One of my favourite bloggers, Latoya Peterson, wrote an interesting post for Jezebel a couple of a weeks ago on the persistence of the wage gap. She offers some good advice for would-be negotiators, which can basically be summed up in two points:

1. Be prepared to walk if you don’t get what you want.
2. Knowledge is power.

Like Latoya, I’ve successfully negotiated pay for both salaried and freelance work in the past, and semi-successfully (got a payrise, but not a particularly impressive one) a few other times.

Unsurprisingly, I agree with both her points - especially the second one. It’s almost impossible to negotiate pay unless you know what other people doing the same or similar work are paid (your predecessors in the role, other freelancers for the same publication), what HR is willing to fork out, and unless you have a sense of how badly they want/need you versus how badly you want/need them.

This kind of information can be difficult to find out, particularly early in your career. The best way to get it is by talking to people - not just when you’re in the negotiation hot-seat, or when you’re job hunting, but consistently. Ask questions, and pay attention to what’s going on around you. There’s a lot about a workplace or industry that you pick up on intuitively, if you just make an effort to be aware of your surroundings.

Information is important because it directly feeds into the other element you need for successful pay negotiation: confidence and self-belief.

If you want to get paid more, you have to believe you’re worth the money, and you have to believe you’re worth a particular amount. It’s no good just saying, “Hey, do you think you could pay me a little more?” (if you do and it works at all, you can guarantee it will literally be a little more).

This might sound like some “power of attraction”, The Secret-type thing, but it isn’t. It’s about the fact that the person you’re negotiating with is almost always going to try to get you to fold, and it’s a lot easier not to if you actually think your work is worth what you’re asking for. This isn’t because they’re mean or evil, but because part of their job is to keep budgets down - which means paying you as little as they can get away with.

And you don’t always have to threaten to walk, either. A couple of years ago, I wrote a short, weekly column for a newspaper. For compensation, they initially offered me my usual word rate, which I would have been fine with, except that the column was short - only 450 words - and required as much work and research as a longer article. So I asked that increase my fee for each article to the equivalent of a 600 word article. I never once threatened to not to do the work - I was pleasant, and polite, and understanding - but I consistently maintained that while I understood their budget was tight, I’d really appreciate more money.

It worked because I was persistent, but also because I felt like I really deserved that rate. I framed my request in such a way that I didn’t look or feel greedy - I was simply asking for pay appropriate to the work I was putting in.

Does anyone else have any pay negotiation tips or experiences they’d like to share?