How to Get a Raise: Ask!
Often we become complacent about getting raises, however the growth of the PA career has seen larger increases in PA salaries then the normal 3% increase for cost of living. If you’ve been at a your current job for a while and are not getting market value for your salary it may be time to renegotiate with your current employer or start applying for new positions.
Initial Job Offer
I was offered a salary of $85,000 for my first job out of PA school. At the time this was about average for PA salaries, however the job was in surgery and the data showed that PAs in surgery tended to make more and felt like I should be compensated fairly for the work I was going to be doing.
I discussed this with the hiring manager when I was first offered the job, however at the time they were not able to go higher on the salary; but they did say that salary could be reviewed in a year.
The position was with a five hospital system and my position was at one of the satellite hospitals. The decision maker on salaries was the VP of something-a-ruther; the main point here is that the decision maker on my salary was not someone who I worked with on a day to day basis nor did I even see her that often.
Meet With the Decision Maker
When the end of my first year was approaching there was no meeting set up with the VP, so I went out of my way to make sure the clinic manager set up an annual review for me so that I could meet with the decision maker.
It’s always good to get feedback on how you are doing but the main reason I wanted to have a review was to bring up the salary. It can be intimidating being reviewed but this is the best time to re-negotiate.
At the end of the review she asked me if I had any feedback or questions and that is when I brought up my question on salary. I discussed with her how I was doing, and the exact work I was doing, really she had no idea what my tasks were on a day-to-day basis as she was not directly overseeing me. She needed to be informed of what I was doing compared to other PAs in the system – how my call schedule was different, how many surgeries I was taking part in, other tasks I was doing, etc.
Ask and You Will Receive
In the end she said she could give me an increase to $95,000 base salary, which was an increase of greater than 10%. That was the easiest $10,000 I have ever made, and all it took was a simple conversation. I had actually countered for more and gave some other reasons for why I thought I deserved more, but in the end she wasn’t able to go higher and I was ok with the increase.
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The hardest part about getting the raise was setting up a meeting with the right person. If you’re not asking for it, usually they won’t go out looking for you; but if you do ask, management is often able to give you more. If you’re working for a large organization with a lot of moving parts you just have to put in the effort to make things happen. Often times the decision maker does not have specific clinical knowledge on how you are doing and they are merely looking at numbers.
If you don’t ask, you will not receive so if you feel like you’re underpaid it doesn’t hurt to ask. Typically the worst that can happen is that they aren’t able to give you more and if you feel like you deserve more you can choose to start looking for a new job that will pay you a fare salary. There is a lot to consider in a job and often you should look at more than just salary, but this allows you to be in the driver seat for your career.
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