Got Raise?

Bob Weinstein is a journalist who covers technology, project management, the workplace and career development.

  Career Development  

Think you deserve a raise? Your boss may not agree. No matter where you are on the professional ladder, asking for a raise always triggers enormous anxiety. That’s usually because there’s no gauging your boss’s reaction beforehand. To make the process easier and increase the chances of a positive outcome, I checked with a few experts to get their input, observations and tips.

Common sense dictates doing your homework and building a strong case before asking your boss to dip into organizational coffers to fatten your weekly paycheck. However, many candidates have different opinions about what they think is a strong case, observes Kerry Patterson, author of Crucial Conversationsand co-founder of VitalSmarts, a Provo, Utah-based management training and consulting company. Patterson says there are strong and poor reasons for justifying a raise. Here are three weak reasons:

1. You’re a hard worker. Putting in extra time, paid or unpaid, is a weak reason for qualifying a raise. Possibly one of the reasons you were hired was that management deemed you a hard worker. But putting in extra hours from time to time isn’t reason enough to justify a raise. If you’re part of a team that’s running late on a project, extra hours are expected from team members. Also consider that your boss could easily conclude that a constant pattern of …

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