People are usually so focused on getting through the interview in the job search process that they aren't thinking about the next step which is to negotiate their salary. It probably isn't a great idea to take a job without discussing the negotiables like salary, work terms, and benefits.
In this episode of "Teachers in Transition," Kitty offers some sage advice on how to approach the salary negotiation phase of your successful job search process. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you can negotiate the terms of your employment after you have agreed to THEIR terms.
For help on how to approach this phase, check out these resources:
"9 Resources You Need to Check Out Before You Negotiate Your Salary" - https://www.themuse.com/advice/9-resources-you-need-to-check-out-before-you-negotiate-your-salary
"How to Negotiate Salary: 37 Tips You Need to Know" - https://www.themuse.com/advice/how-to-negotiate-salary-37-tips-you-need-to-know
If you would like to schedule a complimentary session to discuss your personal situation, click here: https://teachersintransition.com/calendar
For questions by email, contact Kitty at KittyBoitnott@gmail.com.
People are usually so focused on getting through the interview in the job search process that they aren't thinking about the next step which is to negotiate their salary. It probably isn't a great idea to take a job without discussing the negotiables like salary, work terms, and benefits.
In this episode of "Teachers in Transition," Kitty offers some sage advice on how to approach the salary negotiation phase of your successful job search process. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you can negotiate the terms of your employment after you have agreed to THEIR terms.
For help on how to approach this phase, check out these resources:
"9 Resources You Need to Check Out Before You Negotiate Your Salary" - https://www.themuse.com/advice/9-resources-you-need-to-check-out-before-you-negotiate-your-salary
"How to Negotiate Salary: 37 Tips You Need to Know" - https://www.themuse.com/advice/how-to-negotiate-salary-37-tips-you-need-to-know
If you would like to schedule a complimentary session to discuss your personal situation, click here: https://teachersintransition.com/calendar
For questions by email, contact Kitty at KittyBoitnott@gmail.com.
Are you a teacher who's feeling stressed out and overwhelmed? Do you worry that you're feeling symptoms of burnout or are you sure you've already gotten there? Have you started to dream of doing some other kind of job or perhaps pursuing a whole different career, but you don't know what else you're even qualified to do? You don't know how to start a job search. You just feel stuck. If that sounds like you, I promise you're not alone. My name is Kitty Boitnott. I'm a career transition and job search coach and I specialize in helping burnt-out teachers just like you deal not only with the stress and overwhelm of your day-to-day job, but to consider what other careers might be out there waiting for you. Join me for"Teachers in Transition." In some episodes, I'll be speaking to stress management techniques and how you can manage your stress on a day-to-day basis. In other episodes, I'll be talking about career transition. What tools do you need to be successful in a job search when you're moving from one career into a totally different track? These are questions that you need answers to and I can help you find those answers. My name is Kitty Boitnott. Welcome to"Teachers in Transition." Welcome back to episode number 111 of Teachers in Transition the podcast and the YouTube channel. My name is Kitty Boitnott. I am the owner of Boitnott Coaching and the founder of Teachers in Transition. As a career transition and job search coach. I specialize in working with burnout teachers who are ready for a career change. I am also a certified stress management coach and a life strategies coach. And because I have sort of a dual interest, I alternate topics each week, one week talking about career transition strategies and on alternating weeks, talking about stress management strategies this week is the career week. So I'm going to talk today a little bit about what do you do once you've been through all of the interviews and you have low and behold received of, of from job offer. Often people are so concentrated on just getting the interview and getting through the interview that they haven't thought too much about what comes after the interview. So I'd like to offer a few things that I think are important for you to keep in mind when you get to the point in this process that you've been given the job if you want it. But before you say yes, too quickly, I want you to stop and think, is this job something that you really want to do? Or is there something that you've maybe got in the pipeline that you would much prefer to do? And if you commit yourself to this open, this position that you've been offered, you might be cutting yourself off from an opportunity that you want more. You always have to consider that possibility. Once you've taken a job, it's bad form to quit within just a few weeks or a few months, it's also bad for them. And I've actually had this conversation with not a client, but someone who called me and I think was hoping that I would take her on as a client until I told her something she did not want to hear. But in her case, she had taken a job. And within a couple of weeks, she had realized that she had taken a salary that wasn't commensurate with her level of expertise and knowledge and her experience. And she was wanting to renegotiate the terms of her hire and wanted to know how she should go about doing that and how she should approach it. And my reaction was, I don't think you can do that once you've taken the job on the terms that you've been offered within two weeks, you can't go back and say, Oh, I want to do over. It's not like buying magazines where you have three days to think it over and cancel your order. You have to really know that you're what you're committing yourself to in her case. I think she had been eager to be offered something. And she took the offer without thinking through what the salary and terms of her hiring. We're really going to me. It's better to have these considerations in mind before you agree to anything rather than after. So what do you take into account when you're determining whether an offer is fair or not? And let me just suggest to you that regardless of where you might be offered the position or who you might be dealing with, the chances are that you're going to be offered the low ball bid on the salary or the benefits that they're willing to offer to see if you will take it after all, if you'll take their lowest offer, that saves them money. So don't be surprised if you go back, if you, if you have the courage to say, well, now let's talk for a minute. I don't know that I, I want, I want the job, but I don't know that I want it for that salary. Is that negotiable. You would be surprised at how often the answer will be. Well, what is it that you want or need to take the job? It's far more wiggle room than