Career Conversations | S4Ep2: Job compensation and terms: Negotiation strategies to help you be your own best advocate

In this episode of Career Conversations, host Nidhi Kumar, '21 and guest Nayoung Miller Vaughn discuss the importance of effective negotiation and self-advocacy in the professional world. They explore the unique challenges faced by underrepresented groups during salary negotiations and emphasize the need for practice and building supportive relationships. Key strategies include understanding market rates, preparing for negotiations, and recognizing shared struggles among professionals. The conversation highlights the significance of transparency in promotion processes and the role of mentors in empowering individuals. Overall, the episode encourages ongoing learning and connection within the professional community.

Nayoung Miller Won is a strategic life & career coach living in Seattle, Washington in the United States. While she currently works in tech as a program manager, her past includes working as a career advisor and admissions committee member at higher education institutions (University of Washington, National University of Singapore, UPenn Wharton School). She started her career at Deloitte’s Detroit office and most recently worked as a Customer Success Manager at Amazon and Karat. She has pivoted careers multiple times since graduating from college, and is a marketer and educator by training (B.B.A University of Michigan, M.S.Ed. University of Pennsylvania).

A globetrotter at heart, she has lived and worked in many parts of the world including Seattle, Singapore, Korea, Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. A few years ago, Nayoung founded thekokki.com to formalize her passion project driven by her faith. In her spare time you’ll find her golfing at a local course, exploring cities on a bike or supporting small businesses on Yelp.

Nidhi Kumar, '21 is a proud University of Washington School of Law alum, holding a Master in Jurisprudence earned in 2021. She also holds a B.A. in Political Science—Pre-Law and Criminal Justice from Michigan State University. Currently, Nidhi is a J.D. Candidate at Seattle University School of Law, balancing her studies in the evening program with full-time work as a Law Clerk at Simmons Sweeney Freimund Smith Tardif PLLC. Dedicated to giving back, she actively contributes to the UW community as a member of the UWAA GOLD Council, a mentor through the Huskies@Work Program, a nominating committee member of the UWAA Board of Trustees, and as a District Dawg in the 43rd Legislative District.

Creators and Guests

Host

Nidhi Kumar

Nidhi Kumar is a proud University of Washington School of Law alum, holding a Master in Jurisprudence earned in 2021. She also holds a B.A. in Political Science—Pre-Law and Criminal Justice from Michigan State University. Currently, Nidhi is a J.D. Candidate at Seattle University School of Law, balancing her studies in the evening program with full-time work as a Law Clerk at Simmons Sweeney Freimund Smith Tardif PLLC. Dedicated to giving back, she actively contributes to the UW community as a member of the UWAA GOLD Council, a mentor through the Huskies@Work Program, a nominating committee member of the UWAA Board of Trustees, and as a District Dawg in the 43rd Legislative District.

Guest

Nayoung Miller Won

Nayoung Miller Won is a strategic life & career coach living in Seattle, Washington in the United States. While she currently works in tech as a program manager, her past includes working as a career advisor and admissions committee member at higher education institutions (University of Washington, National University of Singapore, UPenn Wharton School). She started her career at Deloitte’s Detroit office and most recently worked as a Customer Success Manager at Amazon and Karat. She has pivoted careers multiple times since graduating from college, and is a marketer and educator by training (B.B.A University of Michigan, M.S.Ed. University of Pennsylvania). A globetrotter at heart, she has lived and worked in many parts of the world including Seattle, Singapore, Korea, Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. A few years ago, Nayoung founded thekokki.com to formalize her passion project driven by her faith. In her spare time you’ll find her golfing at a local course, exploring cities on a bike or supporting small businesses on Yelp.

What is Career Conversations ?

Frank conversations to help you take control of your career.

Going beyond resumes, interviews, and cover letters, each conversation brings a unique perspective on relevant topics for you and your professional development.

Presented by Pepsi, Career Conversations is produced by the University of Washington Alumni Association.

Learn more: https://www.washington.edu/alumni/career-conversations/

Your resume sings, you nailed the interview, and an offer is bound to come your way. You just know it. Are you prepared for what comes next? Successfully negotiating your job terms and salary requires planning just as much as your interview preparation.

Avoid the awkwardness as you learn to be your own best advocate.

We will examine concrete strategies that will empower you to communicate effectively and negotiate successfully to potential employers.

Learn how to minimize the fear of asking for what you want and get what you deserve.

Welcome to Career Conversations Season Four, presented by Pepsi and produced by the University of Washington Alumni Association.

In each episode, we meet with experts for in-depth professional development conversations you won't find anywhere else. My name is Nidhi Kumar and I will be your host for this episode.

I'm a proud UW alum who graduated in 2021 from the University of Washington School of Law. I'm an active member of the UW alumni community, a current member of the UWAA's Gold Council, a Huskies at Work mentor, and a District Dawg in the 43rd legislative district. I am excited and honored to introduce our special guest for this conversation, Nayoung Miller Vaughn.

Nayoung is a strategic life and career coach living in Seattle, Washington. While she currently works in tech as a senior program manager, she has previously worked as a career advisor and admissions committee member at higher education institutions, including the University of Washington, the National University of Singapore, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Nayoung founded Kokki Success Coaching to formalize her passion, helping uplift and empower professionals and students to their utmost potential.

Nayoung, welcome. I'm thrilled to speak with you today.

Thanks for having me.

Of course.

Before we dive into our discussion, could you share a bit about yourself, specifically what you're currently working on and how your passion and interest led you to where you are today?

Absolutely.

That's a very common question that I get in interviews or networking conversations. So I'll try to give you so I will try to give you that in a more personalized version that you can't find online.

So as Nidhi said, my name is Nayoung. It's like Na Old, but Nayoung. Just just the opposite. Like, I hope I will forever stay young.

I identify most strongly as a Korean American marketer and educator.

As Nidhi said, I'm based in Seattle, but I've previously lived in Singapore, Philadelphia, Michigan, New Jersey, Seoul.

Kinda sounds like I'm picking out random cities on a map, but I do really enjoy getting to know different cultures, which is why I have chosen to spend time in the places that I did.

I love to learn particularly through books, through food, through travel.

I'm a big believer in learning by doing. So experiential learning is what you might hear, like, career advisers or academic advisers talk about.

I used to work for the UW, also, helped build up Yale and US College in Singapore, which is the first liberal arts and sciences college in Southeast Asia. Also worked at the Wharton School when I was in graduate school at UPenn, as well as CARET, and Deloitte in Seattle and Michigan respectively.

The question that Nidhi asked was specifically about what I'm currently working on and how my passions might have led me there. So that's a really, really loaded question for me, but I'll try to be succinct.

What I'm currently working on: I am building programs to raise raise awareness of cloud services to university age students, while working at Amazon Work Services.

I'm employed full time by Amazon, but I also work on a lot of little other things on the side for fun.

So some people might call these side hustles or just hobbies that you try to monetize, but usually they don't actually make any money.

So my current dream business would be a prime example of that. I make, like, literally, like, barely any money doing that, but I do it because I love it. I love helping people reach their goals, whether it's going to, graduate school or getting a job or thinking long term about, investments or finding someone to marry or buying their first home. Also working on my real estate license. I also do a lot of mystery shopping because I'm fascinated by consumer behavior. I love participating in in surveys and focus groups and things like that.

