asking for a raise vs. waiting for one

[vniow]

Okay, I should first say that I haven't been working here at my current job for all that long, so I'm mostly looking for advice on how best to go abouts this when (if) the time comes.

I've been working as an admin/tech assistant to various people for the past couple years and quite frankly, I'm good at what I do. I nabbed my current job because of my reputation. I was already hired when I walked in the door. The longest job I ever had would have expanded a lot more (including my salary as many times mentioned by the guy I worked for) had the company itself been able to sustain itself. It was a struggling startup that had a hard time getting funding, they were running out of money so they couldn't much afford to keep me around much less pay me more so I had to look elsewhere.

Like I said before, I don't think its right to ask for one so soon and maybe by the time that comes I would have already gotton one but I'm wondering what the best way to go about it is. I'm currently (desperately) seeking another part-time job since this one simply doesn't have enough hours for me to do much besides pay rent, eat, pay for transportation and (very occasionally) go out. I'm living paycheque to paycheque so an increased wage would be quite beneficial to me right now and would greatly reduce the stress of looking for supplemental income but people don't give raises out to employees who need mroe money, they give them out to employees who deserve them and I don't think I'm quite at that point yet. So I'm mostly looking for advice on doing this when it comes to it since I've never done it before.

Thanx,

-Ani

 

[mactastic]

Are you being paid comparably to others who do your type of job? If not, that alone should be a basis for a raise if you are good at your job.

If you are being paid comparably, then you need to prove you can add value to the company before you are likely to see a raise.

And in my experience, the companies without formal review processes are the most likely to 'forget' (either accidentally or on purpose) to give their employees raises on any kind of regular basis. Those are the people you need to politely remind when the time comes. Companies who do bi-annual reviews (or something similar) are more likely to be on top of the whole pay issue. Although you may still get stiffed, depending.

In the meantime, make sure you toot your own horn around your boss, not in a pushy kind of way, but a lot of times your good work goes unnoticed by your boss because they are simply too busy to notice with things that are going well. They only tend to notice the big F-ups, you know? So remind them once in a while. No one else is going to sing your praises for you.