PINTIMIDATION: which Madeleine Albright pin should you wear to your salary negotiation?
Salary negotiations are stressful business, and if you’re anything like us at DA, you deal with stress by overthinking everything until you fall asleep watching reruns of Work of Art on your iPad. But I digress.
Overthinking is exhausting; being thoroughly and confidently prepared is the goal. When getting ready for a negotiation, we can’t overstate the importance of prepping your answers to key questions ahead of time, keeping a list of your significant assets as an employee, and calculating your goal salary, so that you know how much you can afford to compromise.
That being said, those things aren’t super fun. You know what things are fun? Accessories. Using personal style to send coded messages. Weaponizing jewelry. That’s where we come in.
We’re here to help you choose the perfect accessory for your next salary negotiation. And, because we also find research to be fun, we’re using Madeleine Albright’s browsable book Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat’s Jewel Box as a guide.
For the discerning reader, there are a number of useful takeaways from Read My Pins. Undoubtedly, the most disorienting is that, for years, there was a Wellesley-produced topless photo of Secretary Albright ensconced at Yale (why, history? WHY?). Most of the book, however, is about adding to an outfit, not stripping down.
Read My Pins showcases Albright’s notable brooches alongside relevant anecdotes from her personal history. The brooches run the gamut in both theme (chimeras, UFOs, shaman bears!) and monetary value; the thing that they all have in common is that Secretary Albright used them mindfully as wearable political statements.
And so can you! Take the quiz below to get started.
A note on images: the pictures used in this quiz are photographs we took of the images in Read My Pins. You can find more information about these brooches in the book.
Castle—LJ, Turkey | Dalmatian—Designer Unknown | Red Dress for Women’s Heart Health—National Institutes of Health, USA | Mushrooms—Mary Ehlers | Madam Secretary—Designer Unknown | Red Balloon & Green Balloon—Swarovski, Austria
Leopard Print Purse—AJM, USA | Eagle Cuff Links—Ann Hand, USA | High-Heeled Shoe—Designer Unknown | Cowgirl Hat—Ultra Craft, USA | Eyeglasses—Designer Unknown | Lips and Lipstick—Designer Unknown
Update April 25, 2017: Although Read My Pins lists the designer of Breaking the Glass Ceiling as unknown, some helpful pin aficionados on social media have pointed out that the pin appears to be the work of Vivian Shimoyama. After confirming the veracity of this information, we have updated the quiz to credit the artist.
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