I'm also working on keeping a baby alive. So my primary KPI, OKR, if you like to speak corporate, is my family. Trying to keep myself, my husband, and my baby alive.

Passions and interests that brought me here. Wow. Okay. So I would say the big clusters are: my family of origin, my education, my previous jobs, my volunteer experiences. And then what kind of glues them together is my desire to keep learning and improving.

So my family of origin, I couldn't choose, but I was born into a Korean American family that moved to a foreign country -- to North America -- when I was young.

So, you know, growing up as Asian American in the East Coast is a little different than growing up as an Asian American in the Midwest, I will say, because I've spent time in the Midwest. But you are technically still not the majority in terms of race or ethnicity.

Education: so my undergraduate background in business at the University of Michigan -- Go Blue, if anyone's listening! But I think I'm supposed to say Go Huskies. So Go Huskies too. Yep.

So I did my undergraduate education in business there, and then my master's degree in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania. So that has definitely shaped my world view and my desires and interests as well. My jobs. So from my first job after undergrad to my current job or jobs, right, all of those have shaped and molded who I am. And, you know, I think maybe one part of me will say they have refined my interest, but I think a better way is I think all those experiences actually gave me clarity to what my interests actually are.

And then every job after that, I just kind of refined it further and further and chiseled it into the kind of very, like, more focused scope that that that I do now.

Volunteer experiences: I give a lot of my time, to causes or organizations that I believe in. Most of them are not for profit in nature. So, you know, education, for example, or, like, community based organizations. So I spend a lot of my free time with organizations like Junior Achievement, right, which teaches business skills to youth starting at kindergarten all the way until twelfth grade.

Right? And the the premise there is that the the the foundational belief that with a basic understanding of business and demand and supply, that you can create economic opportunity for anyone regardless of what background that they grew up in. Right? Does that actually carry out?

Not always. Right? But if I can play a part in that I will. So those are some of the passions and interests that have brought me here to where I am.

I'm here specifically today on this podcast because the UW Alumni Association, which is organizing and coordinating and funding programs like this, they reached out. I used to work with someone who works at the Alumni Association, and Quinton thought I would be an interesting person to connect with. And turns out, he thought I was interesting enough to talk with. So yeah. So here I am. Happy to to be here and, share more about my experiences.

Yeah. Thank you so much for that introduction. I mean, I think that tells a lot about a person. Like, what they do that they're, to your point, not getting paid for is usually what they're more passionate about than what they are getting paid for.

And so that's really awesome to hear a lot about your background and your interest, and there's there's a lot going on. There's a lot of diversity in, you know, the schools, the education, the experiences. So that's that's really cool, and I'm really excited. I've also admittedly read through a lot of your articles and specifically on networking and asking for feedback and, you know, a wealth of other related topics. So I'm especially excited to jump into this conversation. I think, all of those backgrounds, is is really gonna lend to a really great discussion.

So as as we stated, our discussion today centers on job salary negotiations and self advocacy in the professional world.

You know, that can often feel uncomfortable to negotiate salaries and especially under the lens of underrepresented groups and minority groups.

It's another layer of challenge. And so, in your view, what is particularly challenging about having these conversations? Like, why is it particularly challenging to have these conversations with an employer? And what specific challenges do you think are unique to minority professionals when they're advocating for themselves in in negotiating salaries?

Yeah. That's a really great question.

I have so much to say here, and I'm gonna take a deep breath.

And I will give the explicit disclaimer that my perspectives are based on my experiences, primarily working in North America and Singapore. And my opinions are my own, so they're not reflective of any of my employers.

Mostly, when I help people with their career goals, I rely on evidence based research.

So most of these research articles have been led by academics from the West. So from North America, primarily, and every culture has their own nuances, which should be navigated with wisdom and respect. So if you're listening and you are trying to work with an employer in North America, what I say is probably a little more accurate than trying to work with an employer in Mexico. Right?

So please take that with a grain of salt. Okay. So going back to the question, I think Nidhi asked, why negotiating can be particularly challenging, and the specific challenges that minority professionals could face in this topic. So, I just wanna reiterate what I heard, which is negotiating can feel uncomfortable.

Yes. It absolutely is. It's not comfortable for anyone. Right? Not even me. Like, I've negotiated for all of my x number of jobs since I finished university.

You know, I've helped, like, literally hundreds of students and new grads through that negotiating process. Even for me, it's still uncomfortable.

So what I wanna acknowledge is that, like, comfort is familiar, but familiar isn't always optimal.

Right? So you can, like, sit on that, but, like, you know, for example, when we had a pandemic. Right? Like, I spent a lot of my time in my yoga pants at home.

It was very comfortable. It was very familiar.

And I took a shower much less frequently than before when I actually went out for social gatherings. Right? So all that was comfortable, and it was familiar.

But occasionally, I would go out. Right? Like, if I'm going to Costco, I would have a dilemma of, like, should I change out of my house clothes? Or should I wear the same clothes as I go to the grocery store? So sometimes it really would have mattered because I wouldn't run into anyone, but other times I would run into, like, a colleague. So I just wanna acknowledge that negotiating is uncomfortable, and discomfort is not familiar, and discomfort is always uncomfortable, but discomfort is sometimes good for us.

Second point that Nidhi used -- she used the phrase "especially for those from underrepresented groups."

So, being underrepresented is is a very heavy feeling, I would say. It has been for me in whatever context I've been. And your representation and your identity is in many dimensions. So I can't say it's just because I'm this ethnicity or just because I'm this gender or just because I'm this, like, ability level. But I think what I wanna make clear is that it's challenging to feel like you're the only one.

And I think that's what representation or underrepresentation sometimes makes me feel like.

If I feel like I'm the only one, then I feel this heavy cloud over me kind of like muggy up everything that I'm about to say or do. So what I want to say is the truth is that you're not the only one.

You may feel like the only one, right? You may feel like you're the only like, Korean in this room. You may feel like you're the only woman. You may feel like you're the only one with disability. You may feel like you're the only one who's a first generation college graduate.

But the reality is you're not the only one. It's just that you don't know yet who the others are. Right? Because some things are visible and some things are not. And to be frank, it's not really our place to probe about other people's identities unless they disclose of their own. So I usually just let people disclose if they want to.

And I disclose if I want to, but I never assume. Right? So for example, if I go to... Okay. So I what I didn't mention in my introduction is that one of my greatest accomplishments in life is that I have been, regarded by Yelp -- yes, the food rating app -- that I am a part of the Yelp elite exclusive circle of avid reviewers.

Right? And you think I'm joking? I'm kind of joking, but I'm really not. They've deemed me credible enough to be in the circle every year for the past eight years, I think, in three different markets.

And it's not on my resume, but I really think it should be. So sometimes I go to these Yelp Elite events, which are with other Yelp Eliteers. So these are other foodies, right, or people who just like food.

And, you know, like, they look at me and then they're like, oh, are you ... are you Chinese?