you often think there is. And, and a lot of employers will benefit from the fact that if you've been in the teaching world all these years, you don't know that you can make it. That's not. Then part of your experience, you've come in on whatever scale you happen to be eligible for. If you came in as a graduate straight out of college, you started at the zero step on the scale, or maybe, maybe if they were having a hard time finding teachers, maybe they started you at step three. But then after that, the progression of the steps were pretty steady. And maybe, and recessionary years, you get stuck on a step where you get knocked back a few steps. And when they start playing with their salary scales and start rewriting them, you can find yourself in a, on a step that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Teachers' salaries have been seriously depressed for, I don't know, maybe forever, but at least for the last 30 to 40 years, I came into the profession in the midst of a recession in the seventies. And I am confident that I never saw the salary that I should have been getting, but I kept getting knocked back because of recession and other considerations. And I was riffed a couple of times or in danger of being riffed. And, you know, they take advantage of the fact that, you know, we all need a job. We want a job. And so often we'll take what we know can get when I moved from one district to another, I was surprised and somewhat disappointed to see that in one of the districts that I was considering putting my application in for the district, just PRI uh, without any ceremony, put everybody who had more than 13 years of experience on step 13. And you lost all of those other years of experience. Now, I think the district was taking advantage of the fact that it was a big district with a lot of mobility. People transferring in for other other industries and wives were looking for teaching jobs and they would give up there. They had 20 years of experience. They'd give up seven years just to get a job. In my case, I had been teaching for 26 years. And so imagine my disappointment. When I saw that if I went to work for this particular district, I would be taking a huge cut in salary. And I would be starting at step 13 instead of step 26. So when I went in for that interview, I almost canceled it, but I did go in for the interview and I was pretty blahzay because I was pretty sure I could get a, an appointment in one of the other neighboring districts. And during the, the, the course of the interview, um, the issue of salary came up and I said, well, I really need to speak with you about that. I was disappointed to see that in this County, when you come in new, you come in at step 13, regardless of how many years you've been teaching. And I don't, I don't think that's appropriate. And I certainly am not going to take a job in this district and take a$5,000 cut in order to come in on step 13, when I've been teaching for 25 years and the HR lady just looked at it and he'd say, well, what salary would you be making if you stayed where you are with 25 years? So I told her, she said, don't, don't sign up with anybody else until I've had a chance to do some checking. Well, I couldn't, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. You mean, what do you mean? Did you, you can check it, did that mean that the 13 wasn't carved in stone somewhere? Couple of days later, she called, she said, don't sign with anybody. I've worked it out. I'm going to put you at step 18. It was a little more than a$5,000 raise. It was going to be a little more than I would have made if I'd stayed in my original location. Now, if I had been eager for that job, I would have gone in and taken that step 13 and taken a$5,000 cut. So sometimes you have to be a little bold. And I was probably a little bold in that interview because I thought I had some backups and I did. I was offered a position in one of the other districts and eventually in the other district as well. So what I'm saying is be smart about accepting the first offer. And if the salary is not negotiable, perhaps something else is Tom off an extra week of vacation or four days a week instead of five, or working from home virtually, even after we go back to onsite working, you can negotiate lots of different things. So be imaginative. Think about different ways that you might like to configure rate your day and your week and your month and what you might be willing to give up in order to have some accommodations made. Ultimately, you have to decide what it is that you want to do. And if you, if you get an offer for a job that feels like your dream job, and you wind up taking a little bit of a pay cut, the good news about going into the private industry is that you will quickly make it up faster than you would. If you were in the public sector, the raises are more frequent. Often there are bonuses that are provided that create an overall annual income that rivals what most teachers make. But don't jump in head first without taking a look at the total landscape. And I'm going to offer in the show notes for today's episode, a couple of links to some resources that will help you to think about different ways to negotiate your salary and where to go to find what the median salary for a specific type of work is and what the salary expectations should be. So that you're not going into your negotiation blind. And that's my best advice on how to approach the negotiation for your salary. Once you've been offered a position, but now remember you do this before you accept the job. You don't say yes, I'll take it and then start negotiating. Once you said, yes, it's too late to negotiate in most cases. So that's it for today. I hope you will have found that helpful, even though you might not be at that point in your job search process yet hopefully at some point in the not too distant future, you will be. And I hope that this episode today will have been useful to you. Certainly. I hope the resources that are provided in the show notes will also be useful as always, if you would, please leave a comment review this podcast so that other people can find it more easily. If you have an individual question that you would like to talk about that schedule a discovery session, I offer those as a complimentary service. You can go to teachers in transition.com forward slash calendar to set up a discovery session, or email me at kittyboitnott@gmail.com. That's it for this week. I'll see you next week. Have a wonderful week ahead. So there you have it, an episode of"Teachers in Transition." I hope you enjoyed the information and I hope you'll plan to come back. Please subscribe to"Teachers in Transition" so that you can be alerted of future episodes. And let me know if you have any questions or topics that you would like me to specifically cover in a future episode. I'm more than happy to help with individual questions as well. So email me at KittyBoitnott@BoitnottCoaching.com. If you are interested in finding a new career or just enjoying your life more, this is the place to start. I'm Kitty Boitnott and this is"Teachers in Transition."