Researching an Appropriate Pay Raise

Want more money than you're currently making? If your goal is to stay in your current job, working for your present employer, you'll need to ask for a pay raise. Planning and preparation are key when you ask for a pay raise. So are timing, your employer's pay practices, and the market-based pay rates for your job.

Your goal at this step in asking for a pay raise is to know your employer's pay practices and the market pay rate for your job.
 

1. Familiarize yourself with your employer's pay practices. If the standard practice is to offer salary increases once a year after an annual review, you are unlikely to receive a raise at any other time.
   If your company offers more frequent increases, you'll have more luck asking for a pay raise. Listen to your employer. If the employer announces that the pay raises will be four percent across the board, you are unlikely to negotiate more money.
2. Research the market pay rates for your job. Getting information has never been easier, although you'll want to take care with online projections and salary calculators. They rarely reflect your local market conditions including the number of open positions in your area. If you are already paid above your market pay rate, negotiating a pay raise can be difficult.
3. Read your employee handbook. The handbook may present the process whereby pay raises are granted. If a policy or a process exists, your best bet when asking for a pay raise, is to follow the process exactly.
4. Network with other employees in similar jobs in similar industries to determine your salary competitiveness. Professional associations also do salary surveys and provide networking opportunities with people in similar jobs.

Bambi Blue is a freelance writer, editor, and social butterfly living in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. When she's not blogging her little heart out, she moonlights as a jazz musician and most apparently a weisenheimer. Loves to cook, hates to clean, and can easily be found on Twitter. To read more of Bambi's posts, head to Nexxt.

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