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Salary Story: I Fought For A Pay Rise Over 6 Months…& Won

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: 29
Location: London
Current industry and job title: Digital marketing lead, retail
Current salary: £45,000
Number of years employed since school or university: Eight
Starting salary: £21,000
Biggest salary jump: From £33,000 to £40,000 in 2021. I jumped from the charity sector to working for a huge supermarket and it changed the whole game for me.
Biggest salary drop: N/A

Biggest negotiation regret: My manager (who was paid £40,000) went on a six-month sabbatical and I stepped up to cover his role but my salary was only bumped up to £30,000 from £28,000. I was fuming but didn’t negotiate hard enough. I started a dialogue with HR that lasted six months and after a while it left a really bitter taste in my mouth. I then took action by sending directly to HR a job specification for a similar role within the NHS that was paying £8,000 more. Within one day they’d changed my salary to be a few grand more (but still didn’t match the NHS salary or my manager’s salary, whose job I was essentially doing). I should have taken action sooner but it’s very tough negotiating salaries in the charity sector.

Best salary advice: When there’s a pay band and you’re offered a salary that’s in the middle, always ask for the top end. It means they have it in budget and can pay you that if they really want you. As someone who has hired people, I’ve always offered mid-band and the employees have accepted. But if they’d asked for more, I would have said yes!

I was working in entry-level admin in the philanthropy department of one of the UK’s biggest charities. I fell into this job out of desperation to move out of part-time café work and my parents’ house and to get started with a career in London. The role was mainly thanking charity donors for their donations of £1,000 and above by phoning them or writing them a personalised letter.

There were opportunities to build relationships with these donors and steward them to give higher gifts, but I wasn’t very good at it. I didn’t negotiate my salary when it was offered to me but I found out that another person doing my exact same job was getting £2,000 more. I had a conversation with my manager expressing that I wanted to be paid more but I went about it the wrong way. The conversation went horribly wrong and ended in tears! I learnt a lot from that experience but it also pushed me into searching for a new role that was a better fit for me.

I moved upstairs in the building of my office and into the marketing department. It was a much better fit for me. I’m very creative and marketing seemed so much more exciting to me. And as a naturally shy person, working in philanthropy wasn’t great. At 24 years old, I was delighted to be paid £28,000. But I was then in this role for another two years and I definitely outgrew it.

I stayed for probably a year longer than I should have due to taking a four-month sabbatical to go travelling (lucky me) and then going straight into a four-month furlough period over the pandemic. It stunted my career progression and with the state of the job market after the pandemic, I found it really tough even to land interviews for other jobs.

A strategic side step into a different and considerably smaller charity. I had more responsibility but as it was a small charity, they couldn’t pay me any more. I was still in a marketing role but working on projects and platforms that gave me experience on channels like paid social/podcasts/radio. I knew this could enable a sector change to the commercial world if I decided that’s what I wanted.
My manager went on sabbatical so I stepped up into his role but I wasn’t paid anywhere near as much as he was. It left a bitter taste in my mouth and I started looking for new roles in the corporate world. After a “conversation with HR” that lasted six months, I sent over a job spec for an almost identical digital marketing role within the NHS, which paid £38,000. Within a few days HR agreed to bump up my salary to £32,000.

I felt totally disenfranchised after this as it showed that all the conversations we’d had previously had meant nothing. HR had been breadcrumbing me for six months and it took me threatening to leave for them to bump it up by a small amount. The role had felt really rewarding up to this point, but by then I was cross. I knew they could afford to pay me closer to £40,000 so I decided to look elsewhere. 

After a really long job hunt (I must have interviewed at 10 places), I landed a job at a salary I was really happy with. Despite the £8,000 salary jump, the role itself felt like more of a side step than a promotion as I was at the same level of decision-making and responsibility. However, the commercial world pays so much more reasonably than the charity sector. Ultimately, I felt exhausted by the money battle that happened in the charity sector and was ready to be in a big company that looks after its employees.

The opportunity to get a bonus was a huge factor in accepting this role as I think it’s the only way I will ever be able to save any money towards a house deposit. I finally felt like I was being paid fairly and the same amount as most of my friends. I didn’t negotiate salary as they’d asked for my salary expectations in the interview and I’d said lower, so being offered above that felt like a win. 

After two years in the role, my salary has gone up twice in yearly salary reviews, both times by 6.5% so roughly £2,400 each time, and both times due to a combination of positive performance and inflation.

It’s great the company does this because it’s really needed in this cost of living crisis and it stops me feeling stagnant. I’m happy here for the time being.

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