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Topic Review (Newest First)
22-05-2013 12:04 PM
Unregistered
Quote:
Originally Posted by panamax View Post
Newbies like to ask smple questions that demand simple answers like "what determines my pay and career" hoping that somebody can just give a one sentence simple answer. Unfortunately like all predictions of the future, what transpires in the future is a product of multi-faceted forces at work and does not lend itself to a simple answer.
True. This reminds me also of the usual bo liao question like "what make you a sucessful entrepreuner/trader/investor?". As if there is anyone in the world who can just give a clear cut straight forward answer.
22-05-2013 09:55 AM
panamax No point giving text book answer not tied to reality at all.

Each individual's pay and career progression is determined by a multitude of factors which includes but not limited to cultural fit, patronage lines, years of experience, experiences in CV, academic qualification, competency, office politics, plain old fashion luck (being right place at right time under right boss), age, inter-department power struggle, industry wide market dynamics, function wide labour dynamics and general marcoeconomic situations.

To declare that competency is the one most important factor in pay and career progression simply defies observations on reality. The IT/ITES industry is a good example. Many local IT professionals are beating South Asians hands down in competency, yet they lost out badly while the openly acknowledged incompetent sychophants who happen to share the same skin color move on to Directors and VPs by smart political manuvering, patronage, cultural contamination and riding on the general trend of South Asians dominating the industry. Look at your own HR function, can you confidently say that those who move on to Heads of HR are the most competent in your department?

Newbies like to ask smple questions that demand simple answers like "what determines my pay and career" hoping that somebody can just give a one sentence simple answer. Unfortunately like all predictions of the future, what transpires in the future is a product of multi-faceted forces at work and does not lend itself to a simple answer.

If you are really so into HR, you would have encountered countless employees coming to your desk complaining about career and salary inequity. The proportion of cases sucessfully resolved by HR is small because they do not have a strong and solid argument to convince others of such inherent consistencies that exist in every organization. There just is no simple clear cut answer.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered View Post
I'm a HR Professional. Regardless of how many years of work experience, HR will usually ask for your last drawn pay. So in quoting "starting salary" is totally irrelevant.

The reason why HR ask for your last drawn pay is to know your likely expectations. If the company only has a budget of $5,000 monthly salary and your last drawn pay is a monthly salary of $7,000, do you think the company wants to hire you? The first question that will be in my mind is "why is this person willing to get such a huge pay cut?". The next question will be "if I hire him, how long will he stay?". Recruiting a new hire and train them (be it on-the-job training or formal training courses) is not cheap. Every time a Staff leaves, it affects the whole team performance. It affects business. If they do not get a pay they expect, they will be dissatisfied and will not be able to perform and sooner or later will resign. This is costly to the company. Some people will not be truthful about their expected pay. They may just want to leave their organisation due to bad work environment and just want to use another company as a temporary stepping stone. They just bare with the pay cut for a while and once there is an opportunity to jump ship, they will. This is the reason for asking your last drawn pay. If you already have 7 years of work experience, who really cares about your starting salary? Will your current expected salary be based on what is recent or starting salary? If a person is unemployed for a year and even if last drawn pay is $10,000 per month but willing to get $7,000 per month now, I may believe but $10,000 just last month but claimed to be willing to get $7,000 per month now, I will not believe without more information.

Good employers look beyond your starting salary. If one's competencies are trash, just overly paid previously, I will not be keen to hire such a person. Firstly, I will believe this person may have unrealistic pay expectations due to previous job. Secondly, I will not believe much value can be created by this person. In this sense, competencies acquired is far more important than salary. Having said this however, it is weird if pay is not increased if that person is really very good. Employers will want to keep good Staff. So if a competent person still has low pay after years, then it may leave employers wondering why. This again, is about last drawn pay, not starting pay.

How fast you climb the corporate ladder is not how much you earn but how competent you are. It is far more important to acquire the competencies for the next level than your pay. What is a few hundreds more as compared to a HoD that earns 5 digits per month? If you can acquire the competencies fast enough, you can become a HoD by 10 years of work experience. Even when not able, you probably will have the competencies that not many people will have and can command a high pay by then. Plan your career well instead. Where do you want to be 20 years from now? Look at the Job Description and Person Specification and then work backwards until entry level. Plan your career development plan and slowly acquire the competencies until that ultimate position you want to be. HR if professional enough will look for both your abilities and passion. It is such person that will perform. Giving high pay to one that is incompetent and lack of passion is just a bad investment.
22-05-2013 12:55 AM
Unregistered
Why HR ask for your previously drawn pay

Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered View Post
1 sentence to end all arguments:

If starting salary does not matter, then why people ask for your previously drawn pay?
I'm a HR Professional. Regardless of how many years of work experience, HR will usually ask for your last drawn pay. So in quoting "starting salary" is totally irrelevant.

The reason why HR ask for your last drawn pay is to know your likely expectations. If the company only has a budget of $5,000 monthly salary and your last drawn pay is a monthly salary of $7,000, do you think the company wants to hire you? The first question that will be in my mind is "why is this person willing to get such a huge pay cut?". The next question will be "if I hire him, how long will he stay?". Recruiting a new hire and train them (be it on-the-job training or formal training courses) is not cheap. Every time a Staff leaves, it affects the whole team performance. It affects business. If they do not get a pay they expect, they will be dissatisfied and will not be able to perform and sooner or later will resign. This is costly to the company. Some people will not be truthful about their expected pay. They may just want to leave their organisation due to bad work environment and just want to use another company as a temporary stepping stone. They just bare with the pay cut for a while and once there is an opportunity to jump ship, they will. This is the reason for asking your last drawn pay. If you already have 7 years of work experience, who really cares about your starting salary? Will your current expected salary be based on what is recent or starting salary? If a person is unemployed for a year and even if last drawn pay is $10,000 per month but willing to get $7,000 per month now, I may believe but $10,000 just last month but claimed to be willing to get $7,000 per month now, I will not believe without more information.

