Tweet

6 Tips for Determining a Fair Hiring Salary: How Much Do They Get Paid?

Guest post by: Dianne Shaddock

Article Overview: Determining an employee’s salary is vital to a company. But in doing so, managers should also think of the welfare of the employees as well. Here are some tips for managers in determining salary.

6 Tips for Determining a Fair Hiring Salary: How Much Do They Get Paid?

Some employers make salary offers based on what they can afford to pay a job candidate with no real thought as to what a competitive salary may be for the type of job that they are hiring for. Other employers may have flexibility to hire a job candidate at a reasonable salary, but in an effort to save money, will try to hire a job candidate at the lowest salary possible without regard to the candidate's salary expectations or work experience.

Most employers probably fall into the category of not having a clue as to how to even figure out what is a fair and reasonable salary.

After all, how do you determine what to pay your employee if you've never hired anyone, or if you don't know what a fair market salary might be for a particular job?

It's understandable that entrepreneurs or smaller organizations and businesses in general may not have a clear sense of how to even begin to think about salary.

Here are 6 tips for determining what should be a fair salary to offer a job candidate:

Tip #1: Research Your Competitors To See What They Are Paying

What are others in your industry paying staff for similar types of positions? Don't be shy about picking up the phone and calling a competitor who may have a job that is posted online or in the newspaper and ask what the salary range is! You'd be surprised at the information that you can get this way.

Tip #2: Go To The Websites Of Larger Companies In Your Area

Many of the larger companies have job posting websites where the salaries for open jobs are listed on the site. Local Want Ads in newspapers are also a good source for salary information.

Tip #3: Perform A Local Or Regional Search Of Available Jobs

Job posting websites such as Monster.com or Career Builder.com feature companies that list salary ranges with their job postings. Go to these websites to see what other companies are paying.

Tip# 4: Use Free Salary Comparison Tools

Find out what the average salaries are for your industry in your region. Salary.com can be helpful because it gives you the ability to search by job category or job title.

When searching on any job posting website or on Salary.com, remember to limit your search to a particular state or region. What might be considered a fair market salary for a job in one part of the country may actually pay much less or a whole lot more in another part of the country.

Tip #5: Research on sites like Craigslist.com

Craigslist.com is an extremely popular website that large and small companies use when looking for employees. Candidates also post their resumes on this site. Take a look at what the salary expectations are for applicants in your region as a way to measure salary expectations and average salaries.

Tip #6: Just Ask Your Job Applicants!

Job seekers in general are very aware of what the market will pay for their particular skill set. If you are phone screening several candidates in the way that I recommend in Episode 3 "How To Phone Screen Job Candidates", you can ask your applicant what their salary requirements are.

You‘ll find that a general theme will emerge. Most applicants with similar years of experience will have salaries that will fall within a particular range. You can use the data from the phone screens and compare it with data that you find using the tips that I mentioned earlier.

To your success!

Related Articles
  10 Ways for Managers to Prepare for Interviewing a Job Candidate
  Cut My Pay? No Way. Yes, Way.
  Sales Force Compensation - X Marks the Spot
  Should You Hire Family Members?
  Importance of Salary Survey for the Employee and Employer
  Small businesses turning to contractors
  Save (UK) tax and national insurance with your limited company
  The Salary Negotiation Dance During a Job Interview
  Assessing the Need for a Training Consultant
  Q What sort of bonuses should we pay
  20 Recruiting Tips to Help Prepare for the Rebounding Economy
  Getting Re-Hired By The Company That Laid You Off
  The Fair Labor Standards Act: What You Need to know
  Top Ten Tips for Negotiating a Job Offer
  Are Your Pay Plans “Pay Scams”
  7 mistakes, and 7 keys to successful entreprneuership.
  Beware the salary sacrifice trap
  Amendments to Small Business Protections under the Trade Practices Act
  Just Like People, No Job Offer Is Perfect
  The Biggest Obstacles I Had To Overcome

Article Tags: fair hiring in small businesses, hiring tips for managers, How to determine fair salary, management best practices, management tips for managers



Related Forum Posts
Business Tips - How about: Tips for managers to handle employees more effectively? Tips on how to deal with difficult customers? Tips on how to deal more effectively with suppliers? The only three I have in mind right now, but will try to come up with something else. Chris
Re: looking for experienced affiliate feedback - Hi Nancy, Hiring an experienced firm to market and sell your products is certainly a viable option. It all depends on whether you want to spend more of your time or money. Hiring a firm is going to cost a good bit I imagine. On the flip side, to do most of the work yourself and attract affiliates to sell your products for you will require much less money but a lot more time and effort. Do you have a budget to work within? Or perhaps maybe you have a loan to get things moving?
Re: Search Engine Optimization - Hi Thomas, So what would you recommend? Hiring an SEO expert or simply trying your hand at doing it yourself?
Re: Has anyone used Spyfu.com? - I have also used Spyfu. It's good to find out what kind of strategy your competitor's are following in Organic and Paid SEO. We can also find out the list of organic keywords our competitors are working on along with their organic ranking in Google. It's really an interesting tool.
Re: For Gmail users... - I haven't used Outlook in 4 years at this stage and I looked at the Windows 7 version, it is a lot more user friendly. Fair dues Bill it only too 20 years to get right. I am so used to gmail at this stage for work and personal that I have no interest or need to change.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Do You Have An Entrepreneurial Vision?

Effective Leadership

If I Were Starting A Network Marketing Company...

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.