Confession

I was one hour into my new job in Human Resources and I was already logging into the system to pull up the salaries of my peers. I had access to this data as part of my job and I wanted to know who was the highest paid person among my peers in the department I had just joined.

I suspected it would be Chris, a middle-aged, highly-experienced, hard-working white male who had been in his job for 13 years.

If you are wondering why I was being nosy, I was simply curious to see if I had negotiated well enough for the job. Had I left money on the table?

I wasn’t entirely shocked to see the answer. I was the highest paid person on the team. By other’s cold looks that first week, I knew everyone else had looked me up and knew it too.

Why I wasn’t surprised

I had negotiated for the salary I needed to say HELL YES to the job offer. I knew I was worth it, and I must have done a good job conveying my value because they had me at the very top of the salary range.

I also knew how the system worked. The most recent hires are almost always paid at the highest rate because they need to attract people at the current market rate. This is usually a lot higher than it cost them to attract the same kind of candidate several years ago.

Therefore, it kind of benefits you salary-wise to change jobs every few years if you want to make significant jumps in salary. Most companies won’t offer a cost of living adjustment or huge merit increases, but a new employer will pay whatever it costs to get your talented butt in their door if they need you.

The next highest paid person was a girl who had joined two months prior. The lowest paid — by a whopping $20,000 — was Chris, the guy who was also the most experienced employee with the highest seniority on the team.

How did that happen? The answer is simple.

Who’s responsible for this?

Every company has someone in charge of Compensation; they determine the salary ranges and approve all new salaries and pay adjustments. Their job is to ensure equity and fairness in comp for all employees. They have fancy data showing the salaries for people based on age, race, gender, etc.

So if you think there is a huge “pay gap” in your company, take it up with your compensation director, who is responsible for ensuring equity based on tenure, market rate, experience and performance. It could be that they are incompetent in their job or asleep as the wheel. I’ve seen both.

But the compensation director is not the only person responsible.

YOU are responsible for how much you get paid when you get hired.

Where you fall in the salary range upon hire depends on one thing — and it’s something that will affect you in more ways than you realize.

Did you negotiate?

A lot of people take a job thinking that the bonus will make up for the lower salary, or perhaps they are just grateful that they got an offer at all. I once made this mistake for a job that had a fantastic bonus structure — it was a harsh reminder of something where I certainly knew better.

It is critical that you get the max from the start. EVERYTHING Is based on your salary. Your merit increases, promotions, and bonuses are all calculated as a percentage of your salary. If a typical annual raise is 3%, you are going to be on a slow crawl to increase your pay rate.

If your salary is low, everything else will be low as well.

Therefore, ALWAYS negotiate: The only reason men may start with higher salaries is because they tend to negotiate — and they do so well. A lot of women get an offer and delightfully say yes right away. Men tend to say they’d like to review the offer and loop back, at which point, they propose a higher rate along with a solid business case to justify it.

However, it is worth stating that women who negotiate end up very high in the salary range as well, and oftentimes are the highest paid among their peers. I once negotiated so well that the company had to bump up the salary of my manager so she would be compensated more than me. If a company really wants you, they’ll figure out how to give you what you want.

The system isn’t rigged against women. It’s rigged against people who don’t know what they are doing.

Unhappy with your salary now? Then it’s time to go. Land a new job and this time, negotiate for the compensation that you deserve. Trying to get a salary adjustment in a job you have been at for 10 years is a tough battle. It can be done, but Comp Directors generally don’t like to approve a 20% equity increase. Move on, and this time, you know exactly what to do.

Trying to decide whether a new opportunity is right for you?

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