Good employers look beyond your starting salary. If one's competencies are trash, just overly paid previously, I will not be keen to hire such a person. Firstly, I will believe this person may have unrealistic pay expectations due to previous job. Secondly, I will not believe much value can be created by this person. In this sense, competencies acquired is far more important than salary. Having said this however, it is weird if pay is not increased if that person is really very good. Employers will want to keep good Staff. So if a competent person still has low pay after years, then it may leave employers wondering why. This again, is about last drawn pay, not starting pay.

How fast you climb the corporate ladder is not how much you earn but how competent you are. It is far more important to acquire the competencies for the next level than your pay. What is a few hundreds more as compared to a HoD that earns 5 digits per month? If you can acquire the competencies fast enough, you can become a HoD by 10 years of work experience. Even when not able, you probably will have the competencies that not many people will have and can command a high pay by then. Plan your career well instead. Where do you want to be 20 years from now? Look at the Job Description and Person Specification and then work backwards until entry level. Plan your career development plan and slowly acquire the competencies until that ultimate position you want to be. HR if professional enough will look for both your abilities and passion. It is such person that will perform. Giving high pay to one that is incompetent and lack of passion is just a bad investment.
22-03-2013 11:26 AM
sdh1234 true. my friend graduated from NUS on scholarship, currently working in MAS. starting pay was about 3.3K or 3.5k. after probation 3 months increase to 4k.

now almost 1 yr liao. is around 4.5K
22-03-2013 11:22 AM
Unregistered
Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered View Post
government or private? Local U or private?
local uni, in private = about there
priv uni, in private = over paid
local uni, gov = too f**king little
priv uni, gov = impossible!

a lot of other factors affects too, like your surname, and face?
22-03-2013 10:33 AM
Unregistered
Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered View Post
it's not where you start, it's how you end. The Journey.

I started my job at 2900 few months ago.. after probation is 3100.

Fresh grad
government or private? Local U or private?
22-03-2013 10:20 AM
sdh1234
Quote:
Originally Posted by dupdupdup View Post
I am actually looking at IT Security.
Median annual income by years of experience:
Less than 1 yr: $26K
1 to 4 yrs: $36K to $38K
5 to 9 yrs: $55K to $60K
10 to 19 yrs: $85K to $90K
20yrs and more: $140K to $180K

Median annual income by IT companies:
HP: $18K to $150K
IBM: $20K to $122K
NCS: $20K to $95K
Dell: $13K to $106K
EMC: $40K to $400K
Cisco: $80K to $200K
IDA Singapore: $50K to $80K
Microsoft: $40K to $123K

Median Annual Income by position:
Project Manager, Information Technology (IT) S$79,024
Sr. Software Engineer / Developer / Programmer S$48,768
Information Technology (IT) Consultant S$48,654
Software Engineer S$40,371
SAP Consultant S$62,086
Network Engineer S$36,422
Senior Software Engineer S$51,675

source: Information Technology (IT) Services Industry Salary, Average Salaries | PayScale Singapore

this website will give you a general guideline about the income for the IT industry
you can sort by Degree, by job scope, by certifications, by work experience

take note the number of IT professional certs and the type of IT certs you have will also directly affect your salary, especially if you are working in big IT companies like Microsoft, IBM, Mcfee, Norton, Cisco
and even banks like DBS, ANZ, Citibank etc

citing an example of my secondary school classmate: he graduated with Higher NITEC in IT, lucky to land a job as Junior IT technician with a private european bank about 7 yrs ago after he completed NS.
starting pay was about $1.8K. Thru the yrs, he went for many IT certification courses, like UNIX, LINUX, MSCE etc went for Poly Diploma study, went for Bsc studies
and of course throughout the years he was promoted from junior to Senior to Supervisor and now IT manager and drawing a monthly pay of about $6K, excluding car, handphone etc.
22-03-2013 10:08 AM
Unregistered
Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered View Post
of course its important but its not everything. you have to consider annual increment and exit opportunities as well. look at signing on, you can command a very healthy starting salary of almost 5k if you get good honours, but the increment is like kachang puteh and the exit ops are quite limited.

compare to the big 4, starting pay is 2.8k only but salary can rise relatively fast and exit ops are much wider.

moral of the story: salary is important but not everything. don't be blind like some dumb dogs who keep saying "THEN WHY HR ASK FOR LAST DRAWN SALARY". employers are as concerned about what skills you gained from your previous jobs as how much they might need to pay you.
Not sure what you are trying to do, but if you are trying to dupe the fresh grads to start low with the "promise" of "better prospect" in the "future", you are doing alright.

Low pay and High pay only determines during the interview(get hired a not), after that, its a linear equation.

Example both worker equal work performance:

A starts : 2500
B starts : 3000

yearly increment 10% for grade A employees... after 3 years

A = 3327
B = 3993

you can see even if both workers have the same work output, because B starts with a higher pay, he earns $21515 more AT LEAST.

If A wants to resign, he will most likely get a re-offer, to a level which will at least match B - 10%. So next time you get re-offer, YOU KNOW WHY!!
22-03-2013 02:13 AM
Unregistered It isn't the most important factor but it is significant. Definitely isnt as significant as what most final year students feel it is though
22-03-2013 12:12 AM
dupdupdup
Quote:
Originally Posted by sdh1234 View Post
which industry are we talking about here?

If you are looking at corporate sales positions, usually the reward or commission package is very important. plus other incentives and benefits.
Some companies would give sales reps company cars, company mobile phones, reimbursement for business entertainment expenses.
I am actually looking at IT Security.
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