Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep144: How to 2X your salary from 90K to 200K in 8 months.

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

✅ Get My FREE '5-Day Career Growth' Guide + Training 👉 http://www.meiphing.com ✅ Grow your career in the 9-5 corporate world with clarity, confidence and opportunities! ⚡ 👋 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing — corporate career coach, ex-corporate leader who has led multimillion-dollar projects across 43 countries and creator of the ultimate career course for 9-5 professionals, The Corporate Survivor™. On this podcast, you'll learn how to grow your career in the corporate world without getting stuck with Mei Phing's 3-step framework to gain career clarity, improve work confidence and attract new job opportunities. ✅ WEBSITE ⮕ https://www.meiphing.com ✅ FREE GUIDE ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co/5days ✅ COURSE & COACHING ⮕ https://www.thecorporatesurvivor.co ⚡ 📌 ABOUT MEI PHING: Mei Phing Lim is a Professional Career Coach and former Corporate Leader in the financial services and consulting industries. Mei Phing went from a shy quiet introvert to leading multimillion-dollar projects with teams from over 43 countries as the Senior Director and Head of Governance at Standard Chartered, and now teaching 9-5 professionals how to navigate the corporate world and grow their careers with her career coaching course, The Corporate Survivor™. Mei Phing has been featured as a LinkedIn Top Voice 2023, sharing expert career advice in guiding young professionals to plan, navigate and grow their careers. Mei Phing is a keynote speaker on corporate culture, work performance and career growth, and sharing perspectives on what truly takes to build a strategic and successful career without getting stuck. ✅ LEARN MORE: https://www.meiphing.com

Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to the final day of my 30-day career live stream series. And if you are new here, hi, my name is Mei Ping. I'm a professional career coach and formerly corporate leader at Fortune 500 companies,

working at some of the biggest companies in the world, managing multi-million dollar portfolios and working with people across 43 countries. So welcome to the final day of my careers live stream where we have been discussing in the past 30 days, very interesting career topics, perspectives, basically the stuff that you see a lot of social media and you always wonder to yourself whether are these good career advice or bad career advice. And since today is the last episode, I have a very special topic that I want to talk about and it's about how do you double your salary in eight months?

And before you start going, hey, Mei Ping, this doesn't sound possible, I want to let you know that this is a true case study from a client that have started working with me last year. And this was actually a message that I got from my client this afternoon to confirm that she again got another jump on her salary and basically this is the second jump in the same company in a matter of six to eight months. So what I will be sharing with you in this particular episode and this particular live stream is I want to walk you through the process that I have worked with this client and hopefully give you a bit more inspiration on how we managed to get from $90,000 to $200,000

in eight months. So stay tuned and you want to make sure that you listen to the end of this live stream because I promise it's an exciting one and it's really the end-to-end journey that I think a lot of you may not have a lot of perspectives as to what it actually takes if you really want to double your salary within a short period of time and you really want to move up the career ladder within a very short period of time also. So let us begin. So this particular client reached out to me sometime in July last year. And as usual, if you guys are not familiar with my six-step career journey, usually the first step is always about identifying career interests and directions. So when this particular client reached out to me in July last year, she told me that she was working at that time in the public sector. And as a senior executive, she was the most junior person in the team. So what then happened was that she found herself being extremely overwhelmed with the amount of work that was given to her.

And because she was the most junior person, she ended up doing everything. And even though her efforts were recognized, but unfortunately, she felt that she was being rewarded with more work rather than actually getting a promotion or an increment. So in our first career clarity session and career consultation session, there were a lot of frustrations.

And really the big question that I usually like to tackle in step one, it's really about where do you see yourself in the next few years? And if this is the type of company, this is the type of department or team that it's something that she sees herself in the next few years. So after kind of like going through the session in detail, she decided that, okay, I feel afraid, I feel unsure. I do want to give the public sector a try. But, you know, that's where all the job seeker fears then come in.

Then she felt that, oh, you know, who do you think is going to hire me? Or maybe I'm not good enough. Or maybe I don't have the certification, yada, yada, yada. Now, if you resonate with any of these fears, I just want to let you know that you are not alone. Other people also, you know, feel the same way. I have multiple clients who work with me also start by feeling that they are not good enough. And the reason why these fears exist is because you don't know the roadmap and you don't know the strategy. And therefore, you feel like you cannot do it. So back to this particular client, after working together for the first

