In the first grade, I wore cat eyeglasses and an eye patch, had chipped buckteeth and a pixie haircut with cowlicks. And in the first grade, I wanted to model when I grew up. Buckteeth and an eye patch, and I was certain Vogue Covers were in my future! Sorry, I have no pictures of me with the eye patch; my mother would not allow it. Yet, had a Vogue Cover ever happen, I’m pretty sure luck would have been the reason, not my six-year-old self’s confidence. Or should I say delusions?

Women often attribute their success to luck and so do others. Sure luck plays into all of our lives. As Oprah says, “I believe luck is preparation meeting opportunity. If you hadn’t been prepared when the opportunity came along, you wouldn’t have been ‘lucky.'” She’s not the first to have this opinion. The philosopher Seneca is attributed with originating it. Yet somehow, many women forget that preparation part of luck.

Perhaps one of the reasons some people credit luck instead of their ability and preparation is because they know about their missteps along the way. The stories are pretty common: the entrepreneur who opened three businesses before the fourth one succeeds; the start-up that triumphs with its third product, not it’s first; and Oscar winners who went to hundreds of auditions before getting the first small bit part. In a recent study on corporate innovation the “only thing that correlated definitively with consistently successful innovation was the amount of times a company tried.” That’s a nice way of saying the successful innovative companies fail multiple times for each achievement.

“Won’t employers expect the same if I put specific results on my resume? I don’t know if I will be that lucky again.” I paused for a moment the first time I heard a client say such a thing. By now, I’m used to it. I hear versions of this all the time.   The problem is that employers hire known entities. You can establish yourself as known by giving specific examples of results. Sure, future employers will expect you to accomplish similar results for them. They really don’t care if you luck into them; white knuckle your way to them; or calmly and steadily progress to them. Employers want results and candidates need to sell they can bring results. So if luck is keeping you from owning your achievements then luck is also keeping you from progressing in your career.   Try letting education, training, ability, experience, talent, and determination join luck as reasons you triumphed. That mindset will help you succeed even more.

Showing financial impact is the best way to get a raise from your current employer and a high first offer and ultimately an even higher final offer from your next employer. If you are like many working women, you probably don’t think you have much financial impact making it hard to get higher pay.   My advice to you – Think Recommendations and Decisions, Not Reports.

I can’t remember the last client who did not have a least one line on her resume about the amazing reports she created. They were sexy. They had pivoting charts. They were 3-dimensional. People wept when they read them. Unless you are an administrative assistant, report specialist, or report designer the inclusion of them on the resume lessens the value of your work. Oh, I know, reports take time. It takes time to pull all the data together. It takes time to organize them in a meaningful manner. It takes time to design them so the important information stands out. What would a business meeting be with a report or PowerPoint presentation to mull over? How dare I say reports are not important!

The thing is that it is not the creation of the report that is meaningful. It is either the recommendation you make to the people who see the report or the decision you make based on the information in your report that is important. For example here’s a line from one client’s resume:

“Created tracking & reporting tools to measure progress, improve budget accuracy and aid forecasting.”

I asked her about the decisions based on these reports.   For one project this report saved 3 months work. Three months of payroll. Three additional months of being able to sell the finished product. Her ability to make decisions that save three months are what people want to hire. The ability to save $X and generate an added $Y is what employers pay good money for. The new bullet point on her resume now looks more like this:

“Created a net increase of $W by eliminating 3 months in project time by consistently reviewing progress, budget, and forecasting metrics in my own proprietary reporting tool.”

A similar example is:

“Conducted cost benefit analysis, modeled long-term costs, presented data for Executive review.”

When we were done discussing it became:

“Proposed $X in savings to the Executive team based on cost benefit analysis and modeled long-term costs.”

Good recommendations and decisions are made based on information. The collection of the information is not the end result. It would be like a great chef listing that she can shop for good ingredients. That she can tell when a tomato is ripe. A good chef boasts about her signature dishes, her Zagat’s ratings, and her Michelin star ratings.   It’s not the collection of ingredients that is important. It is what she does with them – the finished dishes – that are important. In business the finished dishes are your decisions and your recommendations. So stop flaunting that you know how to grocery shop and start getting your future employers hungry to hire you for top dollar by telling what you make – amazingly good and profitable decisions.