Are you Korean, Japanese, Singaporean? And then I'm like, oh, I'm Korean American. And then I sit there and then they say like, oh, I'm from Sri Lanka. And I was like, cool.

Right? But I never go and ask people like, where are you from? Right? Like, that's that's kind of a little bit disrespectful, I would say, to say nowadays because, like, where people look like they're from isn't necessarily, like, where they're from or how they identify.

So, like, I would not recommend, like, going around and asking, oh, who else here is, you know, x, y, or z? Or assuming. But, like, you will eventually find. And how do you find them? One, build real relationships.

So most of these conversations, one on one, are more appropriate for sensitive topics like this, for disclosure. And two, in things like affinity groups. Right? So a lot of employers have affinity groups or clubs.

Right? Like, extracurricular type of clubs, especially the larger ones where, if you have a special interest that you can bond over that. Right? So almost all of my major, big employers have had, like, oh, here's, like, an Asian American alliance, or here's, like, a woman in tech, or here's, like, you know, whatever.

So that's another avenue. And then third is just going through recommendations of other people. Right? So for example, I have people come to me all the time.

They're like, oh, hey. Like, I just moved to Boston from Singapore, and I'm pursuing a master's degree in divinity.

Like, I need to write the thesis paper.

Do you know anyone that could help? They they put this on LinkedIn, for example. Right? And I write, I'm like, oh, yeah!

Hey. It's like a former student of mine from six years ago. I'm like, oh, hey. I have a bunch of friends who I think you would find interesting to talk to.

Here's a bio of one who finished a PhD at Emory and is now working in Boston.

Do you want an intro? They're like, oh, yeah, that'd be great. Right? So reach out to people you already know and then ask for recommendations. So, that's another way.

Wow. Okay. I've talked way too much. Let me just breeze through the other points. Why is it challenging to have these conversations with an employer?

The short, I would say, is the lack of practice.

So the first time you have these conversations with an employer will feel really, really, really, really hard. Second time will feel really, really, really hard. By the sixth time, it will feel one percent less hard.

So I would say the key thing is to practice.

How? Practice in lower stakes settings.

So practice before you get the offer. Practice with your housemate. Practice with your sister. Practice with your college freshman roommate's dog.

Right? It it doesn't really matter. And actually now, there's a lot of AI tools that could help with this kind of communication practice things. So that's another example.

And then Nidhi also asked about challenges faced by minorities and advocating for themselves. Right? So I think there's one element of advocacy and one element of negotiation.

So I am just kinda separating those two. So let's start with advocacy. What's what's so hard about advocating for yourself, especially as a minority? Number one: I think a lot of minorities feel like they're undeserving of being in that room. Absolutely.

It's not my place.

Inferiority complex. Imposter syndrome.

Right? So I'm just dropping words that you probably heard in passing. What does this really mean?

I think when we feel undeserving of being somewhere, when we feel undeserving of being in college, when we feel undeserving of getting a job offer, any job offer, getting a loan too.

When we feel undeserving of having a roof over our heads, Right? We feel like we should not ask for more.

So, I wanna acknowledge that this is something I feel every day, believe it or not, regardless of how I how my tone sounds right now. It sounds like I feel so confident doing this, but, no, I'm just faking it. And I'm not faking it to a point of, like, inauthenticity. This is actually my real voice.

But I'm faking it to the point of, like, if you feel like you don't belong, try acting like you belong, and you'll be surprised because people will believe that you belong.

So, fake it till you make it, essentially.

Fake it till you make it. But then, fake it to to an extent. And then at that point, you have to be real.

So an example. When I was in college, I was trained on how to behave in professional networking settings.

Literally my career office, career development office said -- okay, they didn't didn't force it, but I've read their documents and then read a lot of things.

And they recommended a specific approach to networking that will help you land internships or jobs with favorable outcomes. So I tried it. And most of the time, I just felt like I was faking it, like, to a point of inauthenticity.

Right? But then eventually, I found my adaptation that made me feel authentic. So here's an example. Right?

So a lot of professional networking guidelines in the two thousands, which is when I was in college, recommended that you wear business casual attire to professional networking events. Right? So don't think tech in Seattle. Think like Wall Street, right, in New York.

Or think like Boeing. Right?

So a lot of older, larger corporations, they're in the habit of business casual pre pre COVID.

So I was like, okay. I guess I have to go buy some business casual clothes. Right? So I went to, like, J. Crew or I went to, like, Express or I went to, like, Goodwill. I I I tried to gather. And then I realized that, like, okay. Yeah.

Like, I should wear, like, slacks that are like this, but I prefer tops that are like that.

Right? So that's how how I found my authentic adaptation to, like, a generalized advice.

So my generalized advice to everyone is if you're having trouble advocating for yourself, just act like you belong. Just just just kind of, like, remove the mental block that you don't belong and just try it. And if you try it and it doesn't work, then you learn because something went wrong.

Right? And you know what not to do. If you try it and went okay, then great. You can do it again.

If if you try it and it went really well, you can just keep doing that.

Right? An example is whenever I do introductions. Right? People always ask, oh, how do you pronounce your name?

And I said, oh, my name is Nayoung. And then they're like, how do you spell that? And then I got sick of it. So I was like, you know, it's like Nayoung, kind of like not old but not young.

It's just the opposite. And and then I usually get a chuckle because and I've done this, like, so many times that I know this works in North America, and I know this works in Singapore.

But if I try this in a different culture, like, I might be offending someone accidentally. Right? So I I rarely do that. But if I did, I would learn from it.

Okay. The second thing, the challenges faced by minorities in negotiating salaries. Right? So advocacy and negotiating negotiating.

So I think the challenges is the lack of information, the lack of know how, best best practice, all the same thing. There's also a lack of salary transparency from the employer side.

Thankfully, many states now require require salary transparency by employment law. So Washington, California, and New York are some examples of that, but you can all look it up online. 2023 is when a lot happened. It's great.

Solutions. So I just gave you a bunch of challenges that you already know. Solutions.

I think there's three things that I would recommend. So if you didn't listen to anything in this long podcast, I would say these three things are potential solutions.

Recognize that you're not alone.

Know your market rate.

And practice, because practice makes progress.

Right? Practice makes progress. I didn't say perfection. Progress.

So we're not trying to be perfect here with every negotiation.

We're not going to be perfect. Like, even Bill Gates is not going to be perfect. Right? Even Elon or Satya. Right? No one's going to be perfect. But every time we practice, I do believe we make progress.

So the solutions to the challenges that we face as minorities in advocating for ourselves or negotiating salaries, I would say, is if you're into acronyms: RKP, recognize that you're not alone, know your market rate, and three, practice because practice makes progress.

I love that. RKP is definitely something that I will always remember now. And I think the R in that is actually one of the things that I identify with the most. And I really appreciate hearing the most. Because, even as someone in law where, you know, law is all about advocating for others. And even with your experiences in career coaching, it was surprising, but in a really, really positive way to hear you say, I even have these issues with negotiating still. I even face these challenges rather, with negotiating still. And I think for me in law, I try to be the best advocate for others, but whenever it comes to myself, it's very challenging to self advocate. And so realizing that R of, like, I'm not alone and there's other people who face this, and it's just kind of like a spectrum of continuing to be practicing and progressing is just really, really great to hear.

