Preparing for your next raise

One of my conclusions while reading the salary survey is that employees need to know what they're paid to do. You might be thinking, "I know what I'm paid to do. I'm a developer/ tester/CIO/ whatever." Yes, but that's only part of the story. Via Nobscot's blog, I discovered How To Maximize Your Pay Raise. My favorites of the 15 points are:

1. Do An Outstanding Job
2. Accomplish Your Goals
3. Make Them Want To Reward You
4. Do More Than Expected

If you know what you're supposed to do, you know how you can add value to that. But the first thing to do is to know what your role is and how well you're succeeding at it. If you haven't had a one-on-one with your manager, schedule one, and explain that your agenda is to do interim career development. The points on your agenda could be:

• Define the current aspects of your job, especially if you have only a generic job description or none at all
• Ask your manager where he or she could see where you could add value to your osition.
• Define an action plan (with one small deliverable a week) so you and your manager can see how you are progressing
• Agree how you'll follow-up.

Career development is the responsibility of both the manager and the employee, and it's best when it's decoupled from formal evaluations. This way you and your manager can have a conversation about what's important to the organization and to you. And neither of you need to worry about the raise part of the conversation. At the end of the year, it's much easier to have a money conversation based on value. Now's the time to plan for your next raise. Not when it's evaluation time.