session, she thought about it and she said that, okay, I am not really sure whether I want to pursue the opportunity or not. However, I am open to at least at a minimum updating my resume to better position my value as well as updating my LinkedIn profile, optimizing my LinkedIn just to see what I can get. So at that time, she was still a little bit unsure on like, I'm not sure if I'm going to go for it, but I guess at a minimum that I can do at least, you know, let me fix my resume first and let me fix my LinkedIn profile and let's just see what comes, right? So the point I want to make here is that she's still not sure and, you know, sometimes, you know, decisions don't come

very quickly and it's okay to feel like you're not sure and you're not like 100% committed yet. So the next couple of sessions where we work together is really helping her, for me to help her to really position her value in her resume. And after that, we worked on optimizing her LinkedIn profile. So I basically went through the steps that I, you know, worked with, you know, hundreds of my job seeker clients to do that. And to her surprise, just barely one month after updating, you know, and optimizing her LinkedIn profile,

she started getting headhunted by recruiters on LinkedIn. So these recruiters are some of them are external from recruitment agencies. And she started also getting headhunted by talent acquisition, the recruiters within these global multinational companies. So when we met again, she told me that, oh, maybe I'm actually really surprised that people actually find my profile interesting and what do you think i should do with all these um um all these you know opportunities that basically you know she attracted right by utilizing the right LinkedIn strategy that i taught her so we then kind of went through a couple of the positions where she was headhunted and really again right now deep diving

a bit further as to what her career goals are and which are the ones that make sense to her so after kind of like where you know going through a few she decided to go for several interviews in positions that she was interested in now just to be very clear when she was you know at her current job at the her current job at that time she was in the public sector at a senior executive role but she was getting headhunted for assistant managerial positions and the reason why she managed to do that was because I helped her to craft a career story to demonstrate her seniority and it's a she as a person who can actually add a lot more value so now the point I'm trying to make here is that,

remember, value starts from your resume, right? Then after that, you know, after getting headhunted and so forth, she managed to nail a couple of interviews at some of the biggest companies in her country. So we prepared multiple sessions for interviews as well. So the good news was only after one round of interview with a huge panel she managed to land the job and that was a job in it was a huge company and it was also a part basically take all the boxes that she was looking for that initially she didn't believe that she could get so she took the box of um assistant manager so basically it's a direct promotion

assistant manager it was a public sector company. It was also a huge multinational company, which was really something that she wanted to try. And the other one was, it was in a domain or rather in a function, a department that she was fairly familiar with. So there wasn't really that much of a learning curve, right? And of course, she also saw the growth opportunities

in the role in terms of the roles and responsibilities, she could do different things that could also elevate her skills. So it ticked a lot of boxes. And of course, not forgetting, by taking on that role, right, of course, you know, we actually went through a very detailed salary negotiation process because she was in a public company that paid her $90,000 a year. So she said, you know, I don't know how I'm going to get more money because I think I'm only worth this much. Now, that is a limiting belief. And a lot of times that comes from your lack of understanding on how to negotiate your salary. Now, that is something that we can actually overcome, but most people don't know how to do that, and that's why they are not successful. So,

I just want to let you know that if you don't know how to negotiate your salary, what you need to do is learn the skills, not discount yourself and just say that you are not worth it. No, you are worth it. It's just that you don't know the skills and you don't know the strategy. So that aside, so I helped her to really position her salary negotiation case and skills and everything. And the offer that came up from 90K, which is what she was making at that time, the offer that she eventually accepted was $125,000. So this was a 39% increase. And it was also a story that I covered in one of my earlier podcast episodes. I think it was episode 72, where I talked about, I think it was 62 or 72, where I kind of talked about her journey. Now, that was an immediate 39%. And specifically, her base pay increased

significantly. Her base pay increased significantly because of the way that we position it. And I'm not going to go into detail on that because that's what my clients pay me for, but her base pay increased. And why is it so important for your base pay to increase is because most of the time, HR, generally speaking, they will offer you a percentage of your base pay. So if you are a poor negotiator, you have been getting very low base speaking, they will offer you a percentage of your base pay. So if you are a poor negotiator, you have been getting very low base pay that will affect your income in the future, right? Your salary in the future is going to get suppressed because your base pay is very low. So just be cautious of that. And anyway, back to the point. So immediately the moment she signed the

job offer, she basically got all the tick boxes that she wanted, right? So she got a private company, you know, Fortune 500, Global MNC in the department that she actually wants. She got the assistant manager role. And more importantly, she got 39% increase. Now, within a few months, and she actually joined the company sometime in September or October. And luckily, and also timing plays a very big part in this, right? So when she joined the company around September or October, with the company

