Getting the Raise You Deserve

The average raise for IT staff across the board is a paltry 3 to 4 percent, but that doesn’t have to be your fate if you approach the process intelligently.

“You have to really go above and beyond to merit a higher raise, or at least be in a hot technology area where there is a lot of demand,” said Lily Mok, an analyst at Gartner.

Gartner’s 2007 Market Compensation Study found that companies often pay 10 to 15 percent premiums to attract or retain IT professionals with Oracle, Java, J2EE (Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition), .Net, SAN (storage area network), SAP, Microsoft SQL Server, PeopleSoft, Unix or IT compliance skills. In addition, specific positions, which tend to be difficult in terms of hiring and retention, also can merit higher raises. These include database administrator, system architects, ERP (enterprise resource planning) programmers, Web application programmers, lead application developer, network manager, network engineer and network architect.

But beyond that, the onus is on the employee to justify a raise higher than the standard 3 or 4 percent.

“Know your bargaining position and what the company values,” Mok said. “Talk to your manager and other employees. Get a sense of how you are viewed.”

Know What You're Worth 

Other proactive moves are knowing the going rate for your skills—what people in similar positions make in other companies. There are numerous Web-based resources to find this information, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics and private Web sites like Payscale.com.

Once you know what you’re worth, you have to find a way to convey it to the decision-maker. That means being as specific as possible and describing your value in terms of worth to the company.

“Don’t talk about functional things you do like building applications and supporting the infrastructure,” said John Estes, vice president of Robert Half Technology, an IT recruitment company in Menlo Park, Calif. “Instead, talk in terms of how it benefits the company. What have you accomplished? How has the application you are working on helped the company increase revenue or improve customer satisfaction? If you’re a help desk person, get statistics on where you rank, how many calls you take a day, what’s your resolution rate, what’s your overall customer satisfaction rating. Don’t assume they know.”

Being specific is particularly helpful when you work for smaller companies.

“Unlike larger companies, where IT jobs are well-defined and duties are spelled out, you’re more likely to encounter jack-of-all-trades IT staff at smaller companies,” Estes said. “You may be listed as a network manager, but you may also be doing some network administration and desktop troubleshooting that even your manager doesn’t know about.”

That makes asking for a raise particularly challenging. Your boss may know what the raise range is for a network manager but might not understand that you deserve a higher raise because of your additional duties. That makes being specific doubly important.