Are You An Underearner? What Your Salary Might Say About You

Salary

Are You An Underearner? What Your Salary Might Say About You
Recently, there was an article on LearnVest titled “Hello, My Name is Tom and I’m an Underearner”. It’s an interesting read about the characteristics of underearners and the presence of an AA-type support group called “Underearners Anonymous,” (Who knew such a group existed?) It got me thinking about how salary means more than money: It can affect how others see you, and how you see yourself, like a dirty window on the world.
One of the problems that can develop during a job search is a completely unrealistic idea of salary. It’s easy to undervalue your abilities and ask for too low a wage, or to assume you can demand the paycheck someone with years of experience in your field would get. If you add up your monthly bills and just ask for that much, you aren’t using all the information that should go into salary ranges.
Underearners are people who are not getting the salary that someone with their qualifications would reasonably expect. This could be because they don’t value those qualifications or are afraid to ask for a raise. It could be because they’d have to live up to their potential and they are afraid.
There are a lot of reasons why salary and self-esteem are connected. In some cases, there is discrimination causing salary issues, but this cannot be assumed because sometimes the reason for the lower paycheck is actually performance-related.  You need to dig deeper to find out why that paycheck is that amount.
During a job search and interview, salary is a subject that you should be prepared to confidently discuss with a prospective employer without being demanding. The more you understand your worth, the easier it is to see that you deserve (earn) a wage that is accurate. There are two excellent resources available to you:

  • Job Search Resources — this page has a wealth of information, including salary calculators and self-assessments
  • Job Search Success System — this is a full course that will give you the skills to show your worth accurately to potential employers.

When you are getting the salary you should be getting, it’s like seeing your world through a clean window.

Salary Negotiating Just Because

Salary

money faucet
There seems to be a rule of thumb out there that if you land a job you should always try to negotiate for more money as a matter of course. If you’ve done your homework and realize that the salary offer is too low for your level of education and experience, you should at least try to negotiate a higher salary. However, negotiating your salary just because you think you should can hurt you in a number of ways.
Contract positions are usually set at a certain rate and are only sometimes negotiable. If you try to negotiate a contract job offer, chances are that you delay many onboarding tasks such as drug screening, background and references checks and getting signed up for benefits. You may also find that the employer still expects you to start on the original date stated in the offer, leaving you scrambling to comply.
If you can negotiate your salary higher for other types of positions, you may leave yourself vulnerable to layoff if your salary is higher than your peers’. Your salary may be the first on the cutting block when it is time for your employer to make budgetary cuts.
Negotiating a salary higher than what you originally stated you would be willing to take may make a potential employer think that you did not do your salary homework or are trying to get more money just because you think you can. This does not leave the employer with a good impression of you. Of course, you could prevent yourself from being boxed into a corner like this by not giving a specific dollar amount answer to the question, “What are your salary expectations?” If hard-pressed by an interviewer, give a wide salary range because this question is often used as criteria to weed out a large candidate pool.