How To Get Paid What You're Worth

are you feeling undercompensated if so stick around and i will tell you how to get paid what you're worth hey everybody it's brian from the life after layoff and today i want to talk to you about the concept of compensation so if you feel like you're underpaid you've come to the right place i want to talk to you a little bit about from an hr perspective how we determine compensation and if you feel like you're underpaid what you should do about it and i'm a corporate recruiter and hr professional with over 20 years of experience working in some of the world's most well-known and well-respected companies so i know a thing or two about how we establish pay ranges and whether or not companies paid correctly so if this kind of content is of interest to you make sure you hit the subscribe button so in order to know if you're underpaid i think the first thing we need to discuss is how companies determine compensation to begin with so first let's peel back the curtain on compensation and let's take a look at from an hr perspective how how compensation ranges are determined so in most major corporations they are not determining wage ranges just out of the blue they're not pulling them from thin air and deciding we think that you're worth this really the first thing we start with is we look at what is the local market paying for similar type of roles and and so what we do is we actually in a lot of cases there's actually these um wage ranges that are wage surveys that will go out from industry um industry groups that will they'll survey an entire area and sometimes i'll survey an entire the entire country but usually it's going to be pretty targeted to your local area and companies will participate in it so they may someone our our department will fill it out and send it in and all the different companies in our geographic region maybe our city or our region of the country will fill it out so we all use these compensation range survey data to basically determine whether or not we're going to be competitive with the market of where we're paying based on the size of company and a lot of different factors and industries and stuff like that play a part in it so that would be the first thing that we do is we take that data and then we look at it from a what is our compensation philosophy so each company really sits down and determines do they want to be a pay lagger or a pay leader and in some cases some companies may decide to be a pay lagger where they're going to be on the low end and that's just their strategy they expect typically you'd see a lot of turnover at these companies but that's something that they just kind of built into their business model and in some cases there are companies that just pay a lot and they want the best talent and they know that keeping that talent is is a better strategy for their particular business model so the company you really have to understand what kind of company you're working for are they a pay leader or they pay lagger and it's a very there's a very defined decision that's made amongst senior leadership as to what kind of compensation philosophy would have some companies might say hey we've got uh there's the market here is there's a a lot of jobs and there's not a lot of labor so we've got to pay a little bit more to attract the right people in some cases there might be a ton of labor and not a lot of good jobs and then they can be a little bit more selective also it's going to be be determined by cost of living so if you're living in new york city or the bay area obviously there's a lot more it's going to cost a lot more so you're going to see a lot higher wage ranges typically in higher higher cost of living areas so you would see that as well now we also look so once we take the wage ranges that people are paying and we have a pay philosophy from a company perspective then we look at internal equity so then we look and say okay we're gonna be a pay leader and we know that internal equity means what other positions that are similar to the position that you're going into what are we paying other people similar to you at similar levels at similar similar job grades and similar job titles and so typically you would want you wouldn't want to pay one person doing the same position 200 you know 200 000 for for the same role that somebody else might only be making a hundred thousand for so we look at internal equity and we kind of equalize things so that would be another reason so they so they would take a look at if you were coming into the organization they would say okay this position based on uh what other people are making in this organization at the similar level and what the market suggests we should be paying that's gonna basically create salary bands so companies typically will have salary bands and they'll be a low amid and a high there'll be basically three different points and you'll be able to move in and out of that of that band most companies are trying to target getting people to the middle point of the band and typically it'll incentivize you to move from the from the bottom to the middle pretty quickly through merit increases or in some cases some larger companies might have a pay philosophy where they'll give you bonuses or whatever to get you to the midpoint and then as you get past the midpoint and you head to the top end of the range typically it slows down quite a bit because they they still want to be able to give employees a raise so if you came in at the top end of your range right so say we gave you a range goes from eighty thousand to a hundred thousand dollars a year and you came in at ninety nine thousand now you're probably not going to get much of a raise for the foreseeable future unless you move out of that band and into an enriched role and so from a turnover perspective i mean if you come into a new organization and you spend the next three or four years there and you're never getting a merit increase you know generally speaking you're not going to be too happy with that even though you came at the top end of their band and so that's something to consider when you are applying for positions that are actually kind of below where you would target normally so if you got laid off and you are taking any job and you find yourself in a lower level position than you used to be in that's one of the dangers of that and that's one of the reasons why companies kind of avoid people that are over qualified in that regard because they know it's going