Can I add to what you just said?

Yeah. Of course.

I think what I hear from you is that sometimes it's easier to advocate for others than it is to advocate for ourselves.

Absolutely. Mhmm.

Right. And I think it's interesting that you say that as a lawyer or like a very aspirational ... I would have considered ... Do you consider being a lawyer, like being in a helping profession?

Oh, definitely. Yes. I think, yeah, all we're supposed ... that's generally what we are supposed to do. Yeah. To help to advocate. Yes. For sure.

Okay. Cool.

So all my friends who are nurses, pharmacists, therapists, right? I think they strongly identify as, like, helping professions, and you identify as helping profession as well. So I think when we're advocating for others, we kind of see things in a more objective lens.

We see just the facts. We see just the vitals. We see just the documents, the laws, the policies, and then we can act based on what we see. Right. Right? And we can recommend an approach like that's as, quote unquote, "objective" in nature. And if it's too subjective because we have personal biases or conflicts of interest, like, as lawyers or as investors or nurses or whatever, we we opt out.

So what I wanna say is that same approach is what we should take for ourselves.

So we need to kind of, like, take our micro level view of just ourselves and zoom it out into a macro level view of just the facts.

And I think when we see ourselves as not just one individual, but, like, we are one one dot in a Dippin' Dots cup.

Right? Like, yes, we're like others in some way, oh, yeah, I'm a pink pink Dippin' Dot and you're a green Dippin' Dot. Right? And all pink Dippin' Dots are composed of, like, twelve different chemicals.

Right? We're all white, but we're different at the same time. So I think that helps. And the second thing I wanna say is for advocating for others, I think that's something that I found is, this is why it helps have other people advocate for you.

So I think a typical corporate way to say what I just said is this is why you should get a mentor. This is where you get a sponsor. Right? Sure. If you wanna label it that, you should get a mentor or a sponsor. But I'm kinda avoiding those words because I'm trying not to be so corporate even though I can speak corporate.

So, like, another way to say that is you just need people who believe in you.

Yeah.

So for me, people who've believed in me when I could not believe for myself ... examples are my dad, my brother, my housemate, my church friends, and then, eventually, my romantic partner.

Right? But I did not have a romantic partner for many years of my life. So that was not really a part of it. Right?

My one of my parents, I would say, is a little more believer in me than the other. The other one is a little more harsh critic. Like, why why didn't you get the hundred percent? And not the ninety nine.

Right?

And then, you know, like, friends. Some of my friends saw me as competition.

And some of my friends saw me as a different individual who had similar goals, but we were both unique in our strengths, and we would both land different opportunities at the right time. So that's another way for me to say, if you have a hard time advocating for yourself, that's why you need friends.

That's why you need family. That's why you need, like, a mentor or a sponsor or a coach. Yeah. And it really doesn't have to be any ... it it doesn't have to be anyone paid.

It doesn't have to be anyone related to... it doesn't have to be anyone you see that often. But you need at least one person who does. And in an ideal way, that would be your manager at work. Right. Your ideal situation is your manager who you report to at work knows about your goals: your current, your midterm, your long term.

They understand who you are in an authentic way that you feel comfortable sharing in a professional setting, and they can help you feel advocated for.

Right? That's an ideal setting. But but to be very honest, I think there's this saying that -- well, I don't know what the saying is, but, I'll just I'll just give my own view -- that I think within any organizational structure, sometimes the hardest is in the middle.

Like, being an individual contributor or being like a CXO of anything is sometimes okay. Being a middle manager is really hard because as a middle manager, your role is caring for your ICs, your individual contributors, and caring about your senior leaders' priorities and making that all work. It's really hard to be a good middle manager. So what I wanna say, I think I've been very fortunate to have really, really, really good managers in my my career.

But it's really hard to find someone who advocates for you in an authentic way and doesn't just say they're advocating for you and show they're advocating for you, but they actually back it up with results. It's really hard to get results to show their advocacy.

Right? So I think, Nidhi, I just cut you off from saying something, but advocacy is so important because everyone has a hard time doing it for themselves. Sometimes it's easier to doing it for other people. So think about yourself as another person objectively. And then secondly, get at least one, two, three people who know you, to advocate for you, to believe in you, and to remind you of who you are and who you want to be when you don't feel like you can be the person you wanna be.

Yeah. I love that. And I wanna just highlight two of the points that you made. They really resonated with me. And so, the first is that I really appreciate that you're saying that, you know, mentorships are great, but where you don't have you know -- perhaps some people don't have access to these resources, they don't have time.

You have built-in sort of support systems and advocates for yourself in your family and your friends and your partners. And so I really wanna highlight that that sounds like a really productive way to kind of have someone who believes in you and motivates you and talks through resources with you and maybe, talks through, like you said, negotiations with you. And so that is a really, really amazing point. And then to the second point you had stated, I believe that middle management is a difficult job often, and it's difficult to kind of be in that position of wanting to kind of fulfill a company's bottom line, but also promote fairness and empowerment within your team.

But I see as an individual contributor, are there ways that you can kind of advocate for yourself with middle management, work with them, so that the burden isn't on them to be your mentor, but, kind of in reverse. Like, you're kind of reaching out and asking for those types of opportunities if they just can't naturally kind of come up with those opportunities for you.

Yeah. So are you asking more specifically for, like, once you're in an organization?

Right.

How to advocate for yourself to, for example, get more responsibilities or a better title or promotion, that kind of thing?

Exactly. Yes.

Okay. Yeah. It's a great question.

I think that's very nuanced on every organization's culture and policy, but I will speak to a couple experiences that I've had.

So I've worked in large global corporations.

I've also worked in education.

I've also worked in scrappy startups.

So what tends to happen when any organization is smaller is, there are priority things and then peripheral things.

Oftentimes, when you're at a smaller organization, things like having a fair and equitable process for internal mobility and promotion, it's a nice to have.

Because reality is you're probably like, you don't have a robust HR team.

You don't have a robust legal team. A lot of times startups when they start out, they contract out, they subcontract out, like a legal counsel, right? Or HR recruiter? They're not even like in house people, right? So it's low priority.

It's after an organization comes to a certain size that they decide, oh, having someone who does this and just this would be really helpful. Right? So I just wanna acknowledge that the smaller the org, the more fluid it may be that policy or that process.

Right.

In contrast, if you're a large corporation that works and employs thousands of people in the country or in the world, there has to be policy because there are laws.

Right? As you know, Nidhi.

Right.

There are laws. There are employment laws. There are discrimination laws. There's equal employment opportunity laws. Right? And most organizations, once they get to a certain size, they want to not only be compliant in those things, they want to be leading in those things.

So, I'll give an example of how things work at Amazon because this is public information that you could Google. If you look up "Amazon promotion process" on your preferred search engine, you will see a wealth of information on trusted or less trustworthy sources. So for example, Reddit or Blind. Right?

Those are, like, real people, but they're anonymous. Right? So can you really believe in an anonymous comment? I don't know.

But so, working at Amazon has been really interesting for me because it's the largest corporation I've worked in. I don't know. Actually, maybe Deloitte is large larger by number. I don't know.

