Are You Underpaid? See The 4 Ways To Find Out

As we all know, being underpaid is annoying and dismay, and during that moment, you feel unappreciated and overworked that leads to work a drag.

But with the right game plan, preparation, and negotiation skills, you should be able to increase your salary.

Everyone wants to make money, which is why every individual’s work to earn and the money you are getting can never satisfy you, and that is human nature.

If you ever think you are being underpaid, you must be sure to compare your salary with other employees at your company and any other companies.

And some of the underpaid jobs mainly include those that serve children, the elderly, and the sick. Another thing to do when negotiating a pay raise is to present the most robust case possible, backed by some evidence.

Table of Contents

Are you Underpaid?

Studies revealed that about 46% of employees feel that they are underpaid at their working place. Meaning that about half of all employees are not happy with their paychecks and overworked.

Before you can negotiate for raise, you must contribute professionally to the company you are working for and not doing your job well. You feel you are being underpaid sound tricky.

For instance, you walk into your manager’s office and tell them that you feel they aren’t being paid fairly. They will want to find out why you think this way.

The fact is that any employee in this scenario is making mischief because expecting a pay rise can be tricky if you don’t have any genuine reason to back up your request.

So is there any way to find out maybe you are underpaid? Instead of breaking into your boss’s office to check out what everyone else is earning and which might get you fired. Here are four better ways to figure out if your salary is the industry norm or underpaid.

Network

Network-based on this aspect, some industries have unions that fight for their members and see that employers pay them a fair wage, but the painful part is that most people don’t have access to this resource.

But what you have access to, are those networking organization within your industry which can serve the same purpose.

Some network group is paid while some being free, and most of them offer guides to average salary ranges. Then almost all the groups will provide opportunities for members to share information and support each other.

You can make inquiry from some of your peers you are close with to see what they think the salary payment would be for your position. Just be honest with them that you are doing some research for yourself.

To measure where you might fall within that range, you can ask people if their company weights some specific qualifications, such as a graduate degree or actual types of experience that are more positive than others.

Contact a Recruiter

Contacting a recruiter is the best way as it may be advantageous for you, since recruiters spend all day picking apart resumes, conducting interviews, to play professional matchmaker.

Their jobs are pulling out the strengths in a candidate’s resume and selling them for the highest price. Kindly see some tips for making the most of it:

Cast a wide net
Update your resume
And ask the recruiters about the last three positions they filled

This will give you the guide to quickly get what information you want so that you can get your resume up to date before meeting.

Job Boards

The best options to know if you are underpaid are finding out what other companies are offering compared to where you work. It can be not easy to get accurate data on catchall job boards like Monster.com and many like that, but if you use sites specific to your industry, you will get a better idea of the opportunities out there.

Make sure to use a Salary Calculator

If finding out the information you want through a standard process is tedious and looking for some quick and dirty research, go to a site like salary.com, which aggregates data from employers and employees to give salary ranges for different careers.

Using a salary calculator can be a starting point in your research, serving as one of the data points you collect. After your research, what do you do? By determining what you are worth and realized that you are being underpaid? Well, there is not an easy answer, but it an open way for you.