Negotiating Pay

General Discussion for SMART Scholarship Recipients
Tacos123

Negotiating Pay

Post by Tacos123 »

Hello everyone!

I'm just an undergrad rising into my senior year that received the award. The facility that sponsored me is about 1,000 miles away from me and has a low cost of living. My salary would be about 41K.

Would there be any room to negotiate a step increase? I've had more than a full year worth of engineering internships and I currently earn more hourly then I would at GS-7. Or maybe even a relocation reimbursement?

kbl2017
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Re: Negotiating Pay

Post by kbl2017 »

You should be able to negotiate the step you are within the grade under normal circumstances. Another possibility is negotiating the ladder. Maybe you should reach out to you SF at the end of your site visit or even call them now. I bet they'd be able to explain the process and if its possible for a SMART scholar.

LOL_DOD_Quizzes

Re: Negotiating Pay

Post by LOL_DOD_Quizzes »

Tacos123 wrote:Hello everyone!

I'm just an undergrad rising into my senior year that received the award. The facility that sponsored me is about 1,000 miles away from me and has a low cost of living. My salary would be about 41K.

Would there be any room to negotiate a step increase? I've had more than a full year worth of engineering internships and I currently earn more hourly then I would at GS-7. Or maybe even a relocation reimbursement?
You can go look up the qualifications for GS increases in the OPM manual. Unfortunately you will find that engineering internships usually don't qualify for grade increases. GS-7 is the starting grade for a BS, but make sure you take into account the locality adjustment for your payrate.

You can attempt to negotiate a step increase as previously mentioned, but it will likely delay your start time which means you won't be earning money and your step increase will lose value for each pay period that passes.

The good news is that typically you have a 7-9-11 grade increase automatically. So that means after 1 year you should automatically get your 9 assuming you complete your required training. Similarly after another year you should get your 11. Some auto promote up to 12 or transfer you to a payband system after that.

Good luck

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