Welcome back! This is part two of the story of how I doubled my salary in five years.
Everyone needs income to survive, and it’s essential to focus on how you can achieve more of it.
If you haven’t yet read part one, you can do so here. This piece will pick up where the last left off, at the beginning of the third year of the story.
I’ll round out the final three years of the five year journey, then close by talking about the lessons I learned along the way.
Year 3 – Job 3 – T&A Support (127%-133%)
At the end of part one, I discussed how keeping LinkedIn up to date and engaging with quality recruiters greatly improved my career prospects. It was thanks to these connections and clear documentation of my experience and accomplishments that led me to receiving a job offer from another company.
After two years in the same company, I was ready to move on to something new.
This new role – the Time & Attendance Service Desk Officer role – would see my look after employees and managers using the company’s time & attendance system. I would address their queries with rosters, timecards, as well as recruitment and onboarding (in a different system).
I was using my existing skills, and applying them in new and interesting ways. The role also meant I was moving away from payroll processing, and more towards solving problems.
The more I learnt about the nature of work, the more I realised that those around me that solved large problems were the ones who were most rewarded. The system administrators, consultants, and external contractors were the ones who appeared to be earning high wages.
My goal became learning as much as I could to move into a role that gave me the knowledge to work those types of roles. And solving problems was essential to them.
New Company, New Environment
One interesting thing about changing companies – even when working the same job – is that you begin to notice the diversity between processes from company to company.
I saw how a larger payroll team operated, and how the resourcing requirements of larger organisations can change even when the function is identical.
I spent my days supporting managers to use the system and get their employees paid correctly. As I mentioned in the last article, the software knowledge I had acquired up until this point was rare and highly valued – as was my ability to learn and communicate that information carefully to end users.
I gained that knowledge by being in the right place at the right time, and by focusing my efforts on seizing that knowledge when the opportunity presented itself.
Taking this job was a 27% increase in my base salary (or about 15% if my allowance was factored in)1.
Soon after starting the role, I qualified for a slight raise, which bumped this role up to roughly 33% more than my original pay rate.
Throughout this role, I gained experience in customer service, systems experience, and learned about solving problems as quickly as possible.
Year 4 – Job 3 – Same Job, Same Pay
After a year of working in this role, I had grown accustomed to completing the tasks in the role. The service desk was entirely under control, and I was becoming quite good at what I was doing. That said, I was getting the itch to do something new.
And then COVID-19 happened.
Suddenly, my priorities shifted. With businesses closing down left and right due to mandatory business trading halts, I didn’t think it would be wise to try and find another job. People were losing work left and right, so I hunkered down for as long as I could and kept my head down in an attempt to keep working.
I didn’t feel at risk of losing my job; I worked for a company operating hospitals, in an essential system-focused role. But I thought it best to employ a mindset where my job could be at risk.
At the time, it made sense to put career aspirations on hold to ensure I maintained an income.
During this time, my partner moved into my one-bedroom apartment with me. While we had planned this in advance, COVID expedited the process, and combining that with the two of us working from home was a huge challenge. Especially due to me on phones and my partner working as a tutor.
As we approached the new financial year, our company advised that nobody would be receiving a pay rise. I didn’t mind this – again, I was thankful to be in a role that wasn’t at risk of terminating.
Find Work You Can Control
Working full-time on phones from home feels like a distant memory, but looking back it was quite gruelling. Despite talking to people every day, the isolation was very real – even while living with my partner.
Even as an introvert it was a challenge. The length of the lockdowns in Australia were some of the longest in the world, and we suffered through COVID as a result. Due to rule-breakers and various super-spreader events, we had situations where we would open for a week before forcing all businesses to close again. It was unreal looking back.
I learned a valuable lesson throughout the COVID era – find work you can control.
Too many businesses were forced to close their doors due to government mandates telling them that they couldn’t operate their businesses. I don’t want to discuss whether you think it was worth restricting retail and hospitality businesses for the “greater good”. My point is that I saw how those people lost their income while not being able to control it.
This led me to realise that I need to find a way to control the means by which I make money.
I realised the value of the work I was doing even further, and did what I could to stay engaged with my role during a period of poor mental health.
Eventually, as COVID restrictions eased2, I thought it best to think about my next move.
Jack of All Trades, Master of None
I began to apply for positions, but was rejected or ghosted from almost all of them. Employers didn’t see the value of the work I had done.
Recruiters hiring into payroll officer positions wanted payroll officers with more years of experience.
Recruiters hiring for system roles wanted full-suite experience.
My sideways career movement gave me a lot of skills across connected disciplines. But I wasn’t able to leverage that knowledge effectively in any traditional role.
Most recruiters want the best person for the role. This usually means hiring the person with the most years of experience. It’s backwards, but it’s true.
I then thought about my knowledge of Time & Attendance software and how I could leverage this better. I realised that not only that it was difficult to be in a position to learn what I did about T&A software, but it was even harder to learn more about it.