But Amazon is where I have felt the most transparency when it comes to this process. And I so so so appreciated that. What do I mean by that? If you want a promotion at a large organization, like this, often there's documentation on how to get promoted.

Like, literally, you could look up an internal article about the promotion process. It tells you, like, the fifteen step process. Wow. It tells you the timelines.

It tells you the expectations.

So I was so, so, so shocked when I saw this that there was actually defined criteria on when performance reviews would actually yield potential promotion outcomes.

Oh, wow. Mhmm.

So an example is, like, they would be like, okay. So, like, you're at a level five trying to get a level six, or you're at a level four trying to get to level five. Right? Like, here's what you need to go from this level to this level. But wait.

Being an L four as a software engineer is different than being L four as a program manager. So if you really want the clarity, check out this link, and it tells you literally: Software engineer. Level four expectations is this. Level five expectations is level six, level seven, level eight.

It goes on and on. Wow. Alright. So it gives you, like, six competencies you're looking for for your job function.

And then it says, as a Level five, you should be proficient in this. As a level six, you should be a master at this. And then it defines, being a master means x fines. It was so explicit.

It was also really long, the document.

Right? But it's the first time I've seen any organization treat, like, the internal mobility or promotion process with such clarity in writing.

Right. And I think that's partly because Amazon has a writing heavy culture. Right? Because that's part of how Amazon promotes, like, fairness and equity and consistency instead of just one-off decisions.

Right? Like, every decision has to be, has to be replicable, essentially scalable. It's it's really a scalable effort. Right?

It sounds really fair, and it is, but it's also because they need the system to scale.

So I think that at some organizations, you will see established policies like this that are public information. At some organizations, they will have established policies that are, like, in here that you have to know the right people to get to.

Sorry. This is, I realized this is just, sometimes it's just in people's heads.

That's okay.

And it's not, like, written out somewhere or known to anyone who wants to read it. And then lastly, there's organizations that just don't have that policy yet. They don't have a documentation because they've never talked about it or they've talked about it, but they haven't defined it.

So I think that the sense of, like, fairness in that kind of promotion process really honestly comes down to expectation management.

So for me, oftentimes, when I feel the most, like, angry is when I feel like there was no transparency.

If there was no transparency in a decision making process, there's no transparency in what is actually being considered in a promotion and discussion, then I feel like this is so cryptic.

How am I supposed to know? Right. Like, how do I get my foot in the door? Do I need to, like, make friends with people who, like, just know the right things? But then if it's written down somewhere, it's publicly available information, then information -- and this is why I love working at the UW Information School -- No one paid, Dean Dean Dey did not pay me to say this, but -- I love working at the Information School because information really is power! Mhmm.

And like the more you know, the more anxious you can get. But the more you know, the more empowered you could also feel.

So it's kinda like you gotta extract the things that actually help you. But at the same time you can't let it overwhelm you. Because once I got into that Wiki page, like, clicking, clicking, I was like, oh my gosh.

But then I saved it to my computer, and then every, like, you know, quarterly performance review, every three hundred and sixty degree peer feedback request session, I would look at it. And I would self assess like, oh, how am I doing? Like, am I meeting the expectations of this level? Or am I am I below it or am I above it? And then in a place like Amazon, Amazon makes it very clear. Like, they don't give you a promotion for potential.

They give you a promotion when you're actually working at the level of the place you're trying to be.

Mhmm.

Right? Some some places they hire for potential. And how do you hire for potential? It depends on who's reading you.

Right? Very subjective, which is why, you know, like, it bothered me a lot.

And if you're underrepresented in any way, like, you have to really know that the people you're you're making your good good work known to are people who will fight for you.

Right. That's it. And and no, that was that was super helpful. And I think that's a great way of kind of knowing where you are when you're already inside of a company and knowing where you wanna go and kind of pathways there.

And I think it's great and something I haven't heard of, a lot of companies doing it how Amazon kinda lays out, you know, what your specific expectations are. And they're not just like these vague, like, "do better, have a positive attitude," but they're like steps and actual and measurable successes that you can have, and that's amazing. But in a lot of companies, I would say, and in other, you know, perhaps not tech jobs, but maybe something like law... Like, I know, in the field of law, I know, as a paralegal for many years, there wasn't ever any opportunities to kind of measure what we were doing and then use that to get a promotion.

Because, you know, like, I'm a law clerk now, but as a paralegal, there's no really next promotion. Like, there's no next title. It's kind of just like there's no "level one paralegal" and "level two." It's just paralegal. Or there's, you know, "been doing it for twenty years," maybe like a senior paralegal at max. And so in those types of roles and in those types of opportunities, do you have other kind of advice or tools that people can use?

I know that there's, like you mentioned, Reddit. I've definitely gone down an endless loop of how do I advocate for this, or how do I know what other people are getting? And, especially as a minority group and especially in law as a minority group, that's not always something that I feel like I've been able to access. So do you have any advice on when it's not so concrete and laid out as maybe Amazon and some other bigger companies like I think Boeing and those sorts of companies have it structured.

Do you have advice for that?

Yeah.

That's a great question because that's the majority of places I've worked at. Unfortunately.

I made it sound like I made it sound like all the places I've worked for had these kind of defined clearly defined expectations. But, I think that the most important thing in those cases is to communicate. Right. So when I'm in any employment situation, the most important relationship that I try to foster is a relationship I have with my manager.

So I think communication is really important with your manager. So, what I mean by that: whenever I work anywhere, my manager usually wants to know -- ,well, usually, my manager's involved in the hiring process. And sometimes in the hiring process, they ask me something like, okay. Like, why are you interested in this job? And I tell them it's satisfactory enough. But then I get there, and then they like, okay. They're like, oh, what do you really wanna do with your life?

Right? Like, okay. What are your five year goals, ten year goals, like, whatever. Right? Some people ask me that. A lot of people don't. But if I'm managing someone, like an intern, I always ask them that because, like, sometimes a job is just a job, and it's just a means to an end, and that's okay.

Right? So my first job after college, I was working at Deloitte as a marketing specialist.

And my manager asked me, actually, during the interview process about my mid to long term goals, not just this this job.

And I told them, and then he remembered it.

So when I joined the company, we would have performance reviews. He would ask me, oh, how are your how's your progress towards your midterm or your long term goals going? And I'll tell him. So, I say this because: one, it was rare for someone to care about, like, more than just like filling a headcount on their role.

But two, because it made it really easy to ask my manager for like a reference or recommendation when I was applying to graduate school later on. Right? Because I've always felt really torn like, oh, how do I submit my manager's name for a reference when I'm applying for a new job?

Right? Mhmm. Like, won't they be hurt? Right? But in this case, like so when I applied for grad school, my manager was happy to write a recommendation letter.

I got into grad school. I decided to leave for grad school, leave the job for grad school. So it made putting in my notice really easy because he knew that that job was a good enough job for now, but it wasn't going to be my forever job. And to be honest, he never expected me or anyone to take it as a forever job.

That sounds like a great manager.

Yeah. Steve Schmidt, if you're listening, thank you for being a great manager. So I say one: communicate with your manager.