year-end in December, what that means is that within the three, four-month period, that actually made her eligible for a year-end increment. Now, this is a bit more technical depending on what kind of company you're at. And if I work with you directly then I can advise further but what happened was she was eligible for the year-end consideration and increment because she has been in the company for more than three months so what that happened in the year-end increment was that she again got a bump right so basically she got another increase in her salary and that was also the time that she was told that the bonus that the company was paying was going to be about four to five months. Instead of the initially communicated

bonus at the time that made up the $125,000, she was only told that the bonus would be about two months. So that kind of came up with the $125,000. But at the year end, she not only got an increment on her base pay, she was also told that her bonus structure is four to five months. Now, that immediately, basically like within three to four months of joining the company, her salary package then got bumped up to $150,000. Now, that's like literally 50%, 60% increase, right, within such a short period of time. Timing matters, but of course, right?

I'm going to get into later as to like actually how did she navigated her work and stuff. But right now, I just want to give you a roadmap of like how her money increased, right? So immediately by the year end, she got an increment and the bonus structure was updated and therefore immediately she was making 150k which is amazing right you may think at this point like whoa that that is already a lot of money like how in the world did she get another you know another 50k to make up 200k because it sounds like a short period of time now then what exactly happened after that is sometime in April or May this year, there was an opportunity within the company for a managerial position. Now, what happened then was because she had established

such a good reputation within the company and how she do that, I'm going to explain a little bit later. She basically used my methodology that I taught in the Corporate Survivor, get clear, get confident, get visible. So all that done, she was referred to that position by somebody very senior in the company. And how did that happen? Professional reputation, right? Actual expertise, skills, and the ability to develop trust and a strong reputation. So she was basically handpicked and somebody very senior within her company

reached out to her and said, hey, we've been observing you since you joined, very happy for your performance. We think that you have a lot of potential. You have so much more to give. And now there is this managerial position in this other department. Would you like to give it a try?

So that was when she came to me and we had a very long conversation very long coaching session around this talking about whether should she even give it a try because sometimes it's not about like it's an immediate yes or no but so so so important to think a bit more long term on how this opportunity actually fits her career goals but the second part is does she even have the skills to do a good job and if she doesn't have the skill is she willing to upskill because I can tell you that when I work with my clients I'm very honest and I tell them that you can make as much money as you as you want but you should be ready to put in the work and put in the upskill to make that

amount of money so we knew that it was a manager position. We knew that likely there was going to be some sort of increment. How much we were, you know, she wasn't sure. But we actually went through in detail the pros and cons and also shared some perspective with her as to, like, if she were to move in those sort of business department, what exactly to expect. We talked a little bit about what she understood, at least on a limited basis, her future boss was going to look like and

we did a bit more assessment around that in terms of like people dynamics and like the working styles based on that limited understanding at least for now and you know tying it up with her overall career goal and more importantly how much of a skills gap that she had and how much she's willing to upskill and how much she actually continued to invest in her own learning because like i said you want to take the money, you better deliver the value. There's no such thing as you want to make a double your income, you want to make six figures or whatever,

but you can just sit around. That actually doesn't happen. So after that very, very long conversation, she eventually decided to go for the interview. So she took up the offer from that very senior person in the company and said, hey, I think I want to give it a try. I want to try interviewing for this position and kind of see how it goes. And she went for it.

She got the job on the spot because guess what? She came in with a high recommendation. She was the top candidate for the job because they already wanted her. And to be able to establish that reputation now that kind of goes into the actual work performance and i'm going to share that a little bit more but from a journey standpoint right she got the job immediately and within two weeks there was already an announcement that ran out say that okay as of this date right she's going to assume this managerial position. And that announcement basically went out to the entire company.

So it was actually only today that she dropped me a message saying that she got an official letter on the increment that she was going to get because of that promotion. And she got a 30% increment. And overall right now, as of today, officially on black and white, her annual package is 200k. So that is the story of how to make 90k to 200k in eight months. First is actually the courage to be open to opportunities, even though you do not feel that you are ready for it. By, instead of closing the door, what you need to do is learn the skill, right? And I can tell you that I tell all my clients, even if you're not looking for a job, you should be updating your

resume once a year. You should be updating your LinkedIn at least once a year. Otherwise, you will not believe in your value and eventually you are going to get stuck. So the first one, like I said, the first lesson is be open to opportunities. Number two, every single year, you should actually reflect on your own achievements. And that was something that I made her do by fixing her resume and fixing her LinkedIn profile. Number three, you should always learn how to negotiate and sell yourself during interviews as well as salary negotiation process. These are the two usually face-to-face or ear-to-ear, depending if it's on the phone, that you need to learn how to sell

