How to Ask for a Raise: Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] Hi and welcome to my channel. My name's Erin McGoff and I'm a filmmaker and content creator living in New York and I help people find their dream careers and just generally feel more confident. You clicked on this video, which means that you're thinking about asking for a raise at work,

[00:12] which is an awesome thing to do. You should definitely be asking for a raise. If you feel like you're underpaid, there's a good chance you're underpaid. But I know, I know. The idea of asking for a raise is daunting to say the least. I have so many people in my DMs constantly saying, Erin, I want to ask for a

[00:28] raise so bad. I'm so scared of my boss. I don't know what to say. How do you phrase it? What if they say, no, listen, this is not personal. It is just professional. It even makes sweatshirts that say that to remind you guys. This is how it works. You give your time and your skills to a company and they give

[00:44] you money. It is a transactional relationship. You're not asking these companies to do you any favors. You're not asking your boss to personally take out his or her wallet and give you cash. You're simply asking to adjust your contract to properly compensate you for the value that you're

[00:58] bringing to this company. I always say asking for a raise is simply trading 30 seconds of awkwardness for cold hard cash. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me. By just enduring what, maybe 30 minutes tops of awkwardness, you can be making thousands of more dollars that is going to snowball throughout

[01:14] your life. And the worst that is going to happen here is that they're going to say no. So in this video, I'm going to go through seven really short and quick steps on how to ask for a raise from beginning to end. And I guarantee you at the end, you are going to feel more confident. So let's go.

[01:27] So step one is to do your research. You definitely don't want to just like go in cold turkey and ask for a raise. It's probably not going to go over very well. What you want to do is that you want to look up salaries in your area. Kind of like you're looking for a new job and there's several great websites

[01:40] where you can do this. The first website is Glassdoor. I love Glassdoor.com. It's basically a big anonymous website where people talk about some good, but mainly bad things about companies. They'll leave reviews you saying, you know, this interview process was kind of a mess or they'll talk about how much money

[01:55] they were offered or how much money they made there or maybe a toxic boss. So if you ever leave a company and you want other people to know about the company, another place is PayScale, which is just another anonymous salary transparency website. And the great thing about PayScale and Glassdoor is

[02:09] that they've been around for so long. They really have a really solid database and you can look up your exact job in your exact area and you can compare your salaries. And then third, another great website is of course LinkedIn. You can also look up your job in the location and then see salaries

[02:23] like the other two websites. LinkedIn has just so much data and is such a fantastic website for doing this kind of research. I recommend going to a lot of websites and looking at a lot of different salaries and seeing kind of the average and what people are looking for in skills and then list

[02:36] out your skills and see how much value you bring to the company. And that'll kind of inform like what you could ask for in a raise. But typically people ask for raises between like three to ten percent. However, you're going to want to ask for double what you expect to get because they're most likely going to

[02:49] meet you in the middle. Although every company is different, small, big, they're all going to have different policies around this. But you're definitely going to want to ask for more than you expect to get. Just like when you're negotiating your salary for a job. Step two is to list out your accomplishments

[03:02] and value. So it's really important to go into this meeting knowing two things. The first thing is how your role or your position has changed since your last raise. And number two is how you've contributed to the company since your last raise. And also to society people tend to ask for raises after 12

[03:16] months. I'm not getting a raise. But then again, every industry is different, but that's kind of like a general standard. So a great way to list out your accomplishments and value is to actually keep track while you work. Pro tip, a great way to keep track of your accomplishments and value is to do it

[03:29] while you're working. So don't try to like, hmm, what did I do this year? No. You want to keep track while you're doing things. So if you get an email, somebody said you did a great job in that. Literally screenshot it, create a Google Drive folder. So it's in the cloud. Save. And then upload that. If you get a

[03:45] metrics report or analytics, or you get positive feedback from a client, you want to take all those things and constantly put them in your little like brag, brag book, brag folder. So you could have them to cite, you know, not just when you're asking for a raise, but also when you're negotiating your salary,

