Salary Negotiation for Internal Promotion

Hi all -

This may sound a bit weird and I'm pretty sure that this hasn't been covered before. After 2 years of being in an assistant role with the promise of being moved to a more prominent role in Research, I am finally getting the call from the bullpen. I'm awaiting for the final logistics to be worked out, but all signs point to me working for one of the most well known analysts on the street.

My problem lies here. In my current role I get paid a salary and a hefty amount of overtime and in turn, I make a pretty decent living. For other colleagues of mine, who have started out in this exact role and have moved into sales and/or research, their pay actually went DOWN with the promotion. You may be asking yourself WTF? WHY? HOW? IMPOSSIBLE! But yet, here I am telling you that this is indeed the case at my company (in the past at least).

How do they accomplish this? They raised their base salary by close to 40% (the starting salary as an assistant is quite low) and then get rid of overtime all together. Net net, this equated to both of my colleagues taking home anywhere from $10-$15k less YoY. Not only do I view this as a HUGE slap in the face, I cannot live on anything less than my current total comp.

I've never really had the power to negotiate a higher pay structure before and don't necessarily think I have much leverage at the moment either, but I want to prepare myself to negotiate to a number where both my employer and I will be happy. Where should I start?

Key factors to account for:

1) I am coming from an assistant role and moving to a research role, working as an associate for a well known analyst
2) I went to school for finance and just got my foot into the door anyway possible...hence why I'm in the position I'm in right now
3) I have no direct research experience (as evidenced by #2), but did go to a top 10 public business school (undergrad) so I have a good background in finance/accounting. I'm also known as the "Excel ninja" around the office.

Appreciate any and all help!

2 Comments
 

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