4 Steps to Researching Salary When Your Job Title is Vague

When we shared an article on how to negotiate salary, one of our LinkedIn community members asked: What if the job title is too vague?

We thought this was a really solid question because many jobs, especially in the tech field, don’t always fit neatly into a perfectly labeled box. Often times, your job title might not even reflect what you actually do or the many hats you wear.

A project manager at LinkedIn, for instance, might be more focused on business decisions and products while another project manager at Walmart might be more focused on overseeing data flow models. A marketing analyst might specialize in SEM and SEO marketing while another marketing analyst elsewhere is more focused on email campaign conversions.

You get the idea.

If your job is kind of vague and doesn’t fit the next job you want, it’s crucial to strategize your salary negotiation to highlight the skills you have that best match the business need.

Step 1. Make a list of job titles that fit under your expertise.

This is exactly what HR professionals, like Scott Vedder, best-selling author of Signs of a Great Resume, do in order to pin down the salary budget for job openings that are a little vague, like project manager, technician or analyst.

Making a list of similar job titles from different, but similar fields and industries can help you come up with a fuller picture of the market rate.

Step 2. Find common factors among those roles.

Vedder suggests you identify the most similar roles by comparing factors like:

• Complexity of job
• Key responsibilities
• Educational requirements
• Span of control
• Scope of work
• Decision-making authority
• Budget responsibility
• Revenue goals
• Number of direct and indirect reports

“I’ve completed compensation assessments for thousands of employees,” Vedder told us, “and it’s often tough to match the exact title, particularly if you work in a niche industry or a highly specialized field. Evaluating these factors helps companies make decisions and appropriate, competitive pay.”

To keep track, create an Excel spreadsheet to plot all of the job titles in one column.

Step 3.  Put on you researching hat.

Put on a fresh cup of coffee because it’s time to get to do the legwork!

Open up multiple browsers to as many salary websites as you can find. Some places to start: Salary.com and Payscale.com.

Then, find the average salary for as many job titles on your list as possible. Make sure you note down the average salary from each website next to the job title, inputting the salary by resource.

Vedder also suggests taking a look at the average company salaries for similar companies as well to get an idea of how much the company generally pays in the current job market.

“Using universal factors to evaluate the day-to-day aspects of job is a very effective way to compare apples to oranges, or perhaps more appropriately, Project Managers to Program Managers,” he says.

Bonus Tip: If you can actually ask friends, family or someone in your network about specific pay rates for similar jobs, even better. An honest anecdote about salaries from someone you know is a perfectly legitimate way to research your value. You could even go back and ask that recruiter you once chatted with!

Step 4. Calculate your market value.

After plotting all of your similar job titles, skills and respective salaries from multiple salary resources, find the average and try to gauge a fair range based on the salaries you found.

Since companies can vary in terms of what the job title actually means, getting the average of a comprehensive sample pool can help you get a better, more holistic picture.

Of course, during your job screenings and interviews, you should try very hard to push back and get the other side of the table to name the number first.

But, if you are pretty confident that you know your market value based on this solid research, you’re less likely to low-ball yourself if you happen to be cornered.