Salary info

jjdillie

My annual evalaution is coming up soon and I want to ask for a raise. My boss has said he's working on it but I doubt it will be what I really want/deserve. I am fairly certain that I am underpaid in my current position. My old job was eliminated so I made a parallel move 2 years ago. I haven't had a raise in 3-4 years. My question is how can I find out salary info for similar jobs in my area or industry?

Nechie122

You can check websites like Glassdoor although I take that data with a grain of salt. The professional association for your field likely publishes an annual salary survey that is probably a better bet.

mae0111

I've used salary.com, glassdoor.com, and payscale.com.  I found that it was nearly impossible to find a role that exactly matched mine, so I created a role using a combination of other roles.  My role is x% this, y% that, etc.  I put it all on a series of spreadsheets (Salary, bonus, and total comp) and showed ranges from 10-90%.  Last time I did this, I came in around the 7th percentile.  So it was clear I needed a bump, but the typical argument is that these numbers are inflated.  So I asked to be moved to the 60th percentile, which worked out to be a 30% raise.  I've done this 3 times, and I've ended up getting exactly what I asked for each time.  It was kind of hard to argue with the numbers... 

Karla CS

If you've got friends in the industry, I've always asked around. Salary, glassdoor, and payscale are all good resources also, but likely to be inflated and difficult to find a comparable position.

HarperK

Your situation sounds just like mine! I just did my salary research over the weekend in preparation for my review this week. I work in a very small industry, so I know who our (very few) direct competitors are, and I looked them up on Glassdoor.com, and also looked on their websites for job postings. I also used listservs in my industry -- a lot of hiring managers use them to find new hires, and they're more likely to add a salary range on a listserv job posting than on one that would be quickly indexed by Google, Indeed.com, etc. I came up with salary ranges and averages for jobs that had roughly the same tasks as my job. And then I came up with other jobs in my industry that were in my current salary range.

This part made me fairly ragey, but at least gave me some very good, clear talking points for my review. "You'll notice that the salary range for this job advertised as 'entry level' at Company X is actually higher than my current salary."

I had created a 2-page report for my review: the first page had the general responsibilities for my position, as well as key accomplishments since my last review. The second page had the salary comps. All of this was super effective. It's nice to have a paper in front of you to help center your talk and make your case. And with the numbers staring us hard in the face, my supervisor had no reason to say no. Plus, she then had to go and make my case to the board of directors, and the report helped her there, too. It was pretty clear to me that no one had thought much about my role in the company and how it had evolved -- they had just sort of taken for granted that I would always be there, be agreeable, and generally do good work.

Anyway, the result today was a 30% raise! I also negotiated for my own office!

BTW, on YouTube, I found some good videos when I searched for "asking for a raise" and "salary negotiation." Several of them were by Ramit Sethi, who wrote the book I Will Teach You To Be Rich. They had some great tips for keeping the upper hand and not becoming too adversarial during your review. I practiced some of the techniques and they helped me a lot.

Best of luck!