Right? So if your desire is like, oh, you know, I'm officially a paralegal right now, but I'm considering if I want to go to law school. Right? Like, make that note. And then, I would say the earlier you do it, the more it will help in fostering the relationship.

So these are great things to have when you have yearly goal setting conversations, But sometimes goal setting conversations can feel too heavy and too serious and too, like, corporate.

So these are also great to to talk when you're at lunch one on one.

Right? Like, so for example, Steve Schmidt, my first manager, he wasn't based in the same city as me, so I actually didn't see him very often.

But he flew in for my first week of onboarding, and we would have lunch. Right? Like, we'd be in Detroit, downtown Detroit, eating at like a food court, like a seven dollars Greek salad and seven dollars Greek salad back then was quite expensive. Right now it's like a deal.

And then, you know, I would ask about like his life. I would ask about his hobbies, his family, and he'd ask me about mine! And I'd be like, Oh, my hobbies. Well, I don't know what hobbies I have, but when I'm not at work, I spend a lot of time volunteering with Junior Achievement or volunteering with my juniors, like at the business school who need help with their resumes. And they're like, oh, really? You think that's fun?

And I'm like, yeah, I do think it's fun.

So eventually when I discovered that I could be a career coach, full time, but that it required a master's degree to get there.

I was like, what? Okay.

It made it really easy for me to write my personal statement or to ask for a recommendation because he knew, oh, I really like doing this. Okay. Yeah. You go, you.

Yeah. That's that's such good advice and that's such good motivation to kind of work with your manager. Mhmm. When you're already kind of in the company to advocate for success. But on the flip side of that, can I ask? So going way back, before you even have this job, before you even have a manager in your purview and you're kind of in that early phase of salary negotiations. Could you kinda speak to some success that you personally have had or that you've, heard from others or any of the many people that you kinda coach through this process in terms of advocacy? Like, what sort of things do they do, say, tools that they use to kind of help them through some of these challenges that we've talked about in in negotiations?

Yeah.

So I am going to speed through your question and all the other points that I was going to make in this podcast that we're running out of time on. So how I've had success in my past negotiations.

So, I think that, the main thing is I always asked but was prepared to be told no.

I knew my market rate before the offer came, and I practiced primarily by writing things out before calling.

So those are three things that I always did for every negotiation in all six of my full time jobs.

For part time jobs, contract jobs, or, like, side hustle kind of things, I always negotiated for salary as a key thing. Because salary, like because money like, time is money. Right. But for the all the other jobs, full time opportunities, I always negotiated for salary and, like, one or two other things.

Why would I do that?

When I ask someone for one thing, the answer is a yes or no.

So here's an example. Like, Nidhi, do you like Korean food?

I do. I love Korean food.

Okay. Nidhi, do you like Thai food, Mediterranean food, or Korean food?

Oh, I would have to say all, but I think I like Thai food the most out of those three.

Okay. Which one which one do you like the least?

I would say Mediterranean food because of allergies.

Okay. Got it. That's that's very fair. Right? So when I negotiate, I always ask about wiggle room in the salary, but also wiggle room in things like the start date, relocation assistance, the working title name, other benefits.

I ask that because if I ask only about one thing, they will think I only care about the money.

Oh, right.

But the reality is most of us, we care about the money and other things. Mhmm. But in the end, I think a lot of times ... what oftentimes what I hear from people who are seeking jobs right now is that they want money that's good enough and everything else that in total leads to a fulfilling work that allows us to have a life outside of work.

Right? So a lot of times what I hear is I wanna be fairly compensated, but I also don't want to work a hundred and twenty hours a week.

Right. I wanna be fairly compensated with good health insurance, but I don't wanna be paying five hundred dollars a month to contribute towards that health insurance. Mhmm.

I wanna be fairly compensated for my first job after my informatics degree, but I also wanna go to Europe with my friends for six weeks after we graduate.

Mhmm.

Right? So I think, nowadays, what people want is they want fair compensation with the flexibility to accommodate for their different priorities. Right? Right.

So for example, my first job, I got the offer. And then, you know, it was it was okay. I mean, honestly, I just wanted a job. So I was glad someone would gave me a job.

But I tried not to tell them that. Right?

Yeah. Don't tell them that.

So, I when I got the offer letter, usually offer letters, oftentimes they come like, someone calls you to say we're gonna give you an offer. They tell you the key things, and then they say, oh, we'll email you the offer letter in writing within the next, like, two days. Right? And you say thank you. Right?

Whenever you get the phone call, you should always thank them and be enthusiastic regardless of how you feel.

Thank them for the time they've invested in this process.

Be genuinely enthusiastic because, you know, honestly, you spent, like, a good twenty hours of your life going through their six loops. Right? And they did too. And then if they don't say that they're gonna send it to you in writing, ask for writing. The writing document usually says that they need a response by x date.

Right? Usually, that date is very, very soon. Like, much sooner than you really wanted it to be, which is why I say you need to start your research before the offer comes. So oftentimes, employers make an offer on a Tuesday and then say, oh, we need a decision by forty eight hours from now.

And you're like, what? Like, how am I supposed to sign my life away and make an informed decision in forty eight hours? And at that point, you can't. You can't make an objective analysis of the situation because you're so colored in emotion, which is why decision making -- so negotiation to me comes hand in hand with decision making. And decision making is an identification of your priorities, your deal breakers, your nice to haves, your must haves, and then your, like, no no's that help you inform your decision.

So you need to have that priority list before offers come. Once an offer comes, you thank them. You look at the offer letter, and then you think about the offer and it's full, right? It's really easy to just look at, Oh, they're offering me eighty thousand dollars a year.

I mean, that's good enough, but I hear my friends make like one hundred and forty thousand or oh, but I have friends who, like, haven't gotten a single offer. Right? So how do you benchmark?

Right? You can't you can't objectively at that point. So anyway, I think that, look at the offer letter and then ask for --I usually ask for three things. So I ask for wiggle room in the salary, in the start date, and then something else.

The third thing is just kinda dependent. So for the first job, I ask for wiggle room in the salary, in the start date, and then I think, like, benefits. Right? But the way it was a large organization, I was a part of, like, a, like, a twenty person new hire intake.

So when I asked about salary, he said, oh, we have the same salary for everyone, in this new grad program, so we can't really change that. But start date? If you don't wanna start in June, you know, what were you thinking? And I was like, oh, well, I'd love to travel.

Can I start in, like, September? And they're like, it's a little pushing it, but we could do, like, August thirtieth. And I'm like, deal? Right?

So, like, so salary, I had the assurance that, like, I had asked. Right? And when people say, like, oh, we have the same standard salary for everyone graduating from this degree at this time, I believe them.

Right? But if you are like... if this is not your first job, for example, like, say you have two years of working experience, four years of working experience. Say you have, like, two degrees, right, or certification, right, that makes you a little bit more unique than just a generalized salary grouping? You can use those facts to advocate for more. Mhmm.

Right? So my second job after graduate school, it was overseas. It was in Singapore. I had never even visited Singapore before.

Crazy Rich Asians was not even a book back then.

