Salary Research on the Internet
If you have access to the Internet, and you want to research salaries for particular geographical regions, positions, occupations, or industries, or even (sometimes) organizations, here are some free sites that may give you just what you’re looking for:
• http://jobstar.org/tools/salary/index.cfm: This site is a treasure trove. It links to 300 different sites that maintain salary lists, and joy, joy, it is kept updated. It’s one of the largest and most complete lists of salary reviews on the Web, maintained by a genius named Mary Ellen Mort.
• www.salary.com: The most visited of all the salary-specific jobsites, with a wide variety of information about salaries. It was started by Kent Plunkett, and acquired by Kenexa Corporation, in August 2010. It has expanded a lot, over the years, and has a multitude of resources.
• www.bls.gov/oco: The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ survey of salaries in individual occupations, from The Occupational Outlook Handbook 2010–2011.
• http://stats.bls.gov/oes/oes_emp.htm: The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ survey of salaries in individual industries (it’s a companion piece to The Occupational Outlook Handbook). This site is up-to-date as of December 2010.
• http://stats.bls.gov/opub/ooq/1999/fall/art02.pdf : If you Google “High Earning Workers Who Don’t Have a Bachelor’s Degree” because you want to know how to earn a lot without having to go to college first, you’ll find a bunch of references, but they’re all referring to one article written back in 1999, by Matthew Mariani at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So, if you want current figures, I think you’re out of luck. Nonetheless, you may want to browse this article anyway, to get some ideas about what kinds of jobs—at least of those available in 1999—pay better than most, if you didn’t ever go to or finish college.
• www.salaryexpert.com: When you need a salary expert, it makes sense to go to “the Salary Expert.” Lots of stuff on the subject of salaries here, including a free “Salary Report” for hundreds of job-titles, varying by area, skill level, and experience. Also has some salary calculators.
If you “strike out” on all the above sites, then you’re going to have to get a little more clever, and work a little harder, and pound the pavement, as I shall describe below.
Salary Research off the Internet
Offline, how do you go about doing salary research? Well, there’s a simple rule: generally speaking, abandon books, and go talk to people. Use books and libraries only as a second, or last, resort. Their information is often just way too outdated.
You can get much more complete and up-to-date information from people who are doing the kind of job you’re interested in, but at another company or organization. If you don’t know where to find them, talk to people at a nearby university or college who train such people, whatever their department may be. Teachers and professors will usually know what their graduates are making.
How to you research salaries at particular places? Let’s look at some concrete examples:
First Example: Working at your first entry-level job, say at a fast-food place. You may not need to do any salary research. They pay what they pay. You can walk in, ask for a job application, and interview with the manager. He or she will usually tell you the pay, outright. It’s usually set in concrete. But at least it’s easy to discover what the pay is. (Incidentally, filling out an application, or having an interview there, doesn’t force you to take the job—but you probably already know that. You can always decline an offer from any place. That’s what makes this approach harmless.)
Second Example: Working at a place where you can’t discover what the pay is, say, at a construction company. If that construction company where you would hope to get a job is difficult to research, go visit a different construction company in the same town—one that isn’t of much interest to you—and ask what they make there. Or, if you don’t know who to talk to there, fill out one of their applications, and talk to the hiring person about what kinds of jobs they have (or might have in the future), at which time prospective wages you would be paid, is a legitimate subject of discussion. Then, having done this research on a place you don’t care about, go back to the place that really interests you, and apply. You still don’t know exactly what they pay, but you do know what their competitor pays—which will usually be close to what you’re trying to find out.
Third Example: Working in a one-person office, say as an administrative assistant. Here you can often find useful salary information by perusing the Help Wanted ads in the local newspaper for a week or two, assuming you still have a local paper! Most of the ads won’t mention a salary figure, but a few may. Among those that do, note what the lowest salary offering is, and what the highest is, and see if the ad reveals any reasons for the difference. It’s interesting how much you can learn about administrative assistants’ salaries, with this approach. I know, because I was an administrative assistant myself, once upon a time.
There’s a lot you can find out by talking to people. But another way to do salary research—if you’re out of work and have time on your hands—is to find a Temporary Work Agency that places different kinds of workers, and let yourself be farmed out to various organizations: the more, the merrier. It’s relatively easy to do salary research when you’re inside a place. (Study what that place pays the agency, not what the agency pays you after they’ve taken their “cut.”) If you’re working temporarily at a place where the other workers like you, you’ll be able to ask questions about a lot of things, including salary.
THE FIFTH SECRET OF SALARY NEGOTIATION
RESEARCH THE RANGE THAT THE EMPLOYER LIKELY HAS IN MIND, AND THEN DEFINE AN INTERRELATED RANGE FOR YOURSELF, RELATIVE TO THE EMPLOYER’S RANGE
Before you go into any organization for your final interview, you want more than just one salary figure at your fingertips. You want a range: what’s the least the employer may offer you, and what’s the most the employer may be willing to offer you. In any organization that has more than five employees, that range is comparatively easy to figure out. It will be less than what the person who would be above you makes, and more than what the person who would be below you makes. Examples:
