Salary Secrets

The Transparent Salary Secret in China Most of my candidates tell me they know what everyone else is making in their company. This tends to raise their expectations and makes it difficult for employers to keep up with the market. The employers are relying on information that is obsolete by the time it is published and the candidates are dealing in real-time. One tool they are beginning to use is Payscale.com. Payscale offers “real-time salary reports based on your job title, location, education, skills and experience.” I did a couple searches and found it a bit limited at the moment but it is sure to grow in accuracy as more and more people use it. Another avenue for finding out what your neighbor is earning was featured in an article in China Daily Online, Updated: 2007-02-12 09:41, entitled Salary Secrets Exposed. The article explains how employees are posting their pay slips online. It goes on to say that a search for "pay slip" on China's biggest search engine baidu.com yields almost 1.22 million results. So what? So you (employer) better know what your competition is up to in order to make the best offer that you can to your prospective employees. It would seem wise that you do the same search, look into the same online services, and take a hard look at your own company’s benefits package to see if it is up to market standards. The best packages being offered right now are using a creative mix of signing bonuses, training incentives, performance bonuses, and succession plans to lure candidates into their culture. If you are not it is time that you started.