In today’s IT jobs market, it is important to know how much your IT job is worth. You don’t have to be looking for a new IT job, seeking promotion to understand your value. It’s just good to know. In this blog we will explore a few ways to calculate what your IT job is worth to the market and to the company you work for.
Perhaps the easiest way to find out what you are worth is to pick up the phone and ask a Recruiter. What Recruiter, well there are plenty of us on LinkedIn, just find a specialist and connect on LinkedIn and seek a call.
While salary conversations can be awkward with your manager. They are normal with a Recruiter. One of the greatest skills you can have been negotiating and understanding the value of your work.
If I am advertising for a specific job, I will get many messages asking what the role pays. In some cases, it will be on the job advert. So simply looking at job adverts will also give you a guide. But the conversation with a Recruiter is a good place to start. Who knows the job might sounds good!
Knowing your market rate in the IT jobs market would be point number 1.
Secondly, know your metrics.
What does that mean? (You might ask yourself) – Well its simply what are you worth to your business/employer. A few questions to ask yourself include:
- What impact do you have within the business?
- If you leave tomorrow, what is likely to happen?
- How does your job impact the business, product and bottom line?
If your job is a revenue driver, or a cost saving role. Understand those figures and keep track of them. In sales its easy to do that, you know the revenue you bring in etc. Likewise, if you save money, its clear what those figures are.
It’s not always that easy. For example, if you work in an administrative role, or customer service role. Both will be critical to the business, but harder to understand your true value. Measuring the market via salary surveys etc is perhaps the best starting point. Remember, your experience and current impact needs to be taken into consideration. If you handle 20% more then your colleagues or office average, should your payment be 20% higher. Perhaps not, but it does mean you excel at your role. Use that to your advantage to seek promotional opportunities.
When I managed teams within a sales environment, I always used a 4x matric, meaning each individual should be earning at least 4 times their income in revenue. I used those figures to decide if an individual should warrant a pay increase or promotional opportunity or not.
If you take google for example. In Q3 of 2023, the average employee earned Google $426,403. The average salary in Google is $133,065. That equates to just over 3x. Depending on the stage of your career, this is a good place to start. Because Google is public its easy enough to find these details. You might need to be a little more creative with smaller employers.
Recently we undertook a block of work to assess the salaries in the Irish Job market, you can have a look at it on this link. If you compare your salary to the averages, again taking note of your career stage.
If you feel you are underpaid, do check our blog on the topic. It is always worth exploring your options in your current role before looking at the external market. By all means get in touch with a Recruiter or myself to discuss your options, salaries etc. But talk to your manager too. Unless of course you hate your manager, which a lot of folks do. If you do, its time to leave! Also, an interesting figure is, that on average it costs a company 60% of your salary to replace you.
Know your worth!
If you enjoyed this blog please do like and share our social media pages where we put our blogs out. If you would like to get in touch weather you are looking for a job or seeking talent. Please get in touch with us via our social media, email at robert@elwoodroberts.com or our contact us page here