But when I got the job offer, I decided I want to negotiate. So I negotiated for three things: salary, start date, and relocation assistance. Right? I asked for salary, and I used the facts. I said, this is what I'm making in the US. This is what the data says this title would make in the US.

As you know, you're not in the US, but you are half Yale. So can you help me do a little better there? And then my manager said he's working with HR on it. Secondly, I asked for relocation assistance because I was moving very far away. They did not offer any relocation assistance.

And to be honest, for an educational institution to offer relocation assistance is rare, but I asked. They said we can't pay for your airfare or your housing.

But if you need, like, a couple days to figure out your housing situation when you get here, we could see what we can do. And I was like, okay. Sure. Could you please see what you could do?

So they made an exception for me. Oh, wow. And they they they gave me temporary housing for, like, a week so that I could find a place to sign a lease one once I was there. Right?

But they only came because I asked. And then eventually, my manager got back to me saying like, hey. So HR says they can't do what you're asking for, but I told them I really, really want you. So they said they'll move this much.

Is that okay? And I said, you know, I really appreciate you taking the time to try.

And, you know, if that's the most HR can do, then, you know, I'll do it. Like, I'm not taking this job for the money. And they said thanks. Right? So what I wanna say about that is if you're not serious about even taking the offer, don't even bother negotiating.

Like, only negotiate offers if you have any inclination to actually take it. So just to, like... So, like, sometimes you'll see things on Reddit or Blind. I was like, oh, yeah. I got an offer from Microsoft, but I really wanted an offer from Google.

And I wanted to tell them that I got an offer from a competitor, and they offered a $160K with, like, $30,000 in bonuses. So I negotiated hard, but I really wanted the Google thing. So once I got the offer up to that part, I showed it to Google, and then Google didn't give me anything. Right?

And then, like, yeah, if you have no intent to take it, then that's just disrespectful. That's that's a rude investment of your time, of their time.

So I would say just like generally, you know, what what led to success for me in negotiation is one: I always ask and was prepared to be told no. Right? So that really humbled me that I'm not entitled to anything. I'm just grateful.

But I just wanna ask. Two, I knew my market rate before the offers came. Right? So I usually did my market rate through, Glassdoor or Blind, or the best is if I could talk to other people.

For example, at the UW. Right? The UW Career Office has a lot of data about where their grads go to work after graduation.

So say you get a job to work at, like, Avanade. Right? There's a bunch of other people who have worked at, work there, so they actually know what the the entry level salary for a UW grad with your degree is. Can they tell you who actually gave that information?

Absolutely not. But if you set up a career coaching session with an adviser and ask for their guidance on market data, they can absolutely look and try to give that information in a way that protects the data. So this is why you should actually talk to your career office if you still have access to it.

And then thirdly, I practiced. So for me, this conversation, which is going way longer than what we planned for, I really didn't wanna ramble. So I wrote up some notes on my computer before, but I ended up rambling anyway. So my notes in this case didn't didn't help.

But, for me, I write. Writing helps me think in an objective and logical way.

So sometimes I write things on LinkedIn. Like, I write articles on LinkedIn.

They're not original thought. They're just, like, articles about, like, articles that I've read.

Like, oh, I read this article by a professor at INSEAD Business School, and I learned this. And I write it because writing helps me, like, figure out what I learned and apply what I learned. So I recommend writing things out before. And then for the actual negotiation, it's up to you whether you negotiate in writing, like, for example, over email or over the phone. But I usually try to do phone because you can get a better read of people on the phone.

Right? So in writing, I can be more calculated and planned, and I can send them my questions, but I won't really know their response to my questions in email as well as I would if I just talk to them over the phone.

So, I heard you say that you have, sometimes you take what you learn and you kind of apply them by writing articles or writing down thoughts. And I know that you had written an article about courage and feedback. So I kind of wanted to ask, what role does confidence and courage kind of play into self advocacy and salary negotiations? And how can one build on that confidence and work up to that if they don't necessarily feel confident going into that process? Absolutely.

Confidence is a major contributor to the self advocacy and salary negotiation process. And, it... The question kinda reminds me of a of a book that I liked called The Charisma Myth. It's written by Olivia Fox Cabane.

And the book just talks about charisma in the mythical term that it is. If you ask people what is charisma, it's actually really hard to define what is charisma.

But regardless of how difficult it is to, define charisma, Everyone knows how to identify someone who is charismatic when they listen to one.

Right? So building charisma helps build our sense of confidence.

And Olivia Fox Cabane's research shows that people who are perceived as as having charisma are seen as having more competence. So what does this mean?

If you listen to politicians, if you listen to your favorite, like, president of the past, right, there's one in particular that comes to mind who has a very deep voice, tall stature, dramatic pauses. Right?

That's not how they always spoke. If you look at what the former president Obama sounded like when he was a senator, or just a law school student, he spoke differently. What does this mean? People are trained to speak a specific way. And the kind of training that politicians get or diplomats get is exactly what people perceive as charismatic.

So specific actionable items are things like speaking slower. Adding dramatic pauses as appropriate. Using a deeper voice. Managing your nervousness.

Right?

Everyone gets nervous in interview right now. Am I nervous right now? Not as much as I was thirty minutes ago. How did I manage my nervousness? I wrote out my thoughts, number one. And number two, if I have a tendency to fidget or desire to fidget, I do it where it's not visible.

So right now, for a Zoom interview, it's really hard for me to to it's really easy for me to hide that. In other settings, like, in an in person conversation, I, like, tap my toes in my shoes if I'm nervous.

Right? In an interview, I take notes off the screen.

And then sometimes I just feel like I have to, like, do something. So I stand I take calls standing instead of sitting. Because I'm sitting, I just feel too, like, restless or nervous. Right?

So, Nidhi mentioned that, like, I wrote something about having courage and inviting feedback. It was such a long time ago I should forgot about it. But what I shared right now about, like, speaking slower or using dramatic pauses or using a deeper these are things that the researcher Olivia Fox Cabane recommends in her book, The Charisma Myth. What Nayoung recommends as a practitioner is, smile.

Right? If you're not feeling confident, fake smile. I do that all the time. Can people tell that it's fake? Yeah. Probably.

If they know you, they can definitely tell it's fake. But if they don't know you -- if it's if if it's the first time meeting you, they have no idea if it's fake or not.

Right? Maybe they have no idea if I'm fake smiling or if I'm really smiling right now. But just just smile because a smile opens up the conversation and lowers the walls for people to talk to you.

Be trustworthy.

Right? Live up to what you say you'll do. Follow up.

Right? The number of people that are impressed by my follow-up is shocking, right? Like, if I tell someone to do it, I follow-up and they're like, Oh, wow, like, thanks for following up. And I'm like, in my mind, I'm like, what standard have other people operated with you?

Right?

Were ... To you, you have to thank me for following up on something I said I will do. Right? But following up builds trust.

Trust builds relationships.

Relationships build success. Success builds confidence.

Right? So confidence plays a huge role in self advocacy and salary negotiation.

One can build that confidence with some of those hacks that Olivia Fox Cabane suggested.

I recommend smiling, following up, be trustworthy.

Another way to say this is don't burn any bridges, but that's a really, really low bar.

Like, don't aim to not burn bridges.

