Money is one of the most important parts of the job. Making sure that you’re receiving proper wages is something that tends to be more difficult as your experience increases. You may feel that with your prior knowledge and skills that you should be given the wages of royalty, but hopefully, you know that that may be a bit far-fetched. You can, however, put your foot down when it comes to the lowest amount you will accept.

This is something that you need to develop before you sit down with the boss to discuss your salary. Make sure that you have all of your justifications in mind and prepared for when they ask about them. You will need to explain why you deserve the pay raise you want and why that should be given to you. This means discussing your past experience and what that brings to the team. Everything on your CV is a reason why you deserve the pay that you want to receive. One thing that you should avoid when asked by the boss about salaries is saying a specific number. You want them to say the numbers at you and either disagree or agree with them.

Saying a specific number can be seen as pretentious and cocky and might be disrespectful if it isn’t a reasonable one. You will definitely not want to say the highest amount you would like to get paid as that probably will not happen on the first day at the job. The main reason that employers will ask this question during the interview process is to see how you will talk about yourself and potentially previous employers. When discussing past jobs, they are looking to see if you will talk about them honestly or in a way that you think they should be talked about.

Because of this, you are going to want to think about how you will discuss them. If they were your friend or your worst nightmare, you will want to make sure that you talk about them in a neutral manner. This means no reference to things they did that were strange or bad in the workplace, only things like how effective they were in organizing the team and other similar topics. The new potential employer is trying to see if you will bad mouth them as that speaks volumes about who you are as a person. It also opens the door to the salary topic as they will ask about how much you made while employed there and if you felt that was adequate. Discussing your salary is never an easy task. You will always want to talk about how much you could be making instead of how much you should be making based on your experience level. Potential employers have been asking this question more and more in recent years to see how new employees will react during the interview process. With calculated and prepared answers, you should be able to withstand the pressure and answer strong.