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As a female engineer with almost 10 years in the industry total, I wanted to share some of my career tips for women in STEM fields on a monthly basis to provide some lessons-learned from my career journey, and hopefully help you navigate yours. (PS- I’ll be sharing a ton of insights over the next few months, so you’ll want to be sure you’re subscribed to my blog so you won’t miss anything! 🙂 )

This month’s career tip for women in STEM is:

Know your worth.

Okay, so people say this a lot and in a lot of different contexts, so not to sound too cliche here… But knowing your worth in the workplace will really take you far. The (kinda sad) fact of life is that people always try to get the most they can for the least. Whether you’re an engineer, a social media influencer, or work in any other profession, it’s an uphill battle sometimes of people just not giving you what you feel you’re worth. I mean, this has definitely been the case in my experience as an influencer; brands want content, plus rights, plus they pressure you to provide additional posts outside of what you agreed to all for little to no monetary payment. Or even worse, and my personal pet peeve, the POTENTIAL for commission! So essentially you’ll give the brand advertising and content for FREE and only if someone buys an item through your link or discount code will you get literal PENNIES on the dollar of the purchase price paid to you… Like, how is this still legal?! That’s literally free labor…

Well, a minor moment on my soapbox aside, it’s honestly just good business to pay the least you can for the most you can get. As they say, business (and life) is a dog-eat-dog world and unless you put your foot down and refuse less, odds are that’s what you’re going to continue to get.

Now the caveat to this whole “know your worth” thing in strictly the career sense is that you’ve got to be honest with yourself and educated in the market to “know your worth”. A quick aside: your worth as a human is NOT what I’m talking about here! This is about your worth as an employee with a certain skill set, years of experience, education level, etc. This probably doesn’t need saying but I’m going to say it anyway: be realistic. Obviously if you’re fresh out of college and have only ever held non-industry relevant jobs, you’re probably not the best fit for a management role right off the bat (not to say it can’t happen though, just have realistic expectations!). But, if you’ve got 10 years of industry experience, accolades, professional certifications, high social media engagement, big-name endorsements, etc., and you take a step back and look at what others on your same level in your same field are making/being offered, and you find it’s not what you’re being offered, question it.

Once you have the data and have done the research for your particular field and experience, come up with an idea of what you should be getting, whether it’s financially, job title, stocks, etc., and think about how you’re going to make changes to get it. Are you going to be firm with declining collaboration requests that don’t meet your compensation rates? Will you set aside time to speak with your manager about the possibility of a promotion or cost-of-living raise? Are you going to apply to jobs at other companies if you’re not getting what you feel you should be?

The other thing I want to mention is that I know this subject can bring up a lot of emotion: insecurity, guilt, frustration, anger, self-doubt to name a few. Especially as a woman myself, knowing that I don’t make as much money in my field as men in the same position or struggling to find brands that want to pay me what I’ve heard other influencers of my experience get paid is really disheartening. Just try to remain calm and negotiate your interests professionally and as peacefully as possible while also letting others know where you stand. In my experience, you get more flies with honey than vinegar, but there’s a fine line between being sweet and being soft. You can be persistent without being overly pushy, and you can be insistent without being confrontational. It’s something I’m still learning as a lifelong wallflower…

One final thing I will say is that once you know your worth and pursue it, you might find that the amount of offers you get goes down, at least initially. It’s kind of like dating in a sense. A lot of people (I’ve experienced, before my husband, lol!) won’t pursue others who are strong and confident because they know that they will be held to a standard of behavior. Sadly, and I’m speaking from experience, when you’re insecure or don’t know your worth, that’s when you’ll get a lot of pursuits because people know they most likely won’t be held to a standard of behavior. It might seem like you’re getting a lot, but it’s really just lower quality; it’s the path of least resistance and effort. But, if you know your worth and hold to that, you will find someone (whether that’s an employer, friend, life partner, etc.) who respects that and it will pay off more than any of those small pursuits before.

In life and in your career, knowing your worth will get you far. It’ll be tempting to take less, but stay strong in your insistence and one day you’ll achieve your goals.

Stay tuned for next month’s career tip for women in STEM and be sure you’re subscribed to my blog for all the engineering, fashion, and career content!

Xx Tabi