Step 11 of 21: How to Research Salaries to Prepare for Salary Negotiations

In Step 11 of the "Mastering Your Job Search" series, we delve into the critical process of researching salaries for your target roles. Understanding salary information is not only vital for making informed decisions about job opportunities but also plays a significant role in preparing for successful negotiations.

Important Links:
• How Much to Ask For If a Job Description Has a Salary Range: https://bit.ly/44Ocmk9
• 4 Reasons Job Postings Don't List Salary, and What to Do: https://bit.ly/3QlSq3G
• Successfully Answering "What Is Your Desired Salary?": https://bit.ly/43YCeZq
• FlexJobs Webinar: How to Get the Salary You Deserve: https://youtu.be/1vx4B5JCx1A

FlexJobs is a subscription service for job seekers that features flexible and remote jobs. With an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau and a 4.7 rating from over 10,000 reviews, FlexJobs ensures that customers have a safe and positive remote job searching experience - without the ads, scams and junk found on other job sites.

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Transcript

Welcome to step 11! A crucial part of any job search is the process of researching salaries for your target roles. For this step, we’ll dive into how to conduct this research so that you can not only be informed about salaries within targeted industries and organizations, but also be prepared when it’s time to negotiate.

Many job seekers have noticed an upward trend in the number of job postings without salary and benefits details and this can understandably be a source of frustration for applicants, especially since the application process has become much more involved in recent years. A position that clearly posts a salary range can save a job seeker a great deal of time and effort. So why do employers choose not to list salaries?

1. Employers today have found it’s not necessary to list salary: During the Great Recession in 2007 through 2009, HR departments became inundated with job applications. It was at this time that employers found they no longer had to include salary information to attract high-quality applicants. Even though time has passed since then, many companies continued this trend, opting to list that the salary depends on experience, meaning that an employer will tailor its salary and benefits based on what a given candidate brings to the table.

2. Withholding salary information gives employers more negotiating power. Employers may choose to find out more information about the candidate before they reveal income details and at times can adjust salaries based on the location of the candidate. For example, companies with a remote workforce may be able to pay employees living in rural areas a lower wage due to a lower cost of living than in an expensive metropolitan area. This information can factor into an employer’s salary offer and when it comes to remote jobs, location is often used to establish a salary. To calculate an estimate of what salary range may be, conduct your salary research using three locations: your location, the company’s headquarters location, and a country-wide search. With these three locations, you’ll gather a broad range of your potential salary.

3. Employers are careful to avoid competition between current and new employees. In a perfect world, all employees doing the same job would make the same amount of money. Realistically, however, each employee brings individual skills and experiences to a job that makes them more or less valuable in terms of salary. The amount of money an individual is willing to settle for and their location are also factors that influence compensation.

4. Employers want to avoid competition between other companies within the industry for the pool of qualified candidates. In today’s market, companies also don’t want to advertise their compensation packages because it makes them more vulnerable to their competition. Competing organizations could use salary information to win over candidates.

Equipped with this knowledge it’s time to begin the crucial task of learning about the company and the average pay for the job. One of the best ways to do this is to use salary calculators to find salary ranges for the various jobs you are researching. At times, you may have to search for similar alternate job titles if the specific job you’re applying to isn’t coming up in the results.

There are several different calculators and each one may produce a different range because they pull from different data, so we recommend trying a variety to get a full picture of your potential salary or hourly rates.

Some of the salary calculators that we recommend are 

• Glassdoor which provides specified salaries for companies and utilizes data reported by employees.
• Payscale and Salary.com which all use averages and ranges and pull data from employer surveys.
• And, CareerOneStop Salary Finder which is a Department of Labor website and provides salary ranges in hourly and annual pay.

Salary research is not only an important part of your consideration of a position, but also a great preparation for an interview, as we’ll talk about next time.