Your Market Worth
Your Market Worth
Your Market Worth
Not many people think about it; but you already have a lot of assets that are worth something. I’m not talking about things like your car, your computer, or your phone. I’m talking about your knowledge, background, education, skills, abilities, and experience. The culmination of all of those things combined contribute to your market worth.
But what exactly is your market worth as a student affairs professional? Is that a number that you can even quantify? How does one go about creating and estimating their market worth? How does market worth factor into the student affairs job search?
This article will answer what “market worth” is. In addition, special considerations related to salary and compensation are discussed as they relate to hidden information in the negotiation process. Specific steps are outlined on how to research and calculate your market worth. Also, specific factors are addressed for evaluating your market worth and your compensation as an employee of an institution. Finally, this article closes on the balancing act between evaluating your market worth and new career opportunities.
What is “market worth?”
Market worth is often one of those considerations in the student affairs job search that most professionals don’t consider until they reach the end of their search. But it’s important to know what your market worth is for yourself – and to the institution – at each stage of the interview process.
Simply, your market worth is an estimation of how much you should be compensated (earning) based on a number of different factors. Most of the commonly included factors are experience, knowledge, education, background, skills, and abilities. These are all taken into context against the specific expectations of the role as well as its geographical location.
Talking about and discussing your market worth can be a tricky subject: especially as it relates to your own personal worth as an individual. But as a student affairs job seeker, it’s important to separate one’s feeling of worth as a person, from what they should be paid for in a job.
That’s because your market worth is the amount that you should be paid given how well you can accomplish the responsibilities of a particular position in a given geographical area.
Hidden information
However, for most people your individual and specific marker worth is part of hidden information. There is no benefit for institutions, companies, and organizations to be open and up front about what you’re worth. There is no business sense for them to do this. This is done so they can maintain the upper hand and compensate you for under your market value.
This lack of open information is further compounded by the fact that salaries and market worth is often kept secret – usually from other employees. The reasons behind this is complicated and often divisive: especially in the higher education. This secretive aspect of one’s market worth makes it harder for individuals to determine what a competitive compensation package is.
There are good reasons for institutions, organizations, and companies to openly share the market worth of their employees. That’s because paying employees a competitive wage helps them maintain a competitive talent pool and decreases turnover.
Those are of course good reasons for institutions to pay employees competitive wages. But there are also equally good reasons for you to research and determine your market worth yourself.
Why you should research your market worth
There is a direct economic benefit for researching and defining your market worth yourself. That often arises based on a need for an institution to make you a competitive salary offer.
However, most student affairs job seekers rely on the institution to determine what a fair offer is. That represents one data point in your research, but it should not be the only area that you reference. All student affairs job seekers should go into their interviews armed with their market worth. Doing this provides you with a scale with which to judge another institution’s offer to you.
That means that you should spend time and use the salary research tools available for you in order to estimate your market worth to an institution. Likewise, it’s also important to keep informed of the latest trends in the field and industry.
This is because institutions and hiring managers also evaluate compensation for employees to determine estimated competitive ranges. However, you should always strive to evaluate your knowledge, background, experiences, education, and abilities in order to determine your own market worth in order to earn the pay that you deserve.
How do you research your market worth?
Market worth is important to know no matter where you are in the student affairs job search. The next steps are to discover how much your market worth is. One of the easiest ways to do that is to conduct some research online using some salary research tools.
This is often the first – and easiest – step towards finding out what your market worth is. The next steps after that is to connect and network with some colleagues and other professionals in the field who may work in the same functional area as you. When connecting with these individuals, you can also ask the same question to determine if the market salaries you’ve discovered online are fair compared to what they are making.
The next step would be to compare the information that you’ve found online; your conversations with colleagues and coworkers; and comparing them both against the duties and responsibilities of a potential new job you’re interested in taking on. How do the responsibilities of the position align with what other people are doing? If they are the same then how do the compensation packages compare?
If they align, then great! You’re heading in the right direction. Do they not align? Then it’s time to seriously review the position, responsibilities, and geographic area to determine what is missing. You can also use this information to craft a follow up question that can be posed to the hiring manager during the final stages of the job search.