Aim to build bridges. Wow, that sounds like I could mic drop right there.

But like, yeah, like, have a high bar for yourself, but don't have a high bar of like, Oh, I need to get promoted within a year. No -- have a high bar of yourself of, like, I wanna be a person of integrity.

I wanna be a person that people can rely on.

I wanna be a person that does what what what they say they'll do. Right? Have that high bar for yourself, but don't have this high bar for yourself that you have no control over. Right? You don't have control over, like, your organization's budget.

You don't have control over how the promotion process works.

You don't have control over, like, how the market does. Right? But we do have control over, like, what we do.

Right? Our attitude. A lot of it is our attitude. Confidence is attitude, to be honest.

And if you're not feeling the attitude to be confident, then talk to some people who think what you should be thinking for yourself. Right? There are a lot of times that I don't believe I can. I don't think I can. I don't think I can.

But then like someone reminds me but Nayoung I'm like you. You said this, like when you were feeling differently when you were less emotional, right? Like you said, x y and z. And I'm like, oh, and then part of the part of me -- the reason I write is because like, I read back on things. And I'm like, oh, yeah, like, I did say that. So Nidhi just reminded me of something I wrote, like, literally, like, six years ago when I was working at the I School, I think, maybe five, about how much courage it takes to invite feedback.

So like, you know, if you're listening to this podcast, I guess you could like, subscribe and share. That's what people say I think on podcast, I don't really care about that. But if you if you found this to be valuable, or if you found something to be missing, like, Nidhi and I would love to hear from you like that feed could be a gift. So like, write to us.

I don't know how to write to us. The Alumni Association will tell you how to give us feedback if you wish. Right? And, you know, that's the best gift.

So confidence is really important. If you don't feel confident, then talk to people who who do have confidence in you. And then secondly, just practice being confident. And confidence is a mentality and an attitude, not necessarily like, you know, your achievements.

Yeah. I just really wanna say thank you so much, Nayoung, for all of your insights that you shared and all of your advice. I feel like it felt although it was a podcast, it felt more of like a one on one career coaching session. Like, I definitely learned a lot, and I'm sure that you had a lot of valuable advice that a lot of people will also really appreciate, especially navigating through these tough kind of conversations in their own careers right now.

Before we wrap up, I'd love to just ask one last question if that's okay.

I'm just kind of curious on what some common mistakes people make in salary negotiations are, and how they can be avoided and particularly from an identity based lens.

Yeah. Absolutely. Common mistakes. Number one, not negotiating.

That's the biggest mistake.

Number two, negotiating just for the salary.

Mhmm.

Number three, negotiating before asking about the other person's priorities.

Right? So another way to say this is negotiating with a very egocentric point of view, not asking enough questions.

Right? If you ask questions about their priorities, you'll figure out that there is actually a middle ground that you can come to that is better than the first offer.

Right?

Number four, negotiating without respect.

Right? So this would be like what you imagine of being aggressive out of a desire to win the negotiation versus assertively communicating to understand.

So the goal of these conversations is to understand, not to win.

Right? Through understanding, you might even find an option that benefits both of you more than the first offer. So there's no winner and loser here. This is not like -- there's no winner or loser. There there there this is not rock paper scissors shoot. It's like you might be able to discuss and come to an agreement of something that's even better than what the first first one was. And then lastly, negotiating when you don't have an intent to accept the offer.

This is disrespectful.

You know? Another way to say this is, like, if you negotiate, you commit, and then you, like, change your mind later, that that's even worse. Right? So those are some common mistakes I heard. How they can be avoided, from an identity based lines.

I think repetition sometimes shows what really matters. So too long didn't read version of this podcast is the RKPs, which is number one, recognize that you're not alone.

Number two, know your market rate.

And number three, practice because practice makes progress.

I think RKP, these three things are applicable for someone from any underrepresented identity group. It's also applicable for anyone, whether you feel like you're in the majority or the minority. Right? So, salary negotiations are really hard. Decision making is really hard. And I think, one of the reasons it's really hard from, like, a meta lens is it's one of the biggest decisions you're making, that you are making and not your family.

That's really hard about being twenty something. Being twenty something is really hard because you're technically an adult. You're legally an adult, but you are kind of still operating under your family of origins's wishes, but you're also trying to be independent.

And I think that when it comes to negotiating or deciding on job offers, so -- Sorry. I have to end on this note. Despite how you feel right now, the reality is that you have choice. Job seekers, you have choice. Despite how the market is, you have choice.

Right? So if you're about to graduate right now from university, you may honestly just be desperate for any job. Right? You'll be like, oh my gosh.

One job offer. Yay. I'll take it. Right? But the reality is, like, there are many job opportunities out there for you, and it's up to you what we decide as worthy of our time based on our values.

So I think, occasionally, you'll be in a situation where you have multiple choices, and then, you know, someone important in your life will want you to takeA, and you deep inside wanna take B. Mhmm. You wanna take B, but then you can't ignore what your what your family or your friends really think that you should do. So you'll feel compromised, but then eventually you'll end up doing A and then you'll you'll, like, get bitter at the people who, like, pressured you.

But then they didn't actually pressure you. It was just you made it up in your mind. Right? Or they did actually pressure you.

Like, they, like, threatened you by saying, like, oh, we won't x y z. Right? Or you'll do B. You'll do B.

You'll do what you really wanted, but then you'll question your decision your whole life. Mhmm. I did B. I did what I really wanted, but was that the right thing?

Right? And, you know, regardless of what you choose, A or B, as you can hear, both of them comes with a decision, and some consequences.

And I think part of growing up, part of hashtag adulting, is we take ownership of our decisions and the consequences that may follow.

So when I decided to leave Deloitte to pursue a degree and then get a job in a complete different field, I got paid less than I was making when I graduated from my first degree.

Did I question my decisions, my life choices? Yes. I did. Did my parents question it?

Yes. They did. Did my friends question it? Yes. They did.

Did I question it? Yes. I did. Right?

But at that point in my late twenties, I decided this is my decision. This is my life, and the consequences, whatever it may be, I will take it.

So, yeah, to the last note, like, negotiating, decision making, advocacy, all these things are really hard because oftentimes, it's the first time we're doing it in our lives.

The first time is hard. The second time is hard. Third time is hard. By the tenth time, it might be a little less hard, but even after the twentieth time, it's still hard. So it's a ... with practice, things that are hard get slightly less hard.

These things are part of what makes us adults. These are things that make us unique individuals and not just the son or daughter of mister and missus one.

Right? So, yeah, it's me encouragement.

It's hard, but life is hard, you know? And if you just have some other people to go through the the hard life with you, then it might be a little less hard, but no one has an easy life. Everyone has a hard life. I'm not saying I have a hard life or more hard life than you or, you know, or someone else, but everyone's life is hard. Some people talk about their hearts, some people don't talk about their heart.

But reality is, you know, all of us have something that's hard. And I think it's just good to practice and try to work through things that are hard in our lives because those things get a little easier over time.

Thank you so much. That's amazing and great advice.

I will definitely always remember RKP. I'll take that with me.

This has been such a great discussion. Thanks again for your time, Nayoung.

Yeah. No problem.

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