Part 2: Leveraging your best opportunity to significantly increase your salary

The most reliable way to significantly increase your salary is to change companies. The catch is that you only get so many opportunities to take advantage of this fact because most people will only work for a handful of companies during their careers. You have to make these opportunities count.

In Part 2, we’re going to focus on maximizing your salary at a new company. There are several interrelated areas where a good plan can really pay off with a successful salary negotiation. Your market value estimation from Part 1 comes into play because it’s important to understand your market value so that you can set a realistic goal for your salary negotiation. And you can set yourself up for a successful negotiation by standing out during the interview process and continuously, subtly making your case that you would be a valuable addition to this company.

Getting a strong recommendation from a manager at your new company can also go a long way toward helping you maximize your salary during a negotiation. Many industries seem very large, but you’ll find that you keep seeing familiar faces the longer you’re in your industry. Those people that you see over and over again could help you find lucrative opportunities, and they may go to bat for you if they see you’re interviewing for a job at their company. Those same people could also begin to notice if you’re changing companies every couple of years to pursue higher salaries, so make sure you’re selective with which opportunities you pursue. You don’t want to get a reputation as a job-hopper or it may become difficult to find good opportunities.

You might be tempted to jump straight to How to negotiate your new salary, but I recommend starting with How to ace your next interview and working your way through all of Part 2. The chapters build on each other so that you’ll be able to take full advantage of the negotiation chapter if you’ve already read the interview chapter. Individually, each chapter is useful, but together they can be very valuable because they will give you an overall strategy and the tactics to help you maximize the rare opportunities you will have to significantly increase your salary when changing companies.