Thursday, October 19, 2006

On salary confidentiality

An Anonymous comment I recieved on the blog stated:

Can I ask why so few of these sites make reference to salary, it is difficult to consider a role when you have no idea about the earning potential.
It is an interesting question-especially since the media goes overboard in carrying stories of ‘exceptional salaries’-and most of our acquaintances are experts in quoting who is getting paid how much!!

(As a recruiter who has access to the psyche of both the employers and the employees, let me share a secret. Both parties are equally anxious about getting the best deal :)! And yes, most often the market forces take care of both their interests…)

To a returning Indian, I would advice one to keep an open mind & just look at the role, the scope and the challenges it would provide –am sure the salary would automatically fall in place!

- designations differ among companies in the same industry and so often can be misnomers. ( A Vice President in an American company has more responsibility than a Director- while the opposite is true in most European/Indian companies!)

- roles in differing sizes of companies have different challenges

- each company has a compensation policy – pegged with its business operations and keeping in view the competition. ( Contrary to popular conception, Microsoft is not the greatest paymaster- One third of the industry pays higher!!)

- all companies would hence have a bandwidth within which they operate-essentially as there are already people in the system –and paid commensurately.

Believe me, no employer-after having spent enormous management time, engaged you in a series of discussions, and finding a role most suitable keeping the value add you bring to the table, would hate to antagonize an employee by ‘shortchanging' !! However confidential the salary figures are, it wouldn’t take any employer more than a few weeks to understand the same –and that’s a risk not many ‘service companies that revel on intellectual capital’ would like to take!

In that context, for those already employed in India-the typical salary jump one expects is 20-25% on the last drawn salary.

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