Worried About Starting Salaries
Thinking about changing career? If you are you must be interested in what the starting salary in your new job is. You can find some information online. You will have to search your particular career, and remember that you also have to consider where you live. Jobs in the city will pay more. A comparable position in a less urban area will pay less, but this is relative to cost of living. Your starting salaries may be less than the ones of your peers in the city, but you are basically earning the same. They are making more money, but they have to pay out more for living expenses.
I know one of the most troubling thoughts I had when starting a new career was about starting salaries. Most of my college professors tried to give us advice to starting our careers, and many of them said that you have to know what you are worth. I was used to getting jobs that had a set salary and that was that. If you work hard, you would get a raise. This is true for some jobs, but once you get more experience under your belt and move up the ladder in your career, you have to learn how to negotiate to make more money.
Starting salaries do not just apply to when you start a career. They also apply to when you are starting a new position no matter where you are in your career. If you quote starting salaries that are too high in an interview you are not likely to get the job no matter how qualified you are. Chances are good that someone out there has your qualifications yet they don’t ask as much. They will get the job.
Another way to find out about starting salaries is to talk to your peers. You may not want to talk with the people that you work with though, as it is taboo to discuss salary with your coworkers. When coworkers start to talk about how much they are making tensions can get high. If you find out the person sitting next to you is making more, hurt feelings and resentment starts to build up. Instead, talk to someone who has a job comparable to yours but who works for a different company. The more you learn about starting salaries the more likely you are to get a good price without pricing yourself right out of a job or asking for way too little in comparison to what you are worth.
Tags: changing career, new job, starting salaries, starting salary