yourself. If you cannot sell yourself, no matter how qualified you are, you will not be able to command the number that you actually want. So you are going to leave a lot of money on the table because you don't know how to negotiate. You don't know how to ask for a higher salary, the overall package. So you are going to lose out over the years because as you all know, salary is a multiplier effect. Then the fourth lesson is you need to be able to deliver a job well done. Deliver high-quality work, work that people are happy, that you are demonstrating good characteristics, that people trust you, want to work with you, and that is how you create opportunities for yourself,

and that's how you build a strong reputation in the company, internal or external, to get more career opportunities when the opportunities arise. And the final lesson that I want to share is always be thinking about your career growth. So now, if my client had been so afraid and so fixated saying that, okay, since I just joined this company, maybe I shouldn't take this up and so forth, then she would have lost out this massive opportunity to get promoted to a manager and get the 30% increment and finally hitting the 200k mark. She would have completely missed out on that. And how do I know this? It's because in the past, it actually happened to me as well. So when I joined Standard Chartered initially, I joined as a senior executive, but

within three months, there was an opportunity for a managerial position with a much bigger scope. So initially, I was also very unsure, but I decided that I'm going to do it because it's a great opportunity. And the moment I took that up, basically in three months, I got promoted from senior associate directly to a manager and had a much bigger scope and I could actually work on much bigger portfolios that actually continue to add more value in my profile and in my corporate career. So multiple, multiple lessons, but truly, truly what is the foundation? Yes, you can do all the steps, right? And that is something that I definitely go through in my six-step career journey.

However, what is the solid, solid foundation that you need to have to actually create value and for somebody to see you as somebody that they can trust and have a strong reputation? It's actually these three things. And these are actually things that I also teach in my program at thecorporatesurvivor.co. So what you basically need to do in three phases is number one when you enter a new company right or you're in the process of leaving your own company it's very important to start everything

with a fresh mindset particularly for this client was quite difficult because she initially had a lot of mental blocks because she felt that oh i'm in the public sector i think it's going to be difficult to move to a private sector or i'm moving to a company of a different size, and it's like kind of a higher position, how am I going to handle it, yada, yada, yada. So that's why phase one and step one is always about understanding the corporate culture first. Where do you fit in this company's culture? How is everything integrated? So you need to do a bit of reflection, observation first. Then the second part is, of course,

what's also very important is that you are now going to work with a different group of people as compared to your previous company. So there will be some time needed to really understand herself in terms of the way she was doing things because she also lacked a bit of self-reflection. So that was the personal growth, the personal barrier, stepping out of comfort zone that

she had to make. So she had to step out of that and really understanding more about herself, her strengths, her weaknesses, and how that correlates with her team members on how she can add value. And that was actually eventually how she managed to identify which opportunities worked for her because she was very clear then what she was good at and what she was not good at. And she wanted to pursue an area that she had skills and it also suits her personality so that we can be very sure

that she will be successful. So that is phase one. And after phase one, when we move into phase two, that's where you're going to be very objective against the skill set that is actually needed to be successful in corporate regardless of company size regardless of industry regardless of team and this is something that i teach to all my clients whether it's one-on-one clients or the students in my program because the students in my program come from like multiple different industries and you know over 20 countries so definitely it's a method that works as long as you are working in a nine-to-five corporate world it's the same method

because all organizations are structured in the same way more or less it's the same way so after that the next thing like i said is really identifying your skills gap, really understanding where your weaknesses are and really developing the skills to improve that. So for this particular client, she was not a very good listener. So that initially affected the way that she was working. Second, she had a very bad way of managing her workload. So therefore, she always worked on the very urgent things and the important things kind of get dumped at the corner number three she had a bit of an issue of managing expectations and therefore she kind of became a yes woman instead of someone who's actually focused on delivering the final outcome she ended up saying yes yes yes to

everything and obviously you know that was a bit of a problem as well so that affected her productivity um even though she's seen as very flexible, but from a productivity standpoint, it was affected. And of course, if you can't deliver your work, it will also affect your performance later on. So that was something that we actively worked on and she actively practiced as well. So that's basically phase two.

So once you have sort of nailed your understanding of the corporate world, and for this client's context, the corporate world would be basically her new team as well. So that's basically phase two. So once you have sort of nailed your understanding of the corporate world, and for this client's context, the corporate world will be basically her new team and her new company, then you develop the skills that's required to be successful in this new job, even though she had a lot of challenges, but skills that you need to be successful in this job. With these two, get clear, get confident out of the way, you are then ready to move into phase three. And that was what my client did, which is increasing face time, you know, getting all these

opportunities. Actually, how do you ask for these opportunities? How do you network with the right people? How do you identify the right people, right? How do you, you know, schedule performance reviews? How do you schedule quarterly reviews? What exactly are you going to say, right? All these things are things that I teach in my program and they're something that my client also actively implemented. And that's how she managed to attract this opportunity. And basically, when the opportunity came, they wanted her. Now, that's a very big difference of wanting someone versus wanting you. Because if the company, the team or department already wants you, then you have a very big bargaining power to basically get the position that you want, to get the salary that you want.

