Use Glassdoor.com to negotiate better pay
Asking for a raise and negotiating for more money when accepting a new position are the easiest ways to make more money with very little effort. However, when you do this, it is often tough to find out how much you should ask for.
There are a lot of sites out there that give you expected salary ranges for your position and location. The problem is that most of these sites suck. A Product Manager at one company may be a completely different role than a Product Manager at another company. Therefor, the salary range those crappy websites (i.e. Monster and PayScale.com) give you, are often a really poor place to find out what you should actually be getting paid.
The next time you are doing any type of salary negotiation, you need to check out www.glassdoor.com to find out what people are actually getting paid at the company you are interviewing/work at.
With Glassdoor, you will need to submit the salary of either your current position, or a previous position you worked at to have access to their database (you gotta give a little info to get some info). Please note that the info you submit is completely anonymous so you don’t have to worry about your employer figuring out who you are.
After you get access to Glassdoor’s data, do some research about the salaries that other employees in that same company get paid. This should give you a good understanding as to how much you should be able to get paid. When discussing your salary expectations with your recruiter/manager/HR person, you definitely want to shoot for the top end of the range that is listed for your position. Since you now know the salary range for the position, this gives you a lot more leverage in terms of knowing what you can successfully get in terms of salary. Not everyone is comfortable negotiating salary, but at the bare minimum you need to check out Glassdoor.com and make sure you don’t get screwed.
If you want more info on how to negotiate a salary, email me your questions at derek.homann@yahoo.com