[03:59] your next job, or you're looking for a next job, you're going to have all that data ready to go. So you've step one where you research composal salaries and then step two where you list out your accomplishments and how the role has changed. So for example, if you've gained an intern or if you've gained more

[04:12] responsibilities than when you first started, this is really important because it's showing that you've taken on more work. However, the pay does not reflect it that extra work. Number three is to practice your pitch. It's really important to script and rehearse what you're going to say so that you make sure that you

[04:25] don't mess anything up or ask for the wrong thing. You want to make sure that you are explicit with your request. Now I think there are kind of three elements to the pitch script. The first is just acknowledging them and your role and how much you've enjoyed working at the company. So you can say

[04:39] something like thank you so much for sitting down with me today. I know you're really busy. So I appreciate you making the time to have this conversation. I really enjoyed being a producer here for the past eight months and I'm very grateful for all the projects I've been able to work on. Part two is that

[04:51] you're going to want to talk about what you've accomplished, what you contributed, the value that you've brought, how your role has changed, all that stuff. And then part three is that you have to clearly make your ask. So many people just dance around it. They expect their manager to bring it up. I promise you,

[05:04] your manager is busy and they're really going to appreciate you getting right to the point because the truth of the matter is in any manager watching this is going to nod at me and agree that anybody's going to, anybody's going to know they already know if they can give you a raise. Like all you're really

[05:18] doing in this meeting is that you're giving them a reason to advocate whoever is above them. So you need to give them reasons to go to whoever is above them to say, hey, this person, I think we're under paying them. We need to give them a raise or else they're going to leave. Depending on the company,

[05:31] you like you probably don't have to appeal to your manager's emotions. Okay, they're going to know going into that meeting, what they can offer you and what they can't. And you just need to make your case so that they can make their case to somebody else. That's usually how it works. Step four is to

[05:43] set up a meeting. So this is really important. You shouldn't just ambush your boss. You shouldn't just drop by their office. You shouldn't just zoom them out of the blue. No, you know, do you have a few minutes this week? I promise it's something bad. You know, like you don't have to think that you're quitting,

[05:57] but also like isn't the worst thing ever for them to think that you're quitting because maybe they'll think, oh, what are we going to do without them? Just kidding. But then again, like one time I did this and my manager already came in having talked to HR and finance and so they had actually already

[06:10] they already knew like what they get offered me. So it got done in that meeting and so that was really great. But not everybody has a great manager. So timing is also really key. So you're going to know your manager best, but like don't pick a time when they're stressed out. Also in general, pick a time

[06:24] when you're doing really well, particularly like after you finished a really successful project and when the company is doing well. So if the company just did a bunch of layoffs, not a good time to ask for a raise. But if you just accomplished a big project,

[06:37] if your manager's in a good mood, if the company's doing relatively well, it is a fantastic time to ask for a raise. Step 5 is to make the ask. So here's a script that I really love. Again, customize it to

[06:49] you, rehearse, memorize it, and it should cover all your bases. I've been working here for a little over a year now and have been thrilled with all the projects I've been able to work on. Our ad revenue is up 15% and our newsletter has grown by more than 250,000 subscribers as a direct result of

[07:03] the project I've led. In the past year, I've also gained new project management skills that allow me to perform this job at a higher caliber than when I first started. I'm also managing an intern now. Considering all of this and the current market average for someone with my skillset, I'd like to

[07:16] discuss an adjustment to my salary. And that I would just leave it there. I wouldn't actually make the like specific number ask yet. Just just leave it there and then see how they react to that. How do you react to the conversation? You just want to open up the conversation, okay? You don't

[07:32] want to make things too complicated. You just want to see if they're opened. Pro tip, a great negotiating technique is to use a no-facing question. So instead of saying can I have a 5% raise and

[07:44] then they can say no because people like to say no psychology says people like to say no, it makes them feel safe. They can say no. I'm not going to give you a 5% raise. Instead you can say what a 10% raise beat out of the question. And they can still say no because it makes them feel safe. But they're

