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I recently applied for an IT job with a top hospital in Colorado. The job is entry level but the pay is way better than what I'm making at my current job. Here are the conditions that were on the job posting;
Min Wage: $ 18:24 Mid Wage : $ 20.58 Max Wage: $24.78
I felt the interview went well until they asked me about wages. I stated my desired pay is $20 dollars an hour, based on the fact that I have an associates degree in computer science and 1 year of experience in two positions. The female interviewer basically went on to tell my my year of experience is not worth that much.
She said my experience and degree is worth $17 or $18 which is below the listed min pay in the ad. I asked her if they factored education and experience into the pay. She did not answer. I do not think I was overly aggressive. I was polite and kind. I told her I'd be willing negotiate on that number. In my mind, anything below $ 19 an hour would not have been enough incentive for me to leave my job where i'm making $16.50.
I feel that if i were a man, me asking for a bump in pay when i clearly have exceeded whats being asked for would have gotten me the desired salary. Also, she seemed very concerned about Tech certs when this job does not require any. I have three things against me here in this field 1) being female, 2) being a minority, and 3) not having an A+ cert which equates to an IT tech who has 9 months of experience disregarding my year of actual hands on experience.
Any thoughts on a woman's pay in the IT field? Did I do something wrong here by asking for a mid range of pay?
You are over qualified for what they are looking for. With an IT degree you should not be accepting anything under $40/hr. The ad says "GED/HS and no experience or certs required". That sounds like ANYONE could do whatever job they were looking for.
It sounds like they are trying to low-ball you. When they start finding excuses to say your experience doesn't count etc. and drop you below the minimum.
Agreed. And it's quite likely they did this at least partly because you are a woman, especially because you're going for a job in the traditionally male dominated world of IT. We have the tendency to undervalue the worth of our work and not to ask for the amount we deserve, which aggravates the persistence of the wage gap. If you can afford it OP, insist on the amount you want, as long as it's in line with the average salaries. Don't be willing to take less because you're "just" a woman. Because we're much more than that, no matter what an interviewer tries to make you believe.
I recently applied for an IT job with a top hospital in Colorado. The job is entry level but the pay is way better than what I'm making at my current job. Here are the conditions that were on the job posting;
Min Wage: $ 18:24 Mid Wage : $ 20.58 Max Wage: $24.78
I felt the interview went well until they asked me about wages. I stated my desired pay is $20 dollars an hour, based on the fact that I have an associates degree in computer science and 1 year of experience in two positions. The female interviewer basically went on to tell my my year of experience is not worth that much.
If you have a degree in computer science, then why do you apply for a job like that. Any job that is willing to take high school graduates is not a real IT job. You are not being underpaid, you are overqualified.
If we take this into account, then your salary makes sense. Your degree doesn't matter, and your 1 year in two jobs is not impressive. The result is lower pay.
If you're really a good IT person, you won't even need to post a question like this about pay. Good IT people are always in demand and that's all I can say.
As an entry level tech, you had better focus on both experience and certs, and not worry so much about a couple of dollars per hour. You need to get to a good 3 years' experience and a couple of certs - A+, Server+ etc, and then the MCP's are a good start, but they are explicitly entry-level. Breaking in is tough, and these will help. Be ready to consider the whole cert path, too.
As far as the woman./gender/race thing, I would put it out of my mind and focus on agreeability and competence. It is likely that any entry level role is going to suck. Just roll with it, get your experience, and if your place of employment is intolerable or dead-end, then just get out and go into your next role as a midlevel tech who can command almost twice of what you started out with - and of course have a career path in mind - what do you want to do at a senior level?
I say this as someone who started at the bottom and over 15 years have worked my way up to a senior network engineer level.
Get the certification. It will help and surely won't hurt.
Realize that some jobs just pay low and some jobs pay better.
There are studies that some people (male and female alike) that subconsciously think a female applicant is less qualified than a male applicant with the exact same skills/education/experience. There were recent studies that actually had 2 diff applicants with same everything and even answered interview questions the same way. But the male got rated as better than the woman.
Later as part of the study, the interviewers were given the results and were told about the study. there were females that say they didn't even realize they subconsciously had the bias to assume the women was less qualified. Because they were strong in their belief that both are equal, yet their brain tricked them into favoring the man over the woman.
This situation is often how women get paid less, because of subcontious assumptions by many people that have no clue they are doing it.
I caught myself doing it once too and was so mad at myself. I gravitated toward the male team member as having the knowledge/expertise when his female counterpart was a peer with the same expertise. I wrongly assumed because she was female that her role was less technical even though they were on same team. Ends up he was slow at providing support. She was much faster/more thorough once I learned that she was also a 'go to' person that handled the same issues as him.
"Being a woman has nothing to do with this.Stop blaming a lack of a penis for your problems."
Lockdev you fail to see my point of this post.
It's not a statement of not liking the job offer and woe is me. There was no job offer which highly/ probably had to do with me asking for a higher rate of pay
It's a question of did they just low ball me in general due to me not asking the right way or if I was a man would I have gotten the offer under the same circumstances?
Women are lacking in the IT field and it is a known fact that woman generally makes less than a man for the same job title. I'm not blaming my gender or race for my problems but it does greatly contribute to them in the work force. Instead of being snarky maybe you could answer my question.
You need to look at why this is before you make assumptions that a man would have gotten the deal just for being a man.
You are over qualified for what they are looking for. With an IT degree you should not be accepting anything under $40/hr. The ad says "GED/HS and no experience or certs required". That sounds like ANYONE could do whatever job they were looking for.
The OP has an Associates degree in IT, not a bachelors. An Associates degree really isn't worth much in the world of IT. For low end IT jobs, it's all about experience first and certs second.
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