Most system administrators learn through experience by using their company’s implementation of the system. There’s nowhere you can learn proprietary software outside of the company that owns it, or by working at a company that operates their software. In addition, it’s difficult to be in an organisation that has budget to fully upskill a new hire in the system that doesn’t hire the experienced person outright. So being in a learning position for this software is a rare boon that I was able to take advantage of.
I had to find ways to learn more about these products if I had any hope of moving up in my career.
So I kept applying for roles – even if they had a steep learning curve. As with my previous roles, I was prepared to learn in order to get ahead.
Year 5 – Job 4 – Consulting (163%)
Despite having a great salary at my current role, loving my work, and making excellent contacts throughout my work, I was still thinking about my next move. As a result, I kept my LinkedIn profile up to date. As I was looking for work, this made it easy for recruiters to find me and reach out to me.
I was very lucky that one such recruiter did.
This person was from a consulting firm that specialised in providing T&A solution support to their clients.
If my LinkedIn wasn’t up to date, they wouldn’t have reached out to me.
And they wanted to chat with me. Me! Even though I didn’t have full system administration knowledge!
I felt like I had hit the jackpot.
Crazier still, I had the privilege of meeting and discussing my thoughts with who would go on to become my new boss. And a new mentor.
Proving Myself
The interview started out the same as most others. However, I quickly found myself feeling very comfortable discussing my thoughts and feelings about my career and the job market candidly with the director interviewing me.
I was jaded about having a proven track record of learning, while being knocked back in interview rounds due to lack of experience.
While I can’t remember the director’s response verbatim, it was similar to this:
“Experience isn’t as necessary as a willingness to learn. We want people who can learn quickly.”
Thankfully, I had a proven track record of rapid learning, as well as how I had applied that in my role. I also felt as though I got along very well with this director.
At the end of the interview, I could tell that it went extremely well. So much so that the director all but confirmed the second interview would be happening before we finished the first.
The second interview was with one of the international directors. And the third with another.
All of the directors loved my enthusiasm and drive to learn. I made it very clear that I wanted a chance to prove myself.
And they gave it to me. Something I will always be grateful for.
Rapid-Fire Learning
Upon taking this role, I received a massive 30% pay rise compared to my last role. It was at this point that I had doubled my salary in five years.
The first month was dedicated solely to learning a separate UKG solution. I would go on to become an expert in implementing, managing, and training others on how to use this particular solution.
I thought it was incredible that this company was so eager to hire me, and also give me the space to learn. It seemed as though this was hard to find – especially in the midst of COVID. But they are out there!
What followed was a whirlwind of learning systems, seeing a massive amount of different implementations, and learning how those companies implemented the system. What took me months to learn before, I was learning in days. The knowledge I gained was far beyond anything I could’ve learned from a single solution.
I believe that this, along with a voracious appetite for learning, gave me an immensely powerful skill set that would see me through two and a half years in total in this role.
But that’s beyond this article. Instead I want to talk about what happened halfway through my tenure.
End of Year 5 – Retention Pay Rise (200%)
About 8 months after I started, my boss – the one who gave me a chance and got me to where I was – resigned.
The atmosphere of the role immediately changed, and their absence was noticeable.
The work was good and my colleagues were nice. But something had changed.
This was around the time where I started to realise the value of being a “T&A Consultant”.
I began receiving cold messages on LinkedIn for job opportunities – even without the “looking for work” settings on.
I knew this first hand from my company. The number of consultants we had was dwindling, and finding new recruits was rare.
There simply wasn’t enough people with the expertise.
And companies were doing whatever they could to get that expertise on their side.
The Offer
One such message was from a Big 4 consulting firm, offering me a chat with their partner.
While I only expected a quick chat, it immediately turned into a job offer as a Senior Consultant! Not just a salary increase, but a promotion, too.
I wasn’t prepared to leave, and the offer caught me off guard. So I raised it with my new boss and let them know that I was considering taking it.
They wanted me to discuss with the director of my company first, so I agreed.
And the director immediately offered me a ~22% pay rise to stay.
I know people say you shouldn’t take a retention pay rise when you tell your boss about a job offer. But in my situation, the offer was sprung upon me. And I also valued the company I worked for very highly.
My company gave me a chance. And I didn’t want to take the prestigious job title and immediately leave for greener pastures.
So I didn’t. And I was rewarded for staying with a massive pay rise.
Closing
In the end, I had doubled my salary in five years, and put myself in a position to gain extreme amounts of knowledge along the way.
That knowledge would go on to support me in the future, allowing me to start a business and massively increase my hourly rate.
Focusing on ways to increase my income – and having the means to do so – gave me the ability to save and invest my money, gave me the ability to take a massive career break.
Now, I’m back at work and earning more than I ever did.
I shared this to show that it is possible to work your way up to a higher salary – even if the path forward isn’t always obvious.
I hope there are a few lessons for you to learn along my journey, and I hope that you can use them to achieve similar results on your journey.
Thank you for reading.
I very much hope that you enjoyed this piece. If you’d like to read more, check out previous posts on the blog, and follow me on X @ScottOnFire.