This millennial job-hopped every 6 months to $90K by the time she was 23—she left it all behind to become a salary negotiation guru
· Fortune
Most workers have no idea whether they’re underpaid. Companies rarely volunteer salary information, coworkers often avoid uncomfortable comparisons, and negotiating in the dark can leave thousands of dollars on the table.
Content creator Hannah Williams knows that firsthand. After realizing pay secrecy had limited her own earning potential, she built a social media brand dedicated to pulling back the curtain on what people really make.
Visit palladian.co.za for more information.
The 29-year-old is the creator and host of Salary Transparent Street: a digital media brand fighting the taboo of talking about money. Her 1 million Instagram followers and 1.5 million TikTok fans tune in to watch her on-the-street content, where everyday workers are asked about what they do and how much they make. STS’s audience gets an inside peek into the salaries of every job under the sun, from photographers and research assistants, to models and elementary school teachers. Williams has been breaking open the conversation gatekept by social norms that treat discussing pay as impolite. And the inspiration came from her own experience trying to get what she’s worth.
Right after Williams graduated from Georgetown University in 2019, she hit the ground running to grow her resume—and paycheck. She employed the time-tested strategy of job hopping, spending two months at a sales effectiveness firm in Arlington, Virginia before taking a junior data analyst role at Artlin Consulting. Eight months later, she moved onto a data scientist job at consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton, before switching to a senior data analyst role at Avantus Federal. By her fourth job in less than two years, Williams was earning $90,000 a year—and at 23, she felt like she’d made it.
But the salary lost its lustre when recruiters began offering her $25,000 more for the same exact title. Knowing what she could be making, Williams attempted to negotiate with her employer—prepped with the metrics to back up her success—but was met with a rude awakening.
“I was so innocent and naive to think, ‘Oh yeah, I’ll just show them the numbers and they’ll give me the raise, no problem,’” Williams tells Fortune. “That’s not how it works. I learned the hard way.”
At the time, Williams was oblivious to some salary negotiation realities. The company argued that since she had been there less than a year, she didn’t qualify for the raise. Plus, the extra $15,000 that she requested amounted to a near-17% increase, but her employer only dolled out 3% to 5% at a time. Williams did the math, and realized it would take her years to catch up to what she could be earning elsewhere. So she went back on the job hunt, and took one last full-time job before being pulled into entrepreneurial stardom.
Ditching her 9-to-5 for good to become a salary transparency guru
The inspiration for her media empire came during Williams’ final job hunt.
During one of her interview rounds, the senior data analyst was asked the routine question about salary expectations. But this time, she flipped the script on the recruiter, and answered by asking what the role’s budget looked like. She was told it could pay a salary of $115,000, which was $10,000 higher than what she was gearing up to negotiate for. Williams accepted the offer, and embarked on her final full-time stint as a senior data analyst for government contractor Cathexis.
It was a validating career win. But even though she was finally making a fair wage for her title, Williams couldn’t ignore the nagging feeling that countless others were unknowingly being underpaid. Hoping to demystify pay and help workers advocate their own financial success, she posted a TikTok breaking down her earnings with radical transparency—and it quickly went viral. After seven months in her data analyst role, she ditched the corporate world to take her content creation business full-time.
“In that moment I realized without this transparency, I would have left $10,000 on the table,” Williams says. “All these experiences led to me having this idea: let me go out on the street and ask people how much they make. Maybe a couple people will see it and realize, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that was out there, I didn’t know I could make that,’…And I’ve been doing it ever since.”
Salary Transparent Street has evolved from a side hustle into a full-fledged media business. Williams has published hundreds of salary interviews, and her videos routinely rack up millions of views while fueling conversations about wage gaps, negotiation, and career mobility.
The salary guru’s advice for workers to get paid what they’re worth
Throughout her own experience and the hundreds of videos she’s created, Williams has picked up on a few key tricks to getting the best pay. Most commonly, the biggest mistake that workers make is accepting an offer before knowing what the job is actually worth, she says. After her own experience trying—and failing—to negotiate a significant raise, she realized it’s far easier to negotiate a strong starting salary than striving to make up for it later.
“You have to make sure you’re well compensated when you start at the company,” Williams advises. “It’s way harder to catch up.” And that dynamic also helps explain persistent pay gaps, since employees who begin their careers underpaid often struggle to close the gap through annual raises alone.
Before signing an offer, Williams also advises workers to do extensive market research and understand the company’s pay range and benefits. She also advises workers to negotiate before accepting an offer—even if it feels uncomfortable. That last-ditch effort could mean the difference of thousands of dollars, since most employers don’t consider meaningful raises for newbie employees.
And for those seeking a raise, Williams says strategy and timing matter just as much as performance. Rather than surprising a manager with a compensation request, she recommends scheduling a dedicated conversation in advance so both sides can prepare. And don’t wait until the end of the year, she adds, when most compensation budgets have already been allocated.
“Timing is everything,” Williams says. “Approach your manager first, explain that you want to talk about your compensation, and find time for that meeting.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com