Men vs. Women: Negotiating: Why women make 80 cents to a man's dollar

This blog is mostly for the girls in my cohort of speech therapists. We're all in the process of getting jobs, and I just wanted to share something I heard on NPR a few weeks ago. A study showed that men are four times more likely to negotiate their salaries than women. The average graduate level employee that negotiates their salary for their first job makes 1-1.5 million dollars more over the course of their career than someone who does not negotiate the salary of their first job.

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So how do you negotiate salary? Here's a link to a Washington Post article about that: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/jobs/how-to/negotiate_salary_guidance.html And here's a link to an askmen article about it: http://www.askmen.com/money/career_100/141_career.html The ask men article seems quite useful... And I have no idea why they have a website called askmen. It's kinda weird. But the article is good. I had to X an ad to see the article, but that's not a big deal.

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The main idea of these articles is to do your research, know what you're worth, let them introduce the salary, and then talk it out with them. Anyway, some of us that are working at schools will have exactly 0 opportunity to negotiate. Although EBS, which contracts therapists to schools, will pay an SLP on average 3-7,000 more per year than the district would have otherwise. Which means that school districts do negotiate. Anyway... NEGOTIATE! Think of whether 1.5 million dollars is worth a little conversation instead of a rubber-stamp "yes" when they make an offer.

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As Speech Language Pathologists, we are in demand! A good number of us will be working at a place that wouldn't have an SLP, or would have to pay thousands more per year to a company to contract one, if we didn't work there. I have found a job for CFYs that offers 62,000, one that offers 63,000plus, and one that offers 94,000 for a CFY!