After accepting my first job offer out of college, I made one of the biggest mistakes in my career: I didn’t negotiate my salary.

Without knowing that I could leverage my college degree for a higher starting rate, I also missed the opportunity to negotiate other items in my contract. According to a study performed by NerdWallet and Looksharp, referenced by The Atlantic, this isn’t uncommon. 62% of recent graduates didn’t negotiate their salary.

There is a strong chance that if you are a college student, there’s free revision assistance for resumes and cover letters offered at your college’s career service departments. Since most roles available to students are on-campus gigs or internships with a fixed compensation rate, there might not be a high priority for academic institutions to conduct negotiation training.

Cultural influences, speaking from my experience as a first-generation, also instilled stigma about the salary negotiation process. When I was a college student, my parents advised me to read my contract and accept my job offers because I didn’t want to appear “difficult.” The fear that a company could take a job offer away because I wanted to negotiate my contract made it challenging for me to have open conversations about salary and career mobility.

While salary negotiations might feel uncomfortable, normalizing the discussion will help establish the framework for future college graduates and earnings in the workplace, especially for Black women. On average, women earn less than men despite working the same amount of time, and the gap is wider for Black women. According to a 2019 report, Black women in the U.S. earned 61 cents for every dollar compared to their white male counterparts. As of 2022, March 15 is declared Equal Pay and represents how far into 2022 women have to work to earn what men earned at the end of 2021.

To my surprise, hiring managers expect applicants to negotiate their salary in the job offer announcement, which can work in your favor for annual increases based on your current salary.

If you are looking for advice to increase your financial wellness from a Black female perspective, check out these women trailblazers for more tips:

Ashley M. Scott

Writing since March 2022 · 1 story contributed