The end-of-year bonus will be here before you know it. Some companies have a written-in-stone procedure to determine bonuses such as using a factor of the employee’s salary and the company’s profit to formulate a bonus.   Many other (often smaller) companies use a more seat-of-your-pants process. It may be each manager is given an amount to split amongst the department as s/he sees fits.

Regardless how the bonus is determined, now is the time to remind management of your impact this year. The people who do this will be top of mind for managers while those who do not will be seen as being okay with whatever is given them. Really, do you want to be okay with just any ol’ thing?   Even if you think your manager has no say, it is worth having a bonus conversation. It is a good reminder for raises, promotions, and not to be on the next round of lay offs list if it doesn’t impact bonus.

Remind yourself of the work you have done before popping in on your manager. Your impact on revenue and costs are the best arguments for additional money. Employees tend to think in terms of their actions when discussing work, i.e. “I managed the Smith project.” Try figuring out what the Smith project generated or saved the company and talk about that instead. Let’s face it; money is the fuel of all organizations including non-profits. When you show that you know how you are creating more fuel then you have a much better shot at getting more money (fuel for your household). Did you complete the project on time or even early? Did you bring the project under budget? Can you compare this to other projects managed by other people? When all was completed would the project itself bring in more money for the company or save money? Most likely the project would not exist if it did neither of these things.

Don’t worry if you are not management. Each employee is considered a revenue generator or cost center. Take a great waitress. What makes her better than the other wait staff is that she is brining in more money each shift. She probably is doing this by pushing higher end liquor and turning her tables over quicker in the friendliest of manners. Don’t talk about turning the tables over. Talk about the average revenue per shift. Here is a sample of things to consider for different types of employees:

• The money saved in vendor contracts that you negotiated to lower rates
• The money saved in your widget redesign that takes less time or material to produce
• The increase in revenue based on the customer service improvement you implemented resulting in a higher percentage of return customers

The list can go on and on depending on the type of work you do. As the saying goes “follow the money” and you will figure out your financial impact.

Once you know your impact it is time to pop in on management. Notice I refer to it as popping in. You don’t want to make this a big deal. It truly is a quick touch base. You state your case and leave. You are not waiting for a more meaningful response from your supervisor than “I’ll take it into consideration.” So, what do you say to start the conversation?

You: Hi, boss. I know the end of the year and bonuses will soon be here. Just a reminder, I saved our company $X by doing Y and made the company an additional $Z by doing Q which is why I believe I deserve the high end for bonuses this year. Do you agree?

From there you and your boss are having a conversation. It may be very brief or it may open up a longer conversation.  Regardless, the fact that you had this conversation just gave you a better shot at more money come bonus time.

“The most you should expect is an increase in pay of 25%. That’s the max and it’s pretty standard.” said a headhunter to a woman looking to leave a company that was notorious for underpaying their employees. An increase of 25% would not even get her to what she should have been making at her current job. Accepting a new job at 25% increase would keep her pay far under the current going rate for her next job.

As the headhunter explained, “you can’t expect your new employer to pay for the sins of your former employer.”   No one was asking this yet it seems to be a common rallying call. How is paying the current market rate for a job an extra burden to an employer? It is not.

Yet, she was not asking for the new employer to go back in time a la the Delorean with a flux capacitor in Back to the Future and pay her the 30% under market she was making for 3 years. That money was lost. Somehow, though getting pay at the current going rate for a job would be a penalty for the new employer since the standard is to add 10% – 25% of a person’s previous pay regardless of where it lands you in the market.

This is the embedded discrimination that lives under the guise of a hiring best practice. Once a person accepts a job for low pay whether discriminatory or not that person is forever punished.  I argue that the continuation of under payment is a form of discrimination. Luckily, I don’t have to make this argument on my own. The courts agree. Specifically in the Glen v. General Motors (11^th Circuit) ruling the court found that previous pay is not a legitimate business reason to have pay disparity.

According to data from the US Dept. of Labor, women and people of color make less than white men. Women working full-time typically earn 23% less than men working full-time. African American men typically are paid 22% less than white men. Latino men typically make 28% less than white men. The maximum of 25% increase for changing jobs in all cases keep these demographics from earning the market value of the new job.

As a new employer you may couch it as not paying for the sins of former employers but by using past pay and limiting future pay to a certain percentage increase then you, the new employers, are actually piling on to the sins of former employers.