How to ask for raise/promotion

[Andrew1972]

Leave you are in a dead end for IT the certs will mean nothing to them as you can perform your job. If they ask why state your reasons and if they are inclined they will promote and pay you more.

Obviously look for new opportunity.

 

[JeffKeryk]

Lots of good advice above!

I'm the boss, and I give raises when I want. Which is regularly. I also make sure to pay enough to keep people from leaving.

However, I will side with the above posts in a slightly different way. Employees that get those "pieces of paper" are almost always the ones worth keeping, and remember, retention is accomplished by pay rate in any reasonable firm. It's not just the job performance, the personality and/or the hours worked, it's the dedication to the field, AND that is shown by qualifications.

Our flight department has 8 different aircraft. Imagine an airman (pilot or mechanic) who has just one qualification, and won't make the effort to become qualified on something else. We had that guy. His family was more important and quite simply, he absolutely would not pick up a book, sit in the cockpit and learn a new plane. Instead, he was heading home at 2:00 after his heli flight was done, to be with his wife and kids. Sorry, but that's not good enough and that is not what he was hired to do. He was hired to fly 2 different aircraft.

His inability to see what was needed, despite repeated attempts to coax him and directly tell him, resulted in hardship for his family as his source of income disappeared. He was a great helicopter pilot. His replacement was a great helicopter pilot and became a great Gulfstream pilot.

My qualifications on paper:
G650ER
G550
GV
GIV
GIII
727
PC-12
S-10
EC-135
MD 520N
MD 600N

Spot on!
Cujet speaks to reality. We all want our time off and deserve our time off. But those who want to be top performers in their field have to sacrifice; have to do more. As a business analyst programmer, I have to learn new programming techniques AND business processes.
I have attended user groups and classes throughout my career. These have been primers to self teaching through books, Internet and work.

Yes, you can do fine being an 8 to 5 guy. But if you want more, you have to INVEST IN YOURSELF!

 

[bunnspecial]

I have made my fair share of cases for raises for myself. Sometimes they were successful, sometimes not.

First of all, I'll say that outside traditional degrees, there are no formal certifications so to speak of in my field. With that said, I took up every opportunity I could to attend seminars, conferences, trainings, or just dive in and learn new skills when I could. I always kept careful log of all of this. Your company is willing to pay for certifications in your field-let them do it. It benefits them and benefits you.

Second, every thing I did beyond my formal on-paper job description, I documented. That way, when building a case for a raise, I could say "Yes, I do everything you pay me to do, plus do X and Y regularly and Z occasionally."

One of the biggest raises I got-and this is a strategy that can go either way-but I walked in and dropped an offer letter for a comparable job on my manager's desk. The next day, I had a counter offer for $1K a year to stay.

My last raise came from a new manager who was incredible and I actually didn't ask for it. After he'd been around about a month, he sat down with all of his reports one-on-one and had a discussion about what we all ACTUALLY were doing, not our job description. For some people, like the person in the next office over from me, it was an uncomfortable conversation because she managed to get me to do a lot of her duties. For me, it went well when he realized just how much I did week-to-week to keep things functioning. About two months after that conversation, he called me up to his office on a Friday afternoon and handed me the printout of an email stating I'd received a raise effective the previous business day. One other person, someone else also wearing a lot of hats and doing a lot more than her job description said, also got to hear similar news that day. Meanwhile, the lade in the lady in the office next to me was...quite upset...over my raise and argued to get one also.

Interestingly enough on the second one-after I left I think they saw first hand just how much I did that other people were supposed to do. My nextdoor neighbor ended up retiring about a month after I left because they were "just making her do too much" and also because they wouldn't let her take a month long vacation right in the middle of the semester.

 

[Wolf359]

I was in IT for 10 years before I switched to being a real estate broker. Have an engineering degree and knew many people who didn't have certs or degrees in the field. It's pretty welcoming when the market was hot, but when the market dropped, those without degrees or certs were the first to go and they had a hard time getting back into the market. I actually made the same in real estate with half the work and it was easier too so I never went back into the field. I remember interviewing for the type of job the OP is doing, they basically wanted an IT manager but didn't want to pay IT manager rates. I passed on those.

 

[Dave Hess]

^^^^

I agree you have to know your worth in your career field.

I give the same exact advice to colleagues in my field.

 

[Pew]

Great advice from everyone. They all really boost my motivation to get off my ass and start working on my certificates, which I am now starting back up.

 

[Lubener]

I would look into getting CompTIA certifications. Start with the A+.

Agree 100%. Get your certifications. From there you can easily land a position elsewhere to your liking if your boss still refuses to properly compensate you.

 

[Nick1994]

Great advice from everyone. They all really boost my motivation to get off my ass and start working on my certificates, which I am now starting back up.

Don’t just think about certificates for your current job. What do you want to do next? That’s what you need to get certificates and education on.

 

[Pew]

Don’t just think about certificates for your current job. What do you want to do next? That’s what you need to get certificates and education on.

I'm definitely going to try to get my A+ cert first, then cloud and project manager certs. It seems like that's the way the industry is going towards and any cloud certs would help.