How to Earn More Doing the Same Job

With the cost of living going up and wages not matching it, who wouldn’t want to make a little more in their job? If you want to start earning more without having to go into a new career field or change the job you’re doing, you have options.

There’s Always Room for Growth

Even if it doesn’t feel like it, most jobs offer some kind of growth opportunities. Sometimes this might involve doing the same job for a different company or upskilling to be more desirable, but the opportunity for growth is there.

Defining Your Goals

More is nice, but what are you actually looking to get from your job? It’s a good idea to define your work goals, so you know what to ask for and how to prepare yourself for it.

Focus on two main questions:

Where Do You Want to Be?

Compared to what you’re getting from your job right now, where would you like to be? Is it all about income, or would you like to receive more benefits instead? Are you interested in expanding your role in the same field, or would you prefer to remain in the same job and try to grow your income there?

Knowing where you want to be helps you plot a path to get through from where you are now. Without knowing the endpoint, it’s going to be difficult to make a plan for significant change.

What Are You Willing to Give Up?

If you’re going to seek more from your job, it will likely involve some kind of tradeoff. Most job improvements don’t come without some kind of sacrifice, whether it’s working long hours, taking a new commute, moving from a familiar workplace to an uncertain workplace, or taking on more responsibilities.

What kind of tradeoff are you willing to make in exchange for better rewards from your job? Make sure you know your limits before you start going into any kind of negotiation. You don’t want to accidentally give up a benefit you value in without getting something good enough in return.

Moving Horizontally

You can do the same job for someone else and make more than you currently do. If you’re unsatisfied with what you’re earning, look for other opportunities available with your current skill set.

Transferring to a different company for the same job title is one of the best ways to grow your career. Moving up often involves moving out.

The truth is that most companies will not scale up your pay proportionate to your skills or experience. As you stay in a job and work, you’re becoming more and more valuable to your company. If your compensation does not reflect that value growth, you should look around to see if another company would be willing to compensate you fairly for your current skills, experience, and ability.

Even moving to a new company for the same job can be beneficial to your bottom line. It’s recommended to check out your opportunities every 3-5 years to see if you could be getting more somewhere else.

If you’d prefer to stay in your same company, you may have a chance to improve your circumstances by presenting the offer you’ve received from another company and asking them to match it. Having another job offer on the table is great leverage. They can either pay up or you’ll go your way.

Learning to Negotiate

Sometimes, you can earn more if you ask for it. Negotiation is an important skill for everyone, no matter what kind of job you’re working.

While you normally think about negotiation during a job interview, you can negotiate the terms of your contract at any time. Work performance reports and evaluations can be a great opportunity to re-negotiate. If you get a positive report on your performance, you can take the opportunity to negotiate for a raise.

Negotiating is a vital skill to learn as part of advocating for yourself in the workplace. If you’re not going to ask for a raise, no one is likely to offer it to you.

Here’s how you can start negotiating for a raise in your job:

Research salary data for your position and experience: knowledge of what you could be making elsewhere and what others with your level of education and experience are making can help you make a reasonable argument for a raise. Go through job postings to get this kind of information. For example, those in healthcare fields can go to sites like PracticeMatch to find job postings related to what they’re doing and get a feel for the compensation that’s available.
Connect your performance with the company’s good performance: to show your value to the company, it’s important to connect what you do with how the company is performing. Make it obvious how you’re contributing to the success of the company in a significant way.
Highlight specific contributions: after showing how you’re contributing overall, highlight a few individual ways you’ve provided value to the company. Be as specific as possible, especially if you can show how you affected the metrics to get the company closer to its goals.
Craft your ask: with your value proposition ready, it’s time to plan out your ask. What exactly do you want? Negotiation is not the time to be vague. Ask for specific, tangible benefits like a pay increase, a specific perk, or something else you value.
Prepare and practice: prepare for your meeting where you plan to negotiate. Make sure you can answer questions and back up your facts. You should know exactly what you want from the meeting without having to reference a note anywhere.

Negotiation can feel intimidating when you first start, but it’s worth the effort to learn how to make an ask from your employer. This is a skill that will serve you well in your career or other future jobs you work.

Adding to Your Skillset

A raise isn’t always an option in your current state. It’s possible that with your level of education, experience, and skill right now you don’t have much room for negotiation. What you can do is research to find out what skills are most valued in the job you’re working and try to grow in those areas.

If you make yourself more valuable for the job you’re doing, you might be able to negotiate a raise or become a more attractive prospect for a new job. This applies to both hard skills and soft skills.

A good example of a soft skill is learning a new language. In a public-facing job where you’ll regularly be interacting with people who speak other languages, such as in a hospital, you can make yourself more valuable by learning to speak another language.

An example of learning a hard skill would be a developer learning how to code in a new programming language. By learning this skill, they’re making themselves more effective and creating new opportunities to provide value in the workplace.

Conclusion

While the typical path to improving your salary is stepping up into a leadership role or a different type of job, you can increase your compensation without switching jobs. Think strategically and make a plan for how you’ll seek out higher compensation by upskilling, moving to a new company, or negotiating a raise.