to be a merit issue a merit increase issue and in general some some industries are going to pay more than others so when you look at like for example not for profit typically pays less than a for-profit organization so almost every case a for-profit organization is going to have a healthier compensation structure now you know there's a trade-off there with a not-for-profit there might be some altruistic reason why you would want to work there versus for a for-profit organization um but then that you have to really kind of put with what does that what's that price tag worth to me so there's a trade-off there things like hospitality retail medical the medical industry those industries tend to pay lower than other industries so industries that typically pay well you like like tech pays well if you work for big big internet or big tech they're usually one of the highest paying manufacturing is going to pay high typically and usually like engineering oil and gas some of the more kind of gritty ones and more technical oriented ones you would typically find higher wage ranges there those are the really the factors you know the industry internal equity pay strategy and then what the internal what wage range market wage ranges there are so i think in order to understand if you're underpaid or overpaid or should say underpaid we really need to look look at that first and that's kind of why or how companies determine their wage ranges now it goes without saying if you are interested in getting paid the most you should focus on a a career that pays well so i mean if you're going to go into an administrative type of position don't expect to get paid what a computer engineer is going to be making because they're two totally different things so you want to ideally be choosing an industry and a career path that is going to allow you to hit the wage range that you want so that's going to be the first thing secondly you also should be targeting industries that are going to be competitive so focusing on some of the ones that i just referred to you know you kind of extrapolate out if you really feel like you want to pursue not for profit you have to understand that you're not going to get paid the same amount so you know if that's something that's really important to you then there's going to be a trade-off in your career so something to think about there so if you are in say you're an accountant and you're working for not-for-profit you know there is a one thing that you can do is try to get into one of those industries still being an accountant if you don't want to trade change into being an engineer or something like that try to get into an organization or an industry that is going to be a higher paying a higher paying industry if you can now i wouldn't suggest pigeonholing yourself into something if the area that you're in just doesn't have a lot of that just know that if you ever get laid off or the company goes through a rough patch you could be kind of pigeonholed into a certain type of industry which might be harder for you to get out of and i'll talk about that in another video but that is a whole other kind of ball of wax something to consider but if you are interested in making the most amount of money in your career doing what you're already trained to do industry is going to play a big part in it so try to pivot into an industry that's going to get you that higher wage range so these the second thing that i would suggest really is know what the industry around you is paying what what the market is paying just like a company does they go off and they look at local market wage ranges and they kind of collect data and they they make educated decisions on what they want to pay you can actually do the same thing as a job seeker you can go on to sites like glassdoor you can go onto salary.com is another one you can even go on to some cases there will be like linkedin and indeed we'll maybe give you suggested job ranges i would use those with a grain of salt though because uh being a recruiter myself i'm seeing what they suggest as wage ranges for companies that i know the positions that i'm recruiting they're almost never correct and they're usually way off so um i wouldn't necessarily use that as a strong data point but if you see kind of a ballpark that's usually the average for that local zip code or area that you're in you can kind of use that as an extra data point as well the best thing to do though i think is to go into glassdoor especially for large well-established companies that have a lot of reviews check those out and i would say don't look at total comp but i would focus just on the base salary because total comp could could be a very drastically different from position to position just depending on the individual circumstance of the person that were self-reported but it is based on self-reporting so if you get 50 people that are self-reporting as an accountant for xyz company they made this range that's a pretty good data point actually so i would i would use that as a pretty decent estimate for what other companies and so go around your local area in the in the town that you live in or in the city that you live in look at the major corporations that are in that area and just just get an idea of what they're paying and you can kind of get a flavor a big company versus a small company is going to be another thing so when you look at large organizations i think i had a video right before this one that talks about whether i should work you should work for a large or a small corporation that's something to think about if you work for a small corporation they are just not going to have as many uh resources behind them for a compensation strategy so they have to get creative in other ways to attract talent and keep talent and like it or not uh those of us that are working in bigger companies we kind of go in and poach from those little companies because we know we can outbid them and that's just kind of how it is so knowing that you know knowing that the big company is in almost every case is going to have a much healthier wage range that's another thing to consider if you want to work for a big company it's kind of a whole other thing check out that other video i think i'll leave a link above for that one that's kind of what i would do as far as how to figure out where you are comped at versus the market because if you think that you're underpaid but the reality is that you're not you know you want to make sure that if you're going to