Factors of your market worth
In addition to considering the functional and geographic area of your work; you can also take into account some other considerations that affect your market worth. One of them is your educational attainment. Those with bachelor’s degrees and masters degrees are often considered competitive for student affairs work. For certain positions and responsibilities a terminal degree like a doctorate of education (EdD) or a doctorate of philosophy (PhD) makes you a more competitive candidate and increases your market worth.
In addition, certifications also add value and worth to your background, knowledge, and skill set. These certifications can often be technical and include working with a specific computer or information system. Or they can functional such as being CPR and/or first aid certified.
When examining your market worth in a current position you must also take into consideration what you already provide to the institution. Say you were to leave and take on the same exact role at another competing university or college. What would you be able to make at that institution? That represents your comparative market worth.
Now that you’re thinking about it: say you left your current role at your institution and the college began a job search for your position. What could the institution offer in order to attract competitive candidates? How does that number reflect how much you’re earning right now?
Thinking about and reviewing these hypothetical scenarios are what helps determine your market worth in student affairs, higher education, and the industry as a whole. Remember that your knowledge, background, experience, skills, and abilities are all factors that go into making you a valuable and competitive professional in the field.
Evaluating your market worth
So how do you go about evaluating your market worth? There are two factors for you to consider. The first is the value that you bring to the institution, college, or university. This is variable. The other one is your market value. That’s the factor that we covered before if you were to go to a competing institution and perform the same role there.
You can further refine your research and your market worth by looking at popular job boards and other sites that post salary information. Some of the biggest ones are Higher Ed Job sand the Chronicle Vitae for positions in higher education and student affairs. This is a useful way to determine and provide a broad overview of salaries for functional areas in the field.
In addition, you’ll have to take into account the factors that the institution finds important. If they are looking for dedicated professionals but emphasize those that have graduate degrees then you’ll know that is the yardstick by which they measure market worth. In addition, you can also review market worth from an output perspective. This comes often in roles like admissions and enrollment management where employee activity and productivity is directly reflected and represented in students deposited and enrolled based on an employee’s contacts and activities.
Knowing your market worth is half the battle. Often, professionals want to know what their worth is because they are making a cogent argument or are engaging in a negotiation for a larger starting salary. That’s when you can use the research that you’ve done previously and propose to the hiring manager that a person with your background, knowledge, skills, experiences, education, and abilities in this functional area is worth “x” amount per year.
Employee compensation
Often after having a conversation about market worth with a supervisor or a hiring manger, student affairs professionals will discuss compensation. Compensation can take on many different forms and is not just limited to salary.
One of the most robust forms of compensation offered to educators and administrators are benefits packages. These often include dental insurance; medical insurance; paid vacations; retirement plans; tuition remission; re-location packages; and professional development to name a few.
Of course these benefits are best suited for those professionals who can capitalize on them the most. However, for others, there will always be the question of salary and how that factors into an overall compensation picture. Salary is often most greatly affected by an employees’ applicable experience and education.
A balancing act
Of course knowing your market worth is one thing. But using that information to navigate your student affairs job search or your salary negotiation with your current employer is another. It’s all part of a balancing act. You’ll need to know how and when to use the information to your best advantage.
Of course you don’t want to price yourself out of the market and ask for a salary that isn’t supported by the functional or geographical area of the institution. At the same time, you don’t want to accept a salary that is so low that it won’t support your cost of living expenses.
Ultimately your market worth is a complex compilation. It includes your experience, knowledge, background, and skills. A good way to evaluate your market worth is to network and examine the comparable compensations of your other colleagues that are working in the same functional and geographical area as you. Doing so will help you form an estimate for what is fair compensation for a professional of your caliber.
Takeaways
This article answered what “market worth” is. In addition, special considerations related to salary and compensation were discussed. These can often be factors that are obscured in the negotiation process in the student affairs job search. Specific steps were identified and outlined on how to research and calculate your market worth. Specific factors were addressed for evaluating your market worth and your compensation as an employee of an institution. Finally, this article closed on the balancing act between evaluating your market worth and new career opportunities.
I hope that you found this article useful! If you need some additional help on your student affairs job search, then check out the eBook The Student Affairs Job Search: A Comprehensive Guide available here.
Happy searching,
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Cite this Article
Eng, D. (2020, June 23). Your Market Worth. Retrieved MONTH DATE, YEAR, from https://www.jobhakr.com/blog-1/2020/6/23/your-market-worth
Internal Ref: JHKRF4G81JLOF