Career Bank: How to analyze the job market and understand how much you should be paid

The easy-to-use option: exploring analytics

Open industry reports and see how much your profession earns in different positions at different companies. In such reports, steadily growing industries, the level of competition and the "migration" of specialists from one industry to another are also usually indicated. The whole labour market is at your fingertips!

Look for reports here:

• HeadHunter
• SuperJob
• PWC and other consulting companies
• The higher School of Economics, Moscow State University THE THE
• Rostrud
• Zarplata.ru
• Rabota.ru

The "bit harder" option: conducting your research on companies

It's unlikely that the reports you find will delve specifically into your industry and the range of positions you consider for career advancement. So you will have to dig deeper into the labour market yourself.

To start, go to the most popular job aggregator sites and search for job offers for your position. Review the descriptions of the skills required, salary level, compensation package, and the industry in which the company operates. Then find the vacancies for the jobs you would like to move to in the future and do the research using the same algorithm. For further analysis, it will be more convenient to create the following table:

The second step will be to analyze the data obtained and compare it with what the foreign market offers. Open Indeed and LinkedIn and go ahead! Telegram channels can also be helpful. Scroll through Finder.vc. careerspace, Dream Job, VDHL and "Vacancies from Alena Vladimirskaya".

! We do not recommend searching for vacancies for analysis in the groups on Vkontakte and Facebook. They are unlikely to highlight the industry's overall trends or outline the competencies for which they are willing to pay generously. But you will surely waste a lot of your precious time there!

The "even harder" option: conducting your own candidate research

Not every professional reaches this level of difficulty. Mostly because not all of the sites provide resumes of registered users in the public domain. Usually, such documents are located in resume banks, on sites of small HR startups like "I will" or "Up to me" and on the well-known LinkedIn. In some cases, to unlock the job seekers section, you must register as a company on the aggregator site. However, not all portals request the documents confirming the existence of the firm.

Look for resumes by job title - you can see them in the table you compiled earlier. Pay attention to the work experience indicated on the resume, the received education and courses, unique skills, knowledge of foreign languages, competencies from related fields of activity. Look at resumes at your level and a little higher - you are unlikely to find the necessary information in the documents of seasoned executives applying for the position of deputy CEO.

The "really hard" option: analyzing potential employers

This is painful but very useful. In the previous steps, you have certainly found several companies that have been looking for specialists in your profile. Now, your task is to identify up to 20 larger or smaller organizations that need people with your competencies and that you would be interested in working in. They can work in different industries or be direct competitors.

Make a list of such companies, highlight those that you think are most promising for career building, and put them at the top of the list. After that, analyze each organization. Read about its HR brand, google the staffing changes, look through its social media accounts and websites. Evaluate their corporate culture, salary level, and career prospects. Record the information obtained in any convenient way, but do not create a multi-page manuscript.

The "last level of difficulty" option: analyzing market trends and preparing for the coming changes

From the previous steps, you could learn the main trends of the labour market. The trend can be the digitalization of skills, the need to learn technological innovations, the growth of salaries in the junior segment, etc. To make sure your trends are true, go to a few online conferences and webinars for your field, dive into industry news and Telegram channels (you can find them in the app search for the keywords "industry name" and "job title").

However, learning about trends will not be enough. It is important to know what you are going to do with this information. For example, you can take a course, learn new skills, practice them, and incorporate them into your work. Don't wait for the promised changes to come, prepare for them today and your professional value will start to grow in the near future!