Why You Shouldn’t Base Your Career Decision on the Average Salary in the Field!
The average salary can make a huge difference for someone who’s only starting a career in certain field, especially if we talk about highly challenging sectors like the technologic or medical ones.
Knowing how much a professional employed in a specific field earns is important not only for newbies who are about to choose their career path, but also for experienced professionals looking for a change and preparing to negotiate their salary within a new company.
However, taking a career or educational decision based only on some statistical data regarding the average salary in different fields is not always the smartest strategy to adopt, as there are lots of studies proving the financial reward doesn’t always guarantee the professional and personal satisfaction.
So is it right or not to choose a profession by average annual incomes only? Here’s what statistics have to say about freshly graduates that decide their career path based only on potential revenues.
The average salary’s importance in choosing a career
A recent study done among freshly graduates shows the annual remuneration is considered the most important factor in their career choice by the overwhelming majority – 93% of all interrogated persons. Moreover, only 16% of all the respondents base their decision on the passion for chosen job.
The advantages – both personal and professional – offered by a certain career opportunity are considered very important by more than a half of the interviewed persons while less than 5% of graduate students say they would opt for a certain business field in order to change something and make a difference through their personal efforts and work.
As surprising as they are, these statistical data show freshly graduates are acutely aware of the rising living costs and demanding labor market thus they think objectively when making a career decision. In this context, it makes perfect sense that they first consider and analyze the average salary and only rarely they base their final decisions on idealistic factors!
However, human resources specialists think unemployed people should not exclude their personal preferences and passions from the list of factors to take into consideration when choosing a career path. According to research studies, there are huge differences between expectations and reality when it comes to financial rewards but the surprising part is that newbies rarely manage to correctly estimate their potential earnings and they often underestimate the amount of money they could receive for their first jobs!
Here’s a comparative list including, on the one hand, some sample salaries offered in various business fields to new entry levels and the expected salaries for those positions on the other hand:
- The average salary for an engineering job is around $44,000 per year, while the expected one is only $31,000.
- Graduates think they’ll receive around $30,000 for a career in the legal field but the real average revenue is around $40,000 per year.
- In the IT sector, the medium salary is $41,500 but freshly graduates expect to earn only about $30,500 per year.
- The average wage in sales and marketing jobs is $38,000 while the expected one is $29,000.
- For HR jobs, the medium wage offered to entry levels is $39,800 while students and potential employees expect an average salary of $30,000.
As these data show, there are significant discrepancies between the remunerations estimated by students and graduates and the actual salaries offered to junior positions in certain business fields.
But why are these differences so important?
This comparative table, along with statistical data regarding the top factors considered by graduates when applying for their first job, highlights a sad but true reality: if freshly graduates wouldn’t pay so much attention to the financial dimension when choosing a career path, there would be significantly more newbies opting for jobs they really enjoy and this would surely increase the work productivity!
We can therefore say that choosing a career based only on the average salary is not recommended as it can affect not only the personal and professional satisfaction experienced by employees and employers alike but also the company’s revenues in the long run.
It is thus indicated to pay attention not only to the average wage you can get by joining a business field but also to the factors known to influence the potential revenues in a specific domain:
- The work experience of the candidate
- The employees’ former companies
- The references received from past employers
- The geographical area / location
- The company’s renown
- The position’s tasks and requirements
All these factors can influence the remuneration offered by a company to a newbie so it becomes clear, once again, that basing a career decision only on the estimative average salary for that specific field is not the best thing to do.