[08:00] actually saying yes. You're tricking them into saying yes. It's all psychology. So you can say what a 5% raise beyond the question. Or you can just say a specific number. Another fun psychology trick is that saying a very specific number, especially an odd number, for some reason tricks people

[08:15] into saying yes. So instead of saying I don't know $48,000. Well according to my research I found that a salary of $49,300 would be fair. And this is where step six comes in which is be ready

[08:27] to negotiate. The likelihood of your boss being able to say yep you got it. You got your raise. It's probably not going to happen. What's probably going to happen is that they're going to say thanks for bringing this to me. I need to take this to HR or finance and they can figure it out.

[08:41] What HR and finance are going to do is that they're going to figure out how to give you the lowest raise possible to get you to stay. So you need to advocate for yourself. This is a big thing with

[08:55] my channel. I always talk about how you need to advocate for you because companies don't really care about you. Some do maybe a little bit. They might like you as a person. They like the works that you

[09:07] do a bit more but they might care about their people. Keeping people happy. But a lot of companies just want to make money. So you need to advocate for you. You're just being honest. It's just a

[09:20] frank conversation. Again, it's not personal. It's just business and your manager will appreciate that. But in the moment, they're most likely going to say I can't answer this for you right now. I need to

[09:32] go discuss this with another party. So what you need to focus on is giving them the booklet that they can take to somebody else and say, hey, we're underpaying this person. They need a raise.

[09:44] So then HR and finance or whoever can look at it and say, oh my gosh, this is a really good case. We definitely need to give this person a raise. Your only job is to convince people here, okay? It's not a moral thing. It's not an ethical thing. It's just flat out numbers. There's no emotions in it.

[09:59] It's just these the numbers. This is a value I'm bringing. They don't match. Which brings me onto our final step, step seven. So what's going to happen now, really likely, is that nothing's going to

[10:15] happen. Your boss is going to get really busy doing their actual job and you're going to surround and wait and HR is going to get lost and then finance is going to be like, I didn't see an email, and nothing's really going to happen. Maybe your boss, your manager is really proactive and

[10:30] something you know will happen immediately. Maybe, maybe. But most likely, it's not going to be in that born priority for anybody. So what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to follow up. And this is really also important for legal reasons, because it's really important to have

[10:42] everything in writing. And then if you don't hear anything for like a week, follow up with them again. And if they say that there's nothing that they can do that can't give you a raise right now, say, when can we re-discuss this? Can we re-discuss this in 90 days? Yeah, we can re-discuss this.

[10:57] Okay, send them a calendar invite. Send them a calendar invite for 90 days from now. Or it says, compensation, conversation. Compensation, conversation. Should I start podcast called

[11:09] compensation, conversations? Anyway, you just want to follow up. You want to get things in writing, you want to make sure that you are pestering them. Okay, the squeaky wheel gets the job done. Is that the phrase? And if three months goes by and they keep saying no and you really feel like

[11:24] you're being underpaid, leave. The company's not going to change. Okay, you got to leave. And you know what's really sad is that when you try to leave, they'll probably offer you a raise. Yeah. And remember,

[11:37] you're not asking the company to do you any favors. You're not asking them to do your favor, you're asking them to be fair. Okay, you're asking them to hold their end of the bargain up because you're holding your end of the bargain up and that's just not fair. Okay, that's like you trading somebody a

[11:52] kick out and then giving you one of those little old carmos that you've seen your grandma's house. It's like that's not fair. That's not fair. Not personal, just professional by the sweatshirt. So thanks for watching and if you liked this video, you will definitely like my other content.

[12:07] So I post a lot on TikTok and Instagram, daily career and life advice. And if you want to keep up with just like all the happens going on, sign up for my newsletter. I only send out one newsletter a month and it just has a bunch of like free resources and information and interesting things. And that's

[12:22] pretty much it. So thanks for tuning in.