Now, I'm not saying that it's 100% guaranteed, but it significantly increases your chances to actually negotiate. And then when you learn the right negotiation skills, it again doubles your chances to be able to get whatever number that you want. So a bit of a food for thought. And I hope that, you know, this, you know, by sharing this client journey, I just want to let you know that for those of you who might be thinking that it is impossible to double your salary, you know, in a year, you know, in three years or whatever, that is absolutely not true. My client did it by making the right choices and of course, being able to actually identify opportunities and always ready to learn, to upskill, to improve herself

even though she knew that she had some challenges but she's going to put in double the effort because guess what, when you take double the salary, you're going to have to double the effort, especially if you haven't really developed the skills to learn how to be efficient, effective, as well as deliver results. So it's a journey, but the rewards, like I said, right, if you are really ready to take up the challenge, then put in the effort, put in the time, energy to do a job well done,

to build a solid reputation, build solid skill set for long term success that is very strategic, that is sustainable, then I am very sure that for this particular client, doubling this salary is not going to be like the one-time thing. I'm very sure that working together long term, she will be able to continue to make way more money as the time goes by because she is slowly fixing all these gaps and slowly upskilling all these things that she was not good at. And eventually all these will come up in a more holistic way. It's like, you know, when we all start off, like if you're like in a boat,

your boat may have a lot of holes because there are a lot of skills that you don't know. You may have missing knowledge or you maybe don't know this strategy you don't know this plan this method and so forth but with time right by putting in the effort and of course they're learning from the right people that's that's why she came to me because i've already had the corporate success that she wanted and being able to patch up all the holes using the right strategy and continuously implementing and then working with me one-on-one at the back end to actually get the right feedback

to implement it even better is really what's going to help her go way further and way faster. So I hope that this story actually inspires you because it's very unfortunate when I hear people say that they cannot get a certain job

or they cannot advance in their career, you know, that people don't like them and all these things and, you know, they are being sidelined or they are being ignored and so forth. I think that at the end of the day, the fear starts with you. So you really need to be able to overcome that and really be confident in your own value, your own value first, right? And because

self-belief is one of those things that's at the beginning. So if you really want to develop more self-belief and self-confidence, one of the best ways that I always recommend is start improving on your competence. So your competence can be getting more knowledge, you can be improving your skills, you could be getting more expertise because the more that you do and the more that you know, gradually the feeling of confidence will then come in. Then we are going to layer in your strategies, method and then obviously being very opportunistic as well because there is no way that you are going to see the, it's like if you can't see the opportunity, then you can't take action on it. But how do you see the opportunity is that you need to have perspectives and you really need to understand how the corporate world works and what is your role in there, what you can offer,

what are your strengths, what do you bring to the table, how are you selling yourself and making sure that you have the right network and you speak up to open up more doors for you. Now, sounds very complicated, but it is not. And if you really want to learn my method and my three-step framework on how I have helped many of my clients to do that, you can always go to www.thecorporsurvivor.co to learn the three-step method. And I think there's also a video in there

where I actually kind of like walk through lesson by lesson and the intentions as well. Can always check that out. But my main message to you who's watching today or you who's listening to this live stream episode today is that nothing is impossible, but it all starts with you and set your career goal first. And the moment you set a career goal, if you are ready to get the strategies, you're ready to put in the effort, you're ready to gain the knowledge and be brave and be courageous, you can also double your salary just like what my client has done

for herself. So I'm super duper proud of her and she's of course not the only client that I have with amazing career success, amazing career growth and more importantly, strong, big confidence in herself, knowing that she can do it. It's the confidence that eventually wins it. And confidence needs to come from within. And how I can help is to help you build that confidence, help you build that competence so that it can kind of go hand in hand. So if you want to learn the method, you can always go to www.thecorpusesurvivor.co. And I hope that this story actually inspires you that it is possible. But it starts with you.

So with that, I will see you soon and I also wish you all the best in your career and don't let yourself, don't allow yourself to self-sabotage your success and always be ready to move out of your comfort zone towards the actual success that you want and you think you deserve. So with that, I'll see you soon.

All the best. Cheers. Bye.