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The art of salary negotiation for designers, women and more
I’ve been on the offering end of 50+ jobs over 14 years as a hiring manager in design firms, startups, and large tech companies. Over the years, I noticed that almost all the women accepted their first offer while men would tend to negotiate for more money about 2/3 of the time. These are highly unscientific data-points and they also inspired me to spend more time trying to change the narrative. I’ve informally mentored numerous women around salary negotiation to try to demystify the taboo around talking about money.
That taboo is convenient to employers. In the negotiation space, the employer has the uneven power dynamic of more information. California recently passed a law, AB 2282 The Fair Play Act bill, to help address this uneven power dynamic. As of Jan 1, 2019, it’s illegal for employers to ask about your salary history. Instead, they are permitted to ask about salary expectations.
There are 3 points that make up a comprehensive salary negotiation.
1. Know what you’re worth
Comparative research
Do the online research to better understand salary ranges. Depending on your industry, look at salary comparison sites such as glassdoor, payscale, or levels.fyi (for large tech) which are all my US-centric examples. Specific professional groups often collect & share salary data. For designers, take a look at AIGA’s salary survey, Coroflot’s salary guide, the design census, The Creative Group, and the Vitamin T consultancy.
If this online research may feel a bit generic or irrelevant, another way to do research is to start initiating salary conversations. Consider opening up a conversation with friends in your industry where you mutually share salaries. This is a hard conversation to have, and may feel impossible given taboos about discussing money. Yet sharing this information only benefits each other.
When interviewing for jobs, the best way to know your worth is to try to create the scenario of having multiple offers in hand. While it’s difficult to create these conditions, even letting the negotiator know that you are still interviewing with other companies makes you more desirable.
