Everyone likes to have money. And let’s be honest. Getting a raise or promotion is rarely (if ever) a bad thing. But how exactly do you go about earning more money, especially if you’re already in a position of leadership, like an IT director? In this article, we discuss 9 ways that you can demonstrate your value and earn more money in your industry.
How to Grow Within Your Industry
An obvious way to earn more money is by growing in your industry. As you continue to pursue education, gain experiences, and earn new licenses and credentials, you will become more marketable within your field.
1. Find a Mentor
One of the best ways to grow in any field is to find someone with more experience who can give you guidance and advice. Mentors are absolutely critical if you want to be successful in a new field. But even experienced IT directors can benefit from working with more seasoned experts.
Your boss is an obvious choice when it comes to finding a mentor. Find out how your boss or and other supervisors entered the tech industry. What did they do to get where they are today? Ask what advice they would give to their younger selves.
If you don’t have direct opportunities at work, find someone in your field to regularly review your work and give you honest feedback. Join online tech forums and groups on social media. You can also reach out to potential mentors on LinkedIn or through your social circle.
2. Develop New Skills
Regardless of how long you’ve been in the tech industry, you should always be looking to enhance your education and develop new skills.
Be on the lookout for courses you can join or conferences you can attend. Reach out to your supervisor for ideas, and check with HR to see if your employer offers any continuing education classes.
Furthering your education will give you concrete evidence to present to your employer when the time comes to ask for a raise. And if it doesn’t work now, you now have additional skills to turn outward and begin searching for a better position.
Earn More Money by Getting a Raise
Perhaps the easiest way to earn more money is to ask for a raise. But this isn’t as simple as walking up to your employer and demanding more money.
You first need to present your accomplishments within the company to show that you deserve a raise. It’s also important to do some research so you know how much of an increase you can reasonably expect to receive.
Here are some tips to help you prepare so you can be more successful when asking for a raise.
3. Share Your Goals and Ask for Feedback
It’s always a good idea to have open and honest communication with your supervisor. If you’ve been in your role for at least six months, there’s nothing wrong with expressing your desire to advance so that you can grow as both an employee and an individual.
As for recommendations on what you can do to excel in your current role and how you can best position yourself for the next role.
When you approach a raise with the attitude of bettering the company as a whole, you show your boss that you care about using your skills to benefit others as well as yourself.
4. Take on More Responsibility
You’ve probably heard the expression, “Dress for the job you want.”
When it comes to asking for a raise or promotion, you need to start thinking ahead to what tasks your future self will be handling.
Start by doing everything you can to command the responsibilities of your current role. Then look ahead to the problems your soon-to-be self would be trying to solve.
Ask questions to understand the core strategy and focus of your organization. See how you can align your priorities with theirs, and you will have a greater chance for advancement.
5. Communicate Your Successes and Demonstrate Value
Many employees think that working a certain number of months or years is enough to warrant a raise.
However, it doesn’t really make sense to pay an employee more unless they’re adding direct value to the company. If one employee worked for 10 years, changing nothing about her performance, while another, newer employee, continued to generate more revenue for the company each year, who do you think is more deserving of a raise?
In the same way, you need to demonstrate your value to your employer. As you work to take on more responsibility, don’t be afraid to proactively communicate your wins.
In addition, identify specific ways that you have added value to your organization, either by earning the company more money, generating new leads, or increasing efficiency.
Sharing the successes that you’re seeing in your work will help your employer to see why you deserve a raise, and it will be much more of a no-brainer when the time comes.
6. Do Your Research Before Asking for a Raise
Another mistake that a lot of workers make is that they’re unsure how much of a raise to ask for.
Sure, we all want to earn more money. But how much of a raise do you truly deserve, and how much can your company afford to pay you?
Study salary trends across your industry to find out the market rate for your role (or your intended role). That way, you’ll be prepared when your boss asks how much of a raise you’d like or tells you the amount your company is willing to give.
How to Earn More Money Through a Promotion
Finally, a promotion is another way to increase your value and potentially make more money. Even if you don’t see a huge jump in your salary, a promotion will set you up with skills and responsibilities that can earn you more money in the future.
7. Make Your Boss’s Job Easier
It might seem counterintuitive to take on tasks that your boss would normally handle. But by making your boss’s job easier, you’re freeing up his/her time to focus on new areas of work within the organization.
Making your boss’s job obsolete also shows that you’re ready and able to take on new responsibilities within the company.
8. Summarize Your Work Visually
In the last section, we mentioned that it’s helpful to identify specific ways that you’ve added value to your organization.
When discussing your work, implement visuals to illustrate what you are doing to succeed in your role. A quick visual snapshot, like a chart or graph, will give your boss and other team members concrete evidence that backs up what you’re saying.
9. Articulate Your Desire for a Promotion
This might be the simplest step of all, but if you never say anything, there’s no way for management to know that you’d like a promotion.
As you show how you’ve added value to your organization in the past, express your desire to advance within the company and ask what you can do to prepare.
Creating a pattern of humility and a desire to improve will put you in a much better position for getting a promotion.
Show Pride in Your Work
Perhaps one of the most important things you can do to earn more money in the tech industry is to take pride in working hard. You can’t always control how much money you make, but owning your achievements and continuing to improve will show management and other recruiters that you’re serious about your work.
Here at CR-T, we take pride in providing enterprise-level IT services at prices that work for small businesses. Our team of experts can become your IT support department, responding to issues quickly, often before you even know about them. Covering everything from your servers and network infrastructure to your computers, workstations and mobile devices, we provide end-to-end solutions for all your technology needs.
Time and experience have helped us develop best practices and workflow procedures designed to keep your focus on your business, not your technology.
