Today I have been coincidentally bombarded by a question I believe most 20-somethings struggle with; what am I worth? Now I'm not talking about worth in the terms of my mom patting me on the back and telling me I'm special. I'm talking about how to determine my value as a productive professional and demanding to be compensated as such.
Let me backtrack. When I graduated from college a year and a half ago, I had absolutely no clue the type of job market I would be facing. I had spent the better part of four years listening to my professors and advisors gush about the kind of opportunities waiting for me once I had that trusty diploma in-hand. Screw starting to look for a job four months out from graduation, I was going to be a college graduate, and finding a high-paying, perfect position was going to be a piece of cake right?
Wrong...way wrong.
I started my search seriously after a month of lounging around my parents' house, going to the pool all day and watching episodes of the original Beverly Hills 90210 got old. Little did I know, I had wasted precious time, and I was at a severe applicant disadvantage. Forget finding a nine to fiver that would pay me $45,000.
The first job offer I landed post-college was for an office manager-type position making eleven dollars an hour. Can you say reality check? I quickly turned the offer down assuming something great was just around the corner. Cut to three months later, and I'm working an unpaid internship at a PR agency. When I got the internship, I learned that hundreds of others had applied. Hundreds of grown adults had applied for an entry-level position with no pay! I was in shock, and again, the reality of my situation began to set in. I started to think that as a worker, I was only worth as much as an unpaid internship, and honestly...no one was telling me any different.
After years of hearing I was smart and gifted and going to do great things, I let eight months of job rejections and poor offers get the best of me. I was blindsided by what I thought was my own failure, and I couldn't see that I was still just as talented, only the economy was in the toilet.
While I eventually pushed past this miserable mindset, I must say that it honestly affected me when I accepted my first full-time job. I was so happy to have found a stable opportunity that I agreed to the offer without even considering negotiation, besides, I had absolutely no idea how to negotiate my own future. Of course, it's useless to let "what ifs" cripple you, but sometimes I am plagued by what if I had asked for more money or a better title or more time off? I was so worried about getting a job, that I undervalued my own worth.
At a conference last week, I heard career guru Tory Johnson say, "Not negotiating is not an option." If I'm not going to be my own advocate, who will be? If you don't have confidence in yourself, how can you inspire someone else to have it in you too? Even now, I still get nervous at the thought of telling someone what my talents are worth, but if I won't do it, who will? If I can confidently say that I have something of value to offer, what choice does anyone have but to believe me.
I'm in my twenties and trying not to sell myself short.
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