Are you being paid enough?
By Jane E. Fraser | smh.com.au | 05 February
Image: Steve Baccon
It's the information everyone wants to know: how much are other people being paid? It is a question that is particularly relevant when you have been with a company for a long time and may have missed out on the larger increases that tend to come with moving between organisations.
Few executive job advertisements contain dollar figures, tending instead towards generalisations such as "generous remuneration" or "attractive salary package" and this can make it hard to determine if you are getting the market rate.
Recruiters and headhunters say they often get calls from senior executives wanting to know if their packages are in line with industry standards.
So how do you find out what you should be earning - or have the potential to earn?
A good starting point is the internet. The MyCareer website provides minimum, maximum and average salaries for a wide range of positions. The regularly updated figures are based on actual job listings and can be broken down by state and industry.
For example, banking and financial services can be broken down into 22 subcategories, from data entry to investment banking, and the subcategories can be further broken down by state, when data is available.
An analyst might earn $90,208 in NSW, compared with $85,990 in Victoria and $79,911 in Queensland.
MyCareer figures show the average Australian salary rose by about 7.5 per cent last year, yet executive salaries went up only 1.4 per cent.
Those who were self-employed fared best, increasing their incomes by more than 50 per cent from the first quarter of 2007 to the last quarter. Salaries in primary industry went up 22.5 per cent over the year.
Other sectors that recorded healthy salary increases include human resources and recruitment, education, construction and the legal profession.
Logistics, which is experiencing a skills shortage, was one of several industries that went backwards in terms of pay.
Recruitment firm Hays also conducts a salary survey each year. The survey is broken down by role and state, providing a picture of minimum, maximum and average salaries in a range of industries.
Barry Vienet, managing director of the Beilby Corporation, says the most accurate way to find out what you are worth is to apply for another job. However, you should only do this when you have a genuine intention of finding a new position, as "tyre kickers" are very quickly identified by experienced recruiters.
If you are not quite ready to make your next move, Vienet says you can get some idea of pay rates by monitoring job advertisements, as some do include salary indicators or brackets, or checking salary surveys.
Other people come across salary benchmarks through other means - sometimes without even looking.
"It wasn't until I started getting calls from headhunters that I realised how badly I was being paid," says an executive in the business services sector, who asks not to be named.
"The jobs I was being offered were about 50 per cent more than what I was being paid, so I waited for the right job and added a hundred grand to my salary overnight."
Another executive says he began to realise his pay was not in line with industry standards when people he was interviewing for more junior positions were asking for salaries comparable with his own.
"I was getting 30-year-olds coming in and telling me they were already earning more than what we were offering," the 44-year-old says. "I used that information to negotiate a better package for myself."
First published by Smh.com.au on February 05 2008
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