salary.com builds on-demand software around a deep domain knowledge in the area of compensation to help customers win the war for talent by simplifying the connections between people, pay and performance. Salary.com's cutting edge technology is integrated with actionable data and content, empowering customers to make the best decisions about pay and performance and help them to attract, motivate, reward and retain top performers.
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Who are Salary.com's customers? Judging by their pride in the 7,000 corporate subscribers they've accumulated and the content of the very first paragraph, it's clear that Salary.com values the corporate customer more than their 10 million "employees".
Let's examine that term closely. Salary.com calls the people who give them information on their salaries "employees". Wow. Don't employees get paid by their employers? The people who contribute their salary information to Salary.com presumably do so in order to receive a free salary report. The problem is that the data in those free reports are marginally beneficial (one only gets actionable data by paying fairly hefty subscriber or report fees).
It seems that consumers are essentially VOLUNTEERS for Salary.com because the company is monetizing our data without paying us anything. If the currency that we as contributors to Salary.com should be paid in is information, then Salary.com shouldn't charge anyone for the best data. It should be given away. I find this corporate behavior bordering on unconscionable.