Tessa White
Appearances
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
It's everything. Because on resumes, again, one of my pet peeves is a resume will say, say you take an HR person and they say, I'm a 25-year professional who has been able to manage talent management, training, and employee relations. Well, every single resume says that. But the minute that I can tap into, how do I solve the problems?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
And I say, I'm the person that you'd hire if you need to go fast and put in place infrastructure so that you can go public or so that you can have a high merger acquisition strategy, for example. If I say that, then I've just tapped into how to solve a problem that that particular small company needs.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
I think every single person needs to have not just a mentor, they need to have a handful of mentors and it's available to everybody. What most people, the mistake they make is they think they need to go up to somebody and say, will you be my mentor? When in fact, the best mentorships that I know of are where you identify people who have really good skill sets in an area.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
For example, everybody should have a mentor that they can look to for how do you manage people? How do you get conflict? over the finish line and how do you do it in a way that's productive rather than destructive. Everybody should have a mentor around data and data analytics or presentations and how to give a good presentation or run a meeting. You should identify people who do that well.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
Watch them. You don't even need to ask, will you be my mentor? Watch them. Watch what they do in that area. And then, for example, before you go give a meeting, say, I've been watching you. You give really good presentations and I've tried to use some of the principles I see that you utilize. Will you take a look at this presentation and tell me what you change? Can I just give it to you?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
Spend 10, 15 minutes to run over the high level. That's how you have mentors that make a difference for you. is you find people that do good things, you watch them very closely, and then you ask them when the time is right to help you. make sure you've done that thing right. And I think that's available to everybody. You don't have to have a company program to do it.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
You don't have to have somebody necessarily saying they'll be your mentor. Just pick people, watch them.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
Exactly. Or this one conflict. I have a high conflict situation and this is how I was thinking of handling it. How would you do it? Exactly. I think that's far more productive.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
There are plenty of different certifications, but I don't think that one is necessarily better than another. I think it's a lot like finding a regular therapist. You need to find somebody that you vibe with. You need to find somebody who's been around the block and has some experience. Probably my biggest beef with
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
Career coaching as an industry is that a lot of people with five years of career experience are calling themselves a career coach. You need somebody who has seen lots of situations in lots of different circumstances and watched how those situations play out.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
And I think when you have somebody that has either been in your industry or has been around the block for a while, they're going to be able to give you a much better idea of the different choices that you have and more importantly, the likely different outcomes of those scenarios if you handle it different ways.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
But somebody with five years of experience simply doesn't have enough experience or enough behind the scenes in really high stakes situations to be able to give I think, information that is really, really helpful or useful.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
I would find people that know my industry. For instance, tech is a different flavor than blue collar. If I took advice from a career coach that's a high tech career coach, and I'm in a blue collar environment, that advice is not going to play as well. because there's just different flavors to different industries.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
So you try and find somebody that's the best match to the environment that you are working in, I think. And then you make sure that that person has a lot of experience as well.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
I will tell you that there is a trend that I'm seeing that I think is really valuable to understand. There's a lot of change happening right now, a lot of layoffs and a lot of people leaving companies. But those people who stay through, I call it a red zone of a company, usually have tremendous opportunities that come their way because of the people that leave and the gaps that that creates.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
And even though it may be an uncomfortable period of time to try and do more with less, learning how to work through red zones of companies is really teaching you to innovate and it's teaching resilience. And that skill set is extraordinarily valuable. People who stay in companies often end up with the increases and the promotions that they want because of the vacancies that are left.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
And so I would tell people, don't think that the grass is greener just by leaving a company through a red zone. A red zone can be a tremendous gift to you. particularly people who are okay with taking promotions that are lateral and they learn the ecosystem of a company, that has delayed value.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
While it may seem like you're going backwards or standing still, if you're not getting big raises, if you understand the ecosystem of a company by working in different departments, over time, that makes you incredibly valuable to a company. And I'm seeing people use that as a career strategy. that ends up paying dividends, if you look at it in the long term, like a four-year horizon, is huge.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
Even when they leave that company, the ability to understand the different departments and how they work together is something that's very, very valuable. So don't discount the red zone of a company and think, You know, your brain's going to tell you this is the wrong company, the wrong time. It's terrible. It feels uncomfortable. But discomfort doesn't mean you're in the wrong company.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
It simply means you have to learn to do things differently. And it really is the trigger for innovation. And if you can stay through that red zone, it can be incredibly valuable to you.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
If you're, say, 35 years old and you negotiate an extra $5,000 for your job, it's not just $5,000 because in lifetime earnings, that's several hundred thousand dollars in lifetime earnings. And if you invested that difference, it's even more.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
Well, I think they need to be very mindful that they are their best advocate for making money. The company's not gonna magically go in and decide that they need to pay them more money. Because a company's always going to err on the side of, they'll take as much as you'll give. So making sure that you're advocating for yourself is probably the greatest way that you make money.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
Yeah, salary negotiation, asking for money, which is uncomfortable for people to do sometimes. Understanding what the value of your role is or the position that you're applying for. versus just kind of going with the first thing that people ask. I mean, a little bit of discomfort on the front end of negotiating on behalf of yourself really has a massive impact on the back end.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
If you're, say, 35 years old and you negotiate an extra $5,000 for your job, it's not just $5,000 because in lifetime earnings, that's several hundred thousand dollars in lifetime earnings. And if you invested that difference, it's even more. So you need to look at it a
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
Every penny that I can negotiate on behalf of myself is the new basis for which other offers come in and other raises is based off of. And it really does have a cumulative effect that's significant.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
