Salary Guides are For the Average

There are a number of salary guides available in the market. You can download them free from many sources. For examples are Kelly Service’s 2006 Salary Guide, JobsDB 2006 Salary Report and Jobstreet.com.

The salary report for Kelly and JobsDB are in PDF format, while Jobstreet has revamped their guide into a web-based application that allows you to find the figures in a few clicks. The figures are based on the real salaries of the job seekers registered with Jobstreet.com and with the growing number of users, most likely the Average Salary you will get is the most accurate you can get compared to other surveys.

Salary guides are helpful and will be able to provide you with useful information, especially when you want to know if you’re being underpaid or overpaid (being overpaid is good!). But at the risk of offending you, let me tell you that salary guides are for the average job seekers only. Why? Because if your salary expectation falls within the means of the survey, that means you will be getting the same amount like a bunch of others! Now doesn’t that tell you that you’re just an average worker?

The above average or the uber job seekers never want to put themselves in the same league. Because they are truly excellent in their field, they know they’re worth much more than the mean, the min, the max and the median of the statistic figures. Furthermore, they know salary market report is never an accurate judgment for individual or case-to-case basis because no 2 persons are the same, even though they are holding the same position in the same specialization.

The same works for the employers. If they want to attract the best talents in the market, they can’t just pay them the average salary. Well, they can, but pretty soon they will discover the position vacated faster than they can think of. Some other company with higher buying power come and sweep the star employee right from under their nose. So, in order for them to be competitive in their field, they must offer competitive salary package to the prospective employees. Better yet, offer a package which is off the curve of the graph, and way out of the range.

I have seen many cases that tell me that a company’s talent-attracting power contradicts the company’s ambition to become the leader in their niche. Recently, a multinational engineering company decided to cut RM500 off from the asking salary of a potential new engineer. The engineer was sticking to his demand and the negotiation stalled without much progress.

The candidate insisted on the initial asking salary because he was working with a direct competitor and also the position is in a very small and targeted niche. However, he was pretty much taken aback by the company’s response that ‘they are operating at very tight budget now.’ That put him off and in the end he pulled out from the negotiation. The company lost a truly potential engineer. And for that kind of position, it is not like it can be filled in a month or two. Perhaps, it will take them another half a year to fill the vacancy spot. Surely, they lost a lot more than the RM500 they bargained for.

Recently, when interviewed, Tony Fernandes, founder of Air Asia, told that during the early formative days of the company, he had to offer irresistible salary package in order to get local pilots working overseas to join Air Asia. Look what they have achieved today. And I bet many other pilots out there are raring to work with Air Asia now.

Many times, problems occur when the employers know how much the candidates are earning (Should you reveal your salary?). In the west and in the developed nations, the employers could care less about how much you are making when negotiating a job offer. In fact, they would not be bothered to ask about your salary and pay slip. What is important to them is if your salary expectation is worth the figure.

Back to the real issue, the next time you study the salary survey and salary report, don’t look within the range. Look beyond it, and look especially beyond the upper range salary. Aim for the stars. Be an extremist. Otherwise, you will remain as just another average job seeker.

Update: Kelly Services’ latest Salary Guide 2007 is available here. Thanks to my reader Nik Rozita for notifying!

Other posts you may want to read:

1. Malaysia Salary Guides Compared
2. Kelly Salary Guide 2008/2009
3. Good Salary Jump in IT and Oil and Gas Sectors
4. MEF Malaysia Salary Survey 2008
5. How To Negotiate Salary

Author's bio: Zul is the founder and principal contributor for the SKOR Career blog. He is the author of two books, The Malaysian Job Seeker's Dilemma and Buat Duit Tanpa Kerja Makan Gaji (How to Make Money Without a Job), available in major book stores nationwide. You can reach him at zulkiflimusa[at]gmail.com.