go and do something drastic you need to make sure that you got some data to support your position so if you just feel like you're worth more but you don't have any data to back it up you know that's this is the whole point of this video is to kind of give you an educated data not just get you all riled up and say yeah i'm underpaid and i'm gonna get my torch out and i'm gonna march on hr and i'm gonna tell them that i need more money you know in general that's not generally a good strategy so use this data and and come up with some education on it before you go and make any drastic decisions so maybe you find out that you're underpaid if you are in the same company for a long period of time you are probably going to get passed by on the open market and if you check on my video i think it's a why study jobs bad for your career if you look for that video that'll explain this in a lot more detail but essentially what i say in that video is that people who stay in the same job for a long period of time so you're staying in a position for 8 10 12 13 14 years you are going to inevitably be passed by by the open market and so i know it kind of sounds like hey wait a minute i'm supposed to be rewarded by a long tenure but it actually comes back to bite you and bite you pretty hard in your career if you have stayed the same especially for a smaller company if you came out of college and you started into a company and you worked there for a long period of time uh inevitably the new people that i'm hiring after you even three four five years later are going to be coming in at the same or even higher wage range than you and it just is what it is because the market continues to shift you want to make sure that you are making yourself as marketable as possible and the best way to make yourself marketable is to come up or develop a skill that is unique and in demand and i can't tell you what that skill might be for your industry but it depends on really the type of role that you're in but look at what what are employers demanding you know uh it could be is it a getting a six sigma uh black belt i know that people who have black belts tend to have more opportunities than people that don't if you are in a technical role getting a certain type of programming language that maybe not everybody has that's very that's more niched it's harder to get you know focus on those hard to get skills if you're just doing what everybody else is doing you're not differentiating yourself and you're not making yourself unique and then inevitably you're just going to be part of kind of the pack that most of their career and there's nothing wrong with that but if you're looking for top dollar you need to give yourself a marketable skill that is unique okay you can't be doing what everybody else is doing and expect to be paid the most okay so that's that's the other thing and then if you get really get to the point where you are frustrated with your situation you know and you really realize that you have you've good performance you have developed those skills and you are to the point where you know that you're being underpaid then you need to go into your hr department and say hey listen based on this data set and then back it up with facts so you have local market wage surveys you have other opportunities that are potentially out there you have your performance to back it up and you have unique skill sets and you know and ask for the raise if you do that though be prepared that they might say okay bye and so you need to be prepared to have an updated resume and you better be prepared to you know hit the ground running if you do that so um again check out that five day boot camp because i actually talk about how to create a winning resume that's gonna get noticed by recruiters and we'll get you through the process as quickly as possible to land that best possible position so if you go in trying to get trying to ask for a raise and your your company's not receptive to it you could potentially put yourself on the radar screen for not being satisfied and honestly that might not be a bad thing because sometimes you need to be kind of pushed out of the nest so the kind of the last thing that i would suggest is if you've gone and done all these things and you really find yourself at the an impasse and you are not satisfied with where you are and the market's passing you by because you've been there and you've been paying your dues and maybe you've gotten passed by for promotion or whatever you know you need to make a hard decision and you know that's when your network comes into play that's when you know administering all the tools that i talk about in my training courses you know that's when all that stuff really starts to become real important and that's when you apply it so there is a lot of information here i i know that this is probably um when you look at how do you get positioned to get the highest wage ranges for your job type you know it does take some strategy it's kind of like a chess game you know take careful planning and make proactive steps but back up anything that you have with facts we companies like to have data to support it so if you come in with loaded with data and your company's reasonable they're going to look at it and say hey you know they actually have a point um we probably are underpaying under comping and if you're a valuable contributor to the team you know you might may find yourself with a raise so if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment i usually do try to check them and i will be happy to try to make a future video about some of the con maybe some of the questions that you might have otherwise appreciate you dropping by today make sure you hit the like button people it helps other people find the content that they're looking for and we will see you on the next one

Channel: A Life After Layoff

Views: 40,595

Rating: 4.9480519 out of 5

Keywords: get paid what you're worth, underpaid at work, asking for a raise, asking for a raise at work, get paid what you are worth, get paid what you’re worth, get paid what youre worth, high paying industries, how to ask for a raise when you are underpaid, how to find your dream job, how to get paid more, how to get paid more at work, how to make more money, how to negotiate your salary, pay raise, what to do about being underpaid, career growth tips, how to get paid what your worth

Id: FfKebwUEOCc

Length: 17min 20sec (1040 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 09 2021