Salary Story: I Played The Flight Risk Game & Got Promoted

Age: 29
Location: Orange County, CA
Current industry and job title: Recruiter, healthcare IT
Current salary: $105,000
Number of years employed since school or university: Seven
Starting salary: $40,000
Biggest salary drop: n/a
Biggest salary jump: $62,400 to $86,000 in 2022.

Biggest negotiation regret: I should have done more proactive research when applying for positions to understand the market rates.

Best salary advice: Talk to your friends and coworkers (that you trust) about your salary. I'm always the first person to offer up my salary and how much I make because we will never know what to ask for and expect if we don't know what's out there. Money is such a "taboo" topic but that's what keeps women in the dark and asking for less than they deserve.

Salary: $40,000
Year: 2018

I did a ton of political organizing in college and initially wanted to go the international relations route but the universe wasn't having it! Thankfully I landed at a large well-known progressive think tank with a spunky youth arm where I became the Organizing Associate specializing in reproductive rights, gun violence prevention, and democracy. I was there for a little over two years. Moving to a big city on $40,000 didn't feel amazing but I was just excited to have a job in my field a week before graduation. Based on market research, I was estimating around $35,000-$50,000 for my first job in the nonprofit sector so I felt okay about it. The only negotiating I did was ask about a relocation bonus which was met with a "we don't do that here." Once I started, I learned that this think tank, while flashy and well known, gives below market salaries because of its prestige. I had friends at other progressive think tanks with minimum salaries of $50,000 (without union support). I had one pay rise in my time here because of union negotiations.

Salary: $50,000
Year: 2020

I had organized a multi-media campaign and had several policy research papers published so I used that as leverage to get promoted to a senior role. I gave myself "exceeds expectations" in several categories of my performance review with data metrics on the size of the projects, the media reach, the amount of views per paper, etc. My superiors ended up giving me several "needs improvement" which knocked my score down to an overall "meets expectations." At the end of the conversation while discussing "my next chapter" I started using phrasing like "I'm happy to create more processes and workflows to better support the person who comes in after me." The Executive Director then asked me, "Are you thinking about leaving?" I mentioned I was upset about meeting expectations and the fact I would not be promoted and was questioning my growth at the organization. Less than 12 hours later I was called back into the office and they had edited my final performance review and promoted me to senior organizing associate.

Salary: $50,000
Year: 2020

I wasn't enjoying things anymore and wanted to focus more on policy and government relations, so I joined another nonprofit which specializes in young bipartisan federal and state legislators. I focused on criminal justice reform bipartisan policy and loved working with state legislators. I was originally offered $48,000 with a $2,000 signing bonus. I asked for $50,000 flat with no signing bonus as I wanted to stay at my current salary range. This turned out to be a slight pay cut because my benefits cost more here. I really wanted out of the old job so I didn't negotiate too hard for the role.

Salary: $62,400
Year: 2021

The salary in the job description was actually $50,000 but because I moved to Southern California they had to give me $62,400 by law. California has minimum exempt salary requirements for employees living in the state (even if the company is not) as a type of protection for Californians. These bands change every year to account for inflation, in 2025 the minimum salary if the company has more than 20 employees is $68,640. I had left Washington DC and wanted to try out a non-political nonprofit and switch to project management. I enjoyed the scrappy, sexy nature of political organizing but I struggled with the lack of metrics, structure, and measurement of success.

Project management felt industry agnostic and was a way to pivot out of the small nonprofit space, into larger, more corporate settings. I managed leadership development programming for close to 13 clients including some major global companies. It was the most corporate nonprofit I'd run into... and I was miserable. I found project management was not for me. I did not enjoy babysitting and chasing grown adults for deliverables for so many clients. The size of the company, 2,000+ employees globally, also made it difficult to get anything done quickly. I only lasted about six months before I went to my manager to resign but she asked me to stay on as a contractor to wrap up a project for one of my clients. For the next three months, I wrapped up with the client and took on several other ad-hoc projects for the social impact arm around event planning and DEI initiatives, I was working about 30 hours a week for three months at $40 an hour. The director of the project (a good friend of mine) advocated to pay me $40/hour for my contract work! After myself and several PMs left, the organization did a mass hiring to alleviate the number of clients PMs had to own. I was happy to be the sacrificial lamb that pushed for this change.

Salary: $86,000
Year: 2022

While doing contract work I started applying to non-profit and for-profit companies. I was open to anything and everything. My partner is a recruiter and encouraged me to try more formalized recruiting. Frankly I fell into the company having known nothing about healthcare, IT, or traditional staffing agencies. I was originally offered 80,000 (this is the bottom of the band) and I negotiated to $86,000. I was told to pick a non-round number which is how I landed at $86,000. I am the lowest paid in my position but I am also one the youngest by at least five years. The recruiting team is very close with each other so several of us were transparent about our salaries. Some days being the lowest paid felt gross, but I recognized my level of experience compared to the others was valid. I never brought up my salary standing with my managers or leadership because I felt I didn't have enough ammunition for a compelling case.

Salary: $105,000
Year: 2025

As well as an increase, I got a bonus (after taxes) of $6,000. I'd had a small increase the year before, but this was a huge increase. I exceeded expectations on my performance review for 2024. This was a pleasant surprise and I was no longer the lowest paid recruiter on the team. I was so proud of hitting $100,000 before turning 30 and the hard work for over two years had finally paid off. I advocated for exceeding expectations during my performance review with my win rate metrics, the satisfaction scores from my placed consultants, and the praise from team members. Usually exceeding expectations is a merit increase of  4+% but since I was so low on the salary band I believe they needed to speed up my promotion to be more in line with my peers. From my knowledge my salary band is $89,000-$120,000 and most of my peers are at the "midway point" according to leadership.