Salary Story: I Switched Industries & Now Earn 75k
In our series Salary Stories, women with long-term career experience open up about the most intimate details of their jobs: compensation. It’s an honest look at how real people navigate the complicated world of negotiating, raises, promotions and job loss, with the hope it will give young women more insight into how to advocate for themselves — and maybe take a few risks along the way.
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Age: 35 Location: London Current industry and job title: New business and marketing director Current salary: £60,000 + £15,000 bonus Number of years employed since school or university: 12
Starting salary: £17,000 in 2008 Biggest salary jump: £50,000 to £75,000 (including a £15,000 bonus) in 2020 Biggest salary drop: £31,000 to £27,000 in 2012
Biggest negotiation regret: I let a failed negotiation impact my confidence.
I had worked at an agency for three years and had delivered above and beyond my targets and KPIs for the duration. I had been promised a promotion to head of marketing by the CEO if I delivered a particular marketing objective but once that had happened and I asked for a meeting to discuss said promotion, a new senior member of staff (who had been at the company for a few months) decided I wasn’t capable enough.
The CEO was no longer involved in the conversations, despite being my line manager, and instead I had to negotiate with the financial director and this new member of staff. Rather than provide guidance or accept my proposal of new targets to prove that I was ready, they simply said no and began hiring for the promised role.
It completely knocked my confidence. I stopped negotiating and I felt constantly paranoid at work, so much so that I left a few months later, accepting a new job that was totally wrong for me and just exacerbated my negative emotional state.
Thankfully, two years later I am now a director at an ad agency I love. Having managed to scrape my confidence back to a decent level, I am excited about my future once again. I have also discovered that the person who denied my promotion did so for personal reasons – she has told many ex-colleagues that she didn’t like me or the fact I didn’t have a traditional marketing background.
Importantly, the whole process reminded me that I have value and I get a say in who gets to benefit from it.
Best salary advice: Do your research when you go into negotiations. Don’t pick a number you think is right – it could be too low. Instead go in with multiple reports, job descriptions, even jobs you have been approached about and use that to justify your salary request matched to your current responsibilities.
Also, always remember when they challenge that it costs employers a lot more to replace a good member of the team.
I had just graduated from university and my mum told me that I had two weeks to figure out what I wanted to do or I had to move to Germany with her! Ten days later I had a job earning £17,000, a place to stay (temporarily) and had moved to London. A receptionist job wasn’t exactly the plan but it was at a company that represented comedy talent and also produced live shows, which is what I thought I wanted to do as a career.This was a promotion to the live comedy team where I supported the bookers and producers. It was only three months after joining the company and, with all the confidence of youth, I overheard the department head say they needed an assistant and said: “I’ll do it.” Luckily I interviewed well and got the job (plus a £1,000 a year pay increase).This was a promotion but sadly not positive. The head of the department had left the company and I had picked up a huge chunk of her responsibilities with little guidance or support. It resulted in working insane hours (4am phone calls from company partners shouting at me, missing important family events for work), barely eating and the near-breakdown of my relationship. When it came to my review I had hoped it would be properly recognised but instead I had the smallest possible pay rise (to £19,000) and title promotion because I was “too direct” in my emails and didn’t smile enough.Unsurprisingly, I left quickly afterwards. This role wasn’t the dream. I felt that to be a producer required money, or family with money, and I had neither. This PA role paid well at £30,000 and was available – both important for my mental health at the time.I quickly got into the marketing side of the company, working on their events, PR and external comms channels, which I really enjoyed (and paid slightly better at £31,000).I sadly got made redundant after the company lost a big client so I had to find a role quickly and this was a temp one that filled the gap at £27,000.I then found a permanent role in TV, supporting a totally awesome woman for £30,000. I went on to become the company’s marketing manager and redesigned their brand, external comms and PR, and ended up working with big networks to define and create their social content for our shows. My salary grew to £37,000 by the end of my time there. At £38,000 this was my first role in the advertising and marketing industry and where I finally found my calling. It was quite a transition as I moved from a company of 50 to one of almost 300. I loved this role until the aforementioned negotiation. I am really proud of the work I did here and I met some amazing people. My salary ended on £45,000 after three years.This role provided me with really valuable skills but management didn’t support their staff very well. I also joined months before the pandemic so only had a few weeks working with the team before becoming remote, which made building relationships more difficult. The company made lots of redundancies, lost lots of clients, then wanted to over-deliver on any remaining clients so the pressure was pretty untenable at times. I spent a lot of time supporting younger members of the team through this period. This was a maternity contract initially after changing jobs but I have just been made permanent and promoted to new business and marketing director on £60,000 (with a confirmed £15,000 bonus). I will be able to have salary negotiations in December and there have already been discussions about my long-term future at the company.
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