(Part 6) 3 Things You Absolutely Must Do To Get a Raise
I visited an office manager at a large law firm in San Bernardino yesterday. Just before we were about to head off to lunch, she said, “Oops, I almost forgot.” She took out a journal notebook and jotted down a few items. I asked her, “What are you doing?” She said, “I’m keeping a log of all the little things that I do around here. When you’re an efficient and skilled manager, the assumption by everyone else is that your job is easy. And my boss sometimes has no idea how many little things I do for him every day. So I’m keeping a log.”
What a concept! Has someone been reading my blog? What she is doing is exactly what I’m talking about here. She briefly lists all the things (big and small) which she contributes. Her note-taking activities were a fairly new endeavor for her so I reminded her to go back in time and to include results from three, six, 12 months prior.The sad fact is that if she has a hard time remembering what she did last month for example, how much harder will it be for her managing attorney to remember? The best kind of accomplishment is the one everyone remembers. You don’t want to lessen the impact of all you’re doing just because you did it last year. Write it down!
Quantify Everything!
Be sure to use real data – dollars and cents – facts and diagrams – as much as possible to demonstrate your value. All of this supports your reasoning behind asking for a raise. For example, if you were able to organize a filing room that reduced the amount of time spent looking for a file, how much were you able to reduce it? How did that reduction result in time being saved? How much money did the firm save by saving that time? Try to quantify everything.
One last thought on this report of your results… imagine writing it as a resume. When resume writing, you wouldn’t write about what a hard worker you are… you would write about the results that you brought to the firm’s bottom line. So get writing and remember to use real results, hard, cold numbers and facts.
…to be continued…
Thursday, May 24, 2007
