How to evaluate your work: a simple instruction

When it is required to indicate the desired salary in the resume, for many it causes a mountain of questions and reflections. Together with VTB, we have compiled a list of actions that will help to adequately assess their capabilities – and not to sell too cheap, and not to indicate an exorbitant amount.

1. Look at the offers of employers

If you are considering remote work or the possibility of relocation – check the offers throughout the country, if not – in your region. Go through the entire list and then explore a few of the options you like. This will help you understand what kind of salary the companies are ready to offer in the specialty you are interested in and what requirements are imposed on applicants.

If most ads say “based on interview results”, you should look at the statistics by profession to find out the average salary of specialists in your profile in Russia and the salary level by region. You can find such information, for example, on the Rosstat website or on the Trud.com platform .

2. Define your professional experience

To do this, open a ready-made resume or start creating a new one. Write down work experience, education, skills and achievements, strengths and weaknesses. It is important to fill out your resume honestly, without embellishing reality or belittling your merits.

Analyze what has been written and determine the amount at which you value your work now. This is the starting value and will need to be adjusted depending on other factors. So, if there is no experience, then with the average market salary in the resume, it will take a long time to look for a job. In this case, to speed up the process, you need to lower the bar by 10-30%. If you have experience, but it is small or irrelevant, you can stop at an average salary. If the experience is significant and all skills are available, indicate the amount above. But you shouldn’t get carried away too much: a potential employer with very ambitious salary expectations may seem presumptuous.

3. Compare your experience with competitors

Evaluating other applicants is helpful in order to understand who the companies will be choosing from. If your experience and skills do not match the rest of the candidates, salary expectations should be slightly lower, but relative to the amounts of competitors, and not statistical values. And if, on the contrary, you are the best suited for the job description, stop at an average salary or even above average.

4. Check if there are many applicants for your position

If there are many competitors, overestimated salary expectations can negatively affect the likelihood of getting a job. Recruiters will have the opportunity to choose from several candidates, and it is likely that the choice will fall on an experienced specialist with more profitable financial needs for the company. And vice versa: minimum salary expectations will bring many offers, but there is a chance that some of them will be uninteresting and unpromising.

There is no need to leave an empty column with the desired salary, as this information can become a bonus. If the employer is urgently looking for an employee, it is more convenient for him to immediately see what the applicant is counting on, and not find out about it at the interview.

5. Estimate the search time

After collecting and analyzing the information, it remains only to indicate the total value of the expected salary. The important thing here is to understand how quickly you want to find a job. If you need it urgently, you should indicate the minimum amount for which you are willing to work: this is not necessarily the smallest amount on the market, it all depends on your experience and the situation with applicants. Let’s say the average salary that competitors are asking for is 70,000 rubles, you have estimated the same amount for your work, but now you are ready to work for 60,000 – then you can indicate the latter in your resume.

If you have time to look for a new place or you are a cool specialist, stop at the financial expectations formed earlier. Or try another option: add 10% to the salary from your previous job, but only if the amount was not significantly less than the average value in the market.

It is not recommended to deliberately underestimate or increase the cost of your labor: this may raise questions and doubts from the employer. For example, it may seem strange if a university graduate wants to earn as much as a top manager, or a person with many years of relevant experience plans to get a job with a minimum salary. For top specialists or heads of departments and companies, the salary can not bepoint out in general, but just wait for offers from recruiters.

6. Prepare answers to interview questions

The employer will probably want to know why you listed this salary. You need to be ready to talk about your advantages over your competitors. Answers should be thought up and rehearsed in advance. Write them down on paper or speak on a dictaphone, so you can return to them and eliminate the shortcomings.

Be prepared for the fact that the employer may bargain. How to behave in this case depends on other conditions. If there are few applicants for the vacancy and you are a cool specialist, you can try to insist on your salary, and if the place is popular and you do not have unique experience or valuable knowledge, it is better to agree to the employer’s offer, and request an increase in salary later, when you have already shown yourself.