One of my recommendations is that you mimic a top performer plan. Companies typically put people in this nine box and they have these top performers and nobody knows who they are except the top performers. They get all these extra things. Some of those extra things are exposure to experiences, which are very valuable to you.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
That may be sitting in on an executive meeting and just seeing how things operate. And the thing about corporate America is your manager needs help. There's always more to do than people to do it. And so if you ask for your own top performer plan, you can actually ask for and be very directive with your manager to say, can I give part of a presentation in this executive team meeting?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
Can I run this little piece of a project that is holding us back that we need to get over the finish line? Can I sit in and listen to how a meeting operates? Can I help develop a dashboard for... our departments so that we can show progression in some of the key objectives.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
So there's lots of different ways you can do it, but the key is you have to ask because most managers are not really great at putting together growth plans for people. They've got a lot of people And it gets very murky what they need. But if you actually go to your manager and direct it and say, can I do this one thing? Can you help make this one thing happen? Or these two things happen?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
Then your odds go way up and your credibility goes up in the organization. Your visibility goes up and therefore your promotability goes up.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
Well, let's start with something that I think people might find interesting. I've sat in on hundreds of promotion meetings where they decide who gets the promotions that year. And almost without fail, it's like a broken record. The people that don't get the promotions, people will say, well, they sound great, but I don't know who they are. I haven't worked with them.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
One of the big keys to getting the promotions is visibility across the organization and being able to collaborate well with other departments. And it's really important that when people know you, you have a greater chance of getting the promotion and when you intersect with them. So that's the first thing is that Having that exposure is really important.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
One of the first practical things that I would do in a job is to go talk to the people that intersect with my role and say, tell me, what do you expect out of this role? What are the problems that I am helping solve for you and where are your pain points? And I would get very, very aligned with what those people and constituents need. Because the job on paper is not the real job. It never is.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
And this helps you determine what the real job is and how you win, more importantly, how you align yourself to win. So I would be having those conversations at least twice a year because that's what's going to point you toward how you actually work on the things that are going to get you promoted in a company and how we're going to get visibility for you and what you do.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
I'm a big believer in planting seeds in an organization with other managers and other places in the organization so that you know what's coming. Managers are planning six months, eight months in advance, sometimes a year in advance of what they need and what's coming. And you need to be talking with them about how are you going to be evolving? What are the big problems you're trying to solve?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
What are big initiatives and things that are going to help you over the next couple of years move into the next level of efficiency? And when you understand those things, then you get a better idea of how you fit into the ecosystem. And you also get a better idea of maybe where you want to go in the future.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
And then you can begin to craft the kind of experiences that you need so that you will be somebody that they can pay attention to. I would absolutely treat your company like a big homework assignment. And I would be trying to listen to the quarterly reports, listen to the CEO, what are the big objectives that we're trying to accomplish? And it helps you establish that narrative.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
Because I get mad when people come and say, I interviewed, but it didn't work very good, or I don't think they understood my value. And I say, if you don't understand your value proposition, I promise you the company won't. It really is your job to figure out what your value proposition is. And in order to do that, you have to have information.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
Well, that's a lot of different questions. Let me start with value proposition. First of all, it's kind of a big word, but how do you know what value you bring to an organization? This is a really hard thing for people, but if you think about leverage, that's what you want to have is leverage to get what you want. Leverage at its core is I have what you need.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
And so if you can define what is it that I see the company needs, where are they going and what have I done so far that shows I have that skill? And you can then turn it into numbers. I was able to come into my department and move the needle on these particular criteria. then you have more leverage. But what most people do is they say, I'm really good at working with customers.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
Well, that's in and of itself doesn't mean anything. But if you say, my customer service scores are 20% higher than most of the other people in the department, or I was able to decrease call time by X and increase customer satisfaction by X, then you actually have something that the company understands and you're speaking their language.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
So part of your job in determining your value proposition is saying, how am I solving problems for the company? And then how do I turn what I've done into metrics or numbers? That's why I tell people, you should go to work every day and be measuring. If you don't have a department metric that tells you, am I doing good or am I not doing good?
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
Figure out what it is and start measuring things because those numbers become so critical to how you position yourself for a company.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
Well, your market value, it's like a house. When we put a house up for sale, we don't have some neat, perfect numbers to what its value is. What we know is that other houses sold at this amount that were similar. And the same is true with compensation. What other companies are willing to hire this role at is a pretty good indicator that you can bring that helps determine the value of a role.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
But the other thing that you have quite a bit of control over is being able to tell the company, here's how I solved the problems in my last company and here's how I'll solve them for you. So for recruiting, for example, let's just take a general example.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
If I said I'm a really good recruiter and I was able to manage a recruiting team and fill 200 positions in a year, that doesn't in and of itself mean anything. But if I understand that a company has low resources and
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
and they don't have a lot of money to put towards recruiters, I could say in the last company, I turned every employee into a recruiter in our company because we didn't have a lot of funds. And we rolled out this employee referral program that made every employee a recruiter and it increased the number of applicants that we were bringing into the company month over month by 60%.
NerdWallet's Smart Money Podcast
Boost Your Income and Career: Negotiating Salary, Navigating Promotions and More
Then all of a sudden the company goes, scrappy, I need scrappy. I'm a company that doesn't have a lot of money. I need creativity. Look what that person was able to do. And all of a sudden, your leverage went up, which means your compensation probably goes up because you have what the company needs.