The Best Excuse for a Pay Raise!!!!! 5

[jtb]

The point to remember is that certifications are as valuable as the person seeing them wants them to be.

For every person who will hire you (or promote you, or give you a raise) because of your certification there is another who will not hire you (or not promote you or not give you a raise). >:-<

How many certifications does Michael Dell have? Bill Gates? George W. Bush? (hint: 0)

It's all about marketing yourself.

You need to show your employer (or potential employer) that you have the right stuff to justify their investment in you. It's a matter of &quot;Return on Investment&quot;.

The average IT worker at the average corporation costs between $70000 and $100000 per year. Now, before you complain, I'd like a salary up there, too... but we're not talking about just salary...

There is the salary, of course, the desk, chair, floorspace, light, heating and cooling, electrical and LAN connections, the telephone, PC, insurance, pension plan, taxes, security, mail delivery, parking, management overhead, supplies, and much more...

We are expensive to maintain, even without the salary! ;-)

So, in order to get &quot;the big money&quot;, we need to show how hiring us can either (a) bring in more sales revenue, (b) reduce the cost of doing business, or (c) some of both.

That's it. If we can't increase sales or cut costs, they don't need us.

I'm open to hear other ideas on this... especially ideas on how we can perform these magical feats of derring-do...

JTB
Senior Infrastructure Consultant
MCSE-NT4, MCP+I, CCNA, CCDA,
CTE, MCIWD, i-Net+, Network+
(MCSE-W2K, MCIWA, SCSA, SCNA in progress)

 

[MasterRacker]

Excellent points and quite valid. It can work different ways though. A person who has few certs but does extremely good work can be &quot;held down&quot; by management because of lack of certs. A person can be given a ton of pay simply because of certs. A lot of it unfortunately can depend on the hiring and/or operational managers and corporate culture of a specific company.

As you say, it all comes down to demonstrating our value, both in getting a new job, or negotiating a pay raise.

In the ideal world, certs and references provide the value information in a new hire candidate and honest evaluations of job performance provide that information after the hire. Even in a long term job, however, passivity kills. We need to do an active year round job of documenting and assigning ROI info to what we do. Management generally doesn't know all that we do, and they need get that info in a form they understand if we expect to &quot;educate&quot; them and actually receive the compensation we all think we deserve.
Jeff
I haven't lost my mind - I know it's backed up on tape somewhere ....

 

[chiph]

Rule-of-thumb I've seen for the true cost of an employee is double their salary (all the expenses you list, plus unemployment taxes, medical/dental benefits, FICA, etc. etc.)

Chip H.

 

[jtb]

So what this all points out is that we need to

1--know what our position does relative to corporate P&L (do we affect sales? can we reduce costs? by how much?)

2--know how to present this in a business-case (that is, no whinging, complaining, or comparing)

3--present ourselves as experienced (even if it's mostly classroom) and certified by [insert authority here] to be able to perform the work required.

As the Master Racker pointed out, experience without certs can be as tough to overcome as certs without experience. Go for all of both that you think you need to justify your business case.

In a &quot;soft&quot; employment market, even years of hard work with a company may not be an anchor. So, polish up the people skills, relationship skills, presentation skills, communication skills... that's the key!

Good Hunting!!!! JTB
Senior Infrastructure Consultant
MCSE-NT4, MCP+I, CCNA, CCDA,
CTE, MCIWD, i-Net+, Network+
(MCSE-W2K, MCIWA, SCSA, SCNA in progress)