why are glassdoor salaries so low in this video i'm going to answer this question and some other
common questions about glassdoor salaries so to explore this we're going to look at where
glassdoor salary info comes from what could make it appear low and some alternative places that i
recommend to find out good salary info if there is something specific that you were looking for
in this video and i didn't cover it here then just let me know in the comments and i will address
that for you i'm Amri Celeste a career coach and hr recruitment specialist with over 10 years
hiring experience and i make videos on how to help you on your job hunting journey so do like and
subscribe as it really helps out this channel so let's jump in on glassdoor for any particular role
the salary shown is the average salary in that location so let's say we're looking for
a project manager salary in london the average salary is 45k but it also shows the lowest of
30k and the highest of 75k and in this case it's based on 5872 salaries so that's the number of
people that have identified themselves as project managers and anonymously submitted their salaries
and it tells you here how confident they are in this data so for this role it's very high
as it's based on a large number of fresh recent reports so why do some feel that this is not an
accurate representation well there are actually lots of reasons that the glassdoor salary you see
may make you wonder why it appears so low but we'll cover three key reasons one it doesn't take
other factors into account such as qualifications or experience for example let's say you are a
project manager and your print's too qualified so prince2 is a recognised qualification for project
managers but not all project managers have this qualification so let's say that you have 10 years
experience plus your prince2 qualification you may command a very different salary to someone
who doesn't have this qualification with the same amount of experience and this could distort the
glassdoor salary if you have a disproportionately higher amount of unqualified employees across a
certain location submitting their salaries for a specific role same with another role
so let's say it's marketing exec you could be a marketing exec on 20 40 or 60k because the salary
under that job title can vary quite drastically so the average figure could be quite distorted
if the majority of people that are submitting their salaries are on the lower salary bracket
which leads me on to the next thing that could be distorting this type of data the people submitting
their salaries to glassdoor two glassdoor salaries are anonymous and employee reported now i'm sure
you can imagine how problematic it would be if this were not anonymous information that
you could trace back to each individual not many people would report their salary data but the fact
that it's anonymous and employee reported means that it can only be verified to a certain degree
and with anonymity can come a certain amount of shall we say inflating of salaries or positions
which could also distort the data three the full package in many cases when you're employed
on a permanent basis or even in many temporary and contract positions you don't just get your
basic salary you get a full benefits package with various other contributions such as a company car
or car allowance private medical or health care a quarterly or annual bonus or monthly commission
if you're in sales holiday or annual leave and in some companies you can buy more annual leave
to top up or sell days you don't need moving or relocation cost cover company shares or a whole
host of other benefits depending on the company often these actually equate to additional monetary
value that people would take into account when they were negotiating for say a new job
but not when they're reporting their salary to glassdoor which can also distort the figures
so where can you get accurate salary information one of the ways you may actually be able to get
accurate market information is by speaking to your own hr team at work if you have access to one
because often a benchmarking process is carried out before deciding what salaries to offer staff
so this means that a company would look at what the job market is paying on average for
a particular role and they would take the market median the average salary and they would either
pay in line with that salary or if they want to be particularly competitive they may pay above
the market median when they're carrying out these checks they often work with external companies who
specialize in compensation surveys and market data so how do those companies make sure that
their data is accurate these companies are often compensation specialists who get their information
from hundreds of companies in that sector to get an average so the data is extremely
accurate because it's reported by the employer not by the employee and then this is repeated
each year to get the most up-to-date information but often there's a fee for this service and in
comparison the glassdoor salary tool is completely free so that's just another thing to bear in mind
is glassdoor reliable well yes it's a useful tool but anyone could submit their information
so where else can you get salary information well glassdoor is popular likely due to its popularity
with glassdoor reviews which i cover in detail in another video but there are many sites that many
other jobseekers use to get salary information and i recommend looking at a few to get an average
yourself so a few recommendations are payscale.com so this is first on my list because it's a site
dedicated to compensation and pay insights and they use ai compensation software and validated
salary data so it's a little different to some of the others on this list that i'm going to cover
that are more known for other services they offered originally and only offered a salary
checker or compensation tool down the line so next is total jobs or read salary checker now these are
two of the uk's largest job boards but they also have fairly comprehensive salary checkers as well
and you can also get salary guides or comparison tools from large recruitment agencies i noticed
particularly from ones that have a large global presence such as robert half hayes or michael page
do also check out my video on glassdoor reviews and how to tell which ones are fake and real
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when a new video is ready thanks so much for watching and i'll see you in the next video you