Squiggly Shortcut: How to ask for a pay rise

Squiggly Careers

AmazingIf

Business, Management, Careers

4.9 • 838 Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

✨ Welcome to Squiggly Shortcuts — a series from the Squiggly Careers podcast, bringing you quick career tips in just 5 minutes, every Thursday. In this shortcut, Sarah shares a practical idea to help you confidently ask for a pay rise. While the conversation can feel anxiety-inducing, waiting rarely works — you need to advocate for yourself and highlight the impact you’re having. Sarah breaks it down into 3 simple tips to set you up for success. How To Ask For A Pay Rise Episode 501 ⏱️ Timestamps 00:00 Welcome to Squiggly Shortcuts 00:24 Create don't wait 01:23 Tip 1 – Understand the pay rise process in your company 02:26 Tip 2 - How to approach the conversation 05:09 Tip 3 - Summarise what's been said 05:08 Think about your pay rise tradeoff 🎯 What You’ll Learn - Why waiting to be noticed often doesn’t work - How to approach a pay rise as a series of conversations - 3 practical steps for how to ask for a pay rise 🦞 Pre-order Learn Like A Lobster: PRH US - https://bit.ly/3KxTeBn Amazon UK - https://amzn.to/3KcRZaR For questions about Squiggly Careers or to share feedback, please email helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 📩 Download our free career tools: https://www.amazingif.com/toolkit/ 📮 Get Squiggly Careers in Action in your inbox: https://bit.ly/SquigglyCareersInAction 📚 Read our books: The Squiggly Career and You Coach You: https://www.amazingif.com/books/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Sarah from the Squiggly Careers podcast and this is one of our short
0:04.4	episodes. These are designed to be short, as you'd hope, really specific with actions
0:11.1	that you can put into practice straight away. And today we're going to be talking about that
0:15.7	slightly knotty topic of how to ask for a pay rise.
0:31.3	So before we dive in, asking for a pay rise for most people does feel hard and uncomfortable.
0:36.9	And I think almost if you expect to feel uncomfortable, then you know you're getting it right.
0:38.4	I think very few people go into these conversations and are cool, calm and collected all of the time. So it will probably
0:43.9	feel a bit anxiety-inducing. It will feel difficult, but that doesn't mean that you're getting
0:49.7	it wrong. Firstly, don't wait. Don't sit there doing a brilliant job and just thinking it's okay
0:56.9	because someone else will just automatically realise that I'm as amazing as I am and sort my pay
1:02.9	out for me. That in my experience very rarely happens. You have to advocate for yourself and kind of
1:09.6	talk about the impact that you're having.
1:12.4	So create, not wait, when it comes to your pay. So three tips for you. Firstly, before the
1:19.9	conversation, before you have a conversation typically with your manager, understand the pay rise
1:25.3	process in your company. Most companies now have quite a specific process
1:30.6	that they rarely go outside of to make sure that it is fair and consistent for everyone.
1:37.5	It is quite unusual to be able to just have a conversation with your manager and for your
1:41.3	manager to go, yeah, you are as amazing as you're telling me you are. Brilliant. I'll just put a pay rise into the system. Those days, I think, are long gone.
1:51.2	Perhaps at the very start of my career over 20 years ago, that was slightly more common. But even
1:55.1	then, there does tend to be a kind of way of pay being increased in an organisation. The best organisations, I think,
2:04.4	are really transparent about that. So maybe you know that already. If not, find a friendly face
2:09.5	in HR or just a friend who you trust, someone in the company who's just been through the
	...

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