How I messed up: Salary research & negotiation disaster

Part 3 of the "How I messed up" series where I walk you through a mistake I made in detail ??

I think this issue (along with the previous issue) drives home the message of how important reading the job description carefully is. In Part 1 of the “How I messed up” series, my mistake was that I didn’t read the job description carefully enough. In part 2, I failed to tailor my resume to the job description.

The mistake I made this time was assuming that I wouldn’t be asked what my salary expectations were. It didn’t even occur to me. As a result, I didn’t look at what the pay range was for jobs like this one, and what the pay range was for the region I’m living in.

Regarding the first point: Now, I would ask ChatGPT or Gemini or other LLMs to see what kind of job titles they can come up with based on the job description, and what a reasonable pay range for those roles might be.

Regarding the second point: I’m from Japan. You might know that wages look abysmal there if you compare it to North American wages. But if you then take into account the inflation rate, the wages are somewhat comparable. Here was the problem: I brought my Japanese wage mindset to Canada. This meant that I was expecting to earn $20,000 for an entry-level job, which is like $10/hour (apparently the living wage in Canada was $19.62/hour at the time I applied for this role).

You might have sensed where this was going: at the interview, I was asked what my salary expectations were (after getting grilled. My confidence was pretty much gone by the time we got to this question). And I lowballed. HARD. I lowballed so hard that my interviewer must have taken mercy on me. Despite all the things I mentioned, I got the offer and the salary was decent. Miraculous, I know (I did cry a little after I got the offer). But remember how I misinterpreted the job description in the first place?

I wish the “How I messed up” series was a trilogy… there’s so much more.

Thank you for reading the 7th issue of “Career Mistakes to Avoid” and part 3 of the “How I messed up” series! Did you already know about salary negotiations before you interviewed for your first job? Did you not know? Feel free to let me know in the comments.

Also available on my Substack!