How I got a 25% pay raise as a designer after 3 months

I took these 5 steps to negotiate for more.

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash

Three months ago, I was hired as a UI/UX Designer for a travel startup despite having no experience or formal training. Within a few weeks, I ran a design exercise to ideate with the team for a full feature. I was fortunate enough to be hired during this period, but the internship pay isn’t enough to feed me whilst juggling a computer science major.

Hence, after three months (give or take), I decide to ask the founder for a pay raise — specifically, a 20% increase.

The reality is, pay raises don’t just fall into your lap like that. It is natural for companies to not reward you for the good work you did, and fixed pay increments are usually minuscule to boot. You may be loyal to the company, and you might even dream of moving Trello cards to the “In Review” list when you sleep (I’m guilty of this), but the company doesn’t know that.

Most of the time, it doesn’t care.

Sitting at your desk lamenting that you’re “not paid enough” for this won’t be sufficient for your boss to look at you and go: “hey, you deserve this 10% pay raise for the work you do around here”. There are indeed companies who actively revise their salary policy, though it’s likely you’re not going to be in that company.

The apprehension behind going up to your boss and being seemingly thick-skinned usually stems from job security. Will your boss think otherwise of you when you ask for a pay raise? Unfortunately, there are bosses like that, but that’s mostly because you’re approaching your boss with something that they don’t like.

You need a strategy. Here’s what I did to negotiate that pay raise despite having only joined the company for a while.

1 — Preface the discussion early

It might seem like an insane idea, but I tabled the idea of a pay raise possibility before I confirmed the offer (I wrote it in an email).

It’s going to be rejection, but it’s a strategic move:

• You want your employer to know that you know your worth — and you’re actively “calculating” it. It gives your employer some time to prepare themselves and…