While I am a huge proponent of the earning potential from job hopping, I have now worked for the same employer for more than two years and have no ambition to move in the near future. I found an employer that pays well, provides my most valued benefits, and invests in my knowledge growth. These are rare, and I am sticking to the unicorn!
But after almost two years at my job, I wanted more than a small annual raise. I also felt weighed down by the few nagging tasks that were below my skill level yet seemed to drain my energy, making it more difficult to focus on the projects that I enjoy. So what did I do?
I invented my ideal job description and sold it to my employer and my client, tied to a promotion and raise.
This was the most challenging negotiation process I have ever navigated. Pushing through two bureaucracies is more difficult than just job hopping! But I weirdly love a negotiation that pushes the boundaries of what I have accomplished before and had to see if creating my ideal job at my current employer with a promotion and raise was possible.
Step 1: Packaging the Job and Promotion Together for My Employer
Annual goal-setting time rolled around, and my employer released the career framework chart for qualifications for associates, senior associates, consultants, and senior consultants (list from the most junior position to the most senior position before reaching leadership) to aid our goal setting. As a consultant at the time, I read the descriptions and thought, “Hmm, I should be a senior consultant based on some of my achievements over the past year.”
Rather than being the typical employee that does the minimum for goal setting, I created four documents:
A cover sheet where I outlined how I exceeded expectations in my role as a consultant, the other opportunities that have been presented to me (i.e., the multiple places that recruited me over the previous year), my idea for a new position focused on innovation at my client site in line with my employer’s current innovation initiative, and an outline of the three pages that would follow.
The career framework chart with my employer’s consultant criteria in column one, senior consultant criteria in column two, my significant achievements at the senior consultant level in column three, and the continued efforts I conduct at the senior consultant level in column four.
My goal sheet where column one displayed the four goal categories defined by my employer, column two showed what my goals would be if I remained working at the consultant level, and column three showed the much more impressive potential senior consultant goals I would pursue.
A draft position description of my proposed senior consultant-level position with expanded job responsibilities.
This showed my employer a few important details. First, I had other career opportunities but trusted my employer enough to believe they would make every effort to keep me because they recognized my value. Presenting this information in a way that shows I respect and prioritize my employer makes it less threatening while also adding enough urgency that they cannot ignore my four-page response to “write goals.”
Second, adding the career framework chart showed that I studied their qualifications for each position to present my argument in their words rather than demanding a promotion without evidence that I deserved it. Presenting my goals using that framework demonstrated my thorough understanding and showed the employer what they stood to gain by promoting me. Comparing the consultant and senior consultant goals made the senior consultant goals column tangible, tempting, and difficult to refuse.
Finally, the draft position showed I was serious and considered a gap that existed at my client site that dovetailed with the current initiatives of my employer. When my employer reads that, they see future opportunities to create additional business because of my initiative, and they do not want to restrict that ambition.
In my goal conversation, in mid-March, my manager did not say yes. He liked the idea, but he cautioned me that the government (my client) could move slowly. He also mentioned support for an off-cycle promotion in the summer, meaning it would probably go through in July. However, I was told it would be difficult to get my client to move quickly enough for the position to come into existence until at least fall.
My manager gave me my next mission, and I accepted the challenge.
Step 2: Selling the Position to My Client
I talked to the individual in leadership at my client site who is my main supporter. She has always been generous with her time with me, encourages my innovations and process improvements, and is just a huge supporter to my career. When I went to her with my idea of a new position, she loved it. She told me to bring up the idea with our team leader within the next couple days.
I brought the idea to the team leader, and he seemed interested but not completely sold yet. Luckily, he was interested enough to bring it to a meeting with all of our team leaders, and they all immediately agreed there was a gap of responsibilities and loved the idea of the new position. One in particular was ready to have my help immediately on a project with which she felt only I had the skills to properly assist.
Less than two weeks after the meeting with my manager, my client approved my new position. It was late March, and they wanted me to transition my current role and move to the new one in about a month. It was time to speed up my employer’s promotion timeline.
Step 3: Speeding Up My Employer’s Promotion Timeline and Writing My Own Job Description
Suddenly, summer was not soon enough for my promotion to a senior consultant position and appropriate raise because the work for that position was set to start in about a month. I reached out to my manager about this discrepancy, and explained the options were to expedite the promotion and raise or tell my client I could not start conducting the work until later than they preferred. He initially suggested slowing down the transition process.
The next week, the team member who was excited about my desire to switch to the new position pulled me into a meeting. The meeting ended up involving a request that could not be more perfect for my skill set that was clearly at a higher level than my consultant position and presented potential growth opportunities for my employer.
I went back to my manager and told him that our employer wanted me in this role now. He agreed. He scheduled a meeting with his boss to figure out how to navigate the transition because it did not align with their processes for out-of-cycle promotions. We initially brainstormed ideas like a spot bonus to cover the salary difference with the official promotion coming in summer. Ultimately, my employer had me write a position description based on the original one included in my goals package but with more detail. The position was posted on the company’s internal job board, I applied to it, and remarkably, I got the job! (This job description included a combination of qualifications just short of, “Your name must be Xa Hopkins.”)
We worked out a plan so both my formal transition to the new position with the client, my promotion, and my raise would all begin on May 1, 2023. Record timing for getting my client and employer on board for a move.
Step 4: Negotiating the Raise
Unfortunately, the initial salary offer was not what I wanted. Again, staying with an employer and forcing career progression is much more work than just job hopping, and the 8% raise offered to me did not seem worth the effort.
So I went back to work, putting together a comparison spreadsheet, looking into raises across the industry, and showing a range of percentage increases that made more sense to me. I had to have a discussion with both my manager and my manager’s manager to get this through.
I finally accepted my promotion to senior consultant with a 15% raise on April 27, salary effective May 1.
Step 5: Living the Dream
I now work for the same employer with benefits I value, at the same client site, with a team I enjoy working with each day. I took the parts of my job that drained me out of my daily activities and filled my days with the projects that energize me and challenge me to keep learning what I already want to keep learning. As an added benefit, the position lets me help more people because I no longer have to spend time on tedious tasks that folks without my skill set can accomplish. I have even been told that certain efforts are having an agency-wide impact. The position feels more rewarding each day in such a short period of time.
Over the years, I searched for a dream job for a long time without success. I figured something was wrong with me. I found FIRE and started counting down until my freedom like so many, conceding that I may never enjoy my job. But as I started to find parts of my job that I thoroughly enjoyed, I became more creative. Creating a job around the best aspects of the work ended up being the perfect solution for daily happiness at work.
Imagine being on the later part of the FIRE path and also working your dream job. It feels like compound freedom: Working no longer feels like a restrictive chore, and the salary that comes from this dream job just creates more potential freedom.
If you cannot find your dream job, go create it. With a promotion. And a raise.
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