What's this job worth?

[Wes Bucey]

As part of what I see as my Moderator duties for the Occupation and Employment forums, I spend a lot of time each month reviewing job listings, salary rates, and all sorts of things folks actively engaged in a job hunt should be paying attention to as they go about the hunt. Actually, the information is just as important to the folks on the hiring side of the equation so they have a realistic view of what organizations competing for employees are asking for candidate credentials and what they are willing to pay.

I've noticed a disturbing trend in the ASQ website job listings. In previous years, right up to about March, 2009, recruiting companies often gave a salary range in the ASQ listing, even if the identical listing in one of the national listings like Monster or CareerBuilder did not. I looked through over 200 listings at ASQ today and not one gave a salary range.

I won't identify the company, but I am excerpting pertinent info from its ASQ listing to use as a discussion starter [fair use.] The closely held (not publicly traded) company is a midwest company with hundreds of employees, headquarters located in a pleasant small town within easy driving distance of a relatively big city (not Chicago.) It could be loosely termed "automotive/industrial."

I've opened a poll, asking in what salary bracket you think the job should fall, given what the company lists as both requirements and "nice to haves." In addition to your vote, I'd be interested in a post explaining your thinking for the salary bracket you chose.

Director of Quality
PRINCIPAL DUTIES / PERFORMANCE OBJECTIVES
1. Leads Achievement of World-Class Quality Performance. Meets or exceeds organizational quality objectives established for each year, supporting best-in-class operations. Establishes and maintains an environment that relentlessly monitors, assists, and motivates the pursuit of ‘zero ppm’ performance. Works with operations team to secure cell OEE’s in excess of 85%. Supports operations and engineering measurement and analysis / product validation requirements. Insures best practices are shared and all issues identified are internally permanently resolved.
2. Facilitates APQP Activities and Develops Effective Dialog with Customer Quality Management. Participates in and / or leads APQP activities with cross functional product development teams. Facilitates DFMEA / PFMEA / DFM reviews. Supports the team’s part and product validation requirements. Assures that all products manufactured meet all required safety standards and reliability goals. Manages recall / update actions when and where necessary. Represents Quality Assurance on issues related to customers and other divisions. Manages, processes, and resolves all customer line and field warranty claims.
3. Exceptional Organizational and Team Leadership. Participates as part of ITI executive staff, providing management with an independent assessment of overall operations performance from a customer and field perspective. Develops and executes short- and long-term Quality Objectives and Strategies. Establishes criteria by which management can measure the cost of quality at various organizational levels. Resolves interdepartmental issues concerning the safety, quality, and performance of products.
4. Hands-On Leadership. Visibly leads the division’s efforts in customer satisfaction, based upon quality, productivity, and service to both internal and external customers. Comfortable executing capability studies and Gage R&R’s on components and assemblies as and when required.
5. Develop Best-in-Class Global Supply Base. Works in close collaboration with Purchasing Manager to identify and develop best-in-class global supply base with emphasis on achieving across the board 6-Sigma performance. Facilitates supplier selection process relative to system quality expectations. Works with suppliers and supplier development engineers on continuous improvement efforts with goal of zero ppm.
6. Strong Operational and Financial Acumen. Utilizes understanding of operations activities to effectively manage financial resources of quality systems and processes to optimize product quality, productivity and customer satisfaction. Establishes departmental goals to minimize budgetary expenditures while maintaining and improving the overall quality system.
7. Maintains and Enforces Quality and Environmental Policies and Certifications. Drives all necessary actions across organization in order to secure and retain applicable quality / environmental certifications including but not limited to ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and TS16949.
8. Quality Team Development. Organizes and staffs the department to achieve continuous improvement objectives in systems, processes, and finished products. Develop and train quality personnel to drive continuous improvement throughout operations.
Requirements


1. Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering. Graduate degree helpful. Six Sigma certification a plus
2. Exposure to QS-9000 / TS16949 Automotive Quality Systems and ISO 14001 preferred
3. Minimum of 8 years experience in product design or manufacturing, and quality.
4. Must have supervisory experience and demonstrated skills in organization and leadership.
5. Should have knowledge of Accounting and Engineering functions.
6. Effective communicator, both oral and written.
7. Capable of managing a department that is located in multiple sites and includes diverse technical skills.
8. General knowledge of hydraulic products is desirable.
9. Capable of acting in an aggressive, uncompromising manner when necessary, but able to manage long-term relationships with others in a non-adversarial, team oriented fashion.
10. Must be able to combine “hands-on” effort with day-to-day administrative and management functions. A practical orientation is desirable.
11. Willing to travel up to 20% of their time

 

[qualitytrec]

I would say $100,000-150,000 (I put $110-125 since my guess was not listed) depending on the size of the organization and the type of product manufactured.

Mark

 

[Wes Bucey]

I voted "Over $125,000" simply because the last salary I saw back in March 2009 for a similar position (small town, low living expenses, relatively cheap housing, etc.) was for $100,000 plus benefits and a minimum benefits package usually is in the $20,000 to $30,000 value (medical, dental, life insurance, 4 weeks vacation, etc.) If this were in Chicago or Dallas/Fort Worth, I'd expect it to run closer to $150,000 for the total package.

I am aware that many companies are NOT offering that kind of money today. What do YOU think it SHOULD be worth? Perhaps we need a second poll - "How cheap do you think the company will try to get someone to fill this job?"

 

[Pancho]

Wes, you are missing the $90 - 100k range (where I'd cast my vote for salary, based on current conditions).

--
P.S. In the poll you mention "salary, including perks", but in your last comment you mention "total compensation package". Are "salary + perks" the same as TCP?

 

[Jen Kirley]

Wages in my area are low although our cost of living is high, mostly from heating and transportation costs. As a result, for example my pay is about $42K for auditing all three management systems, whereas ASQ's average and median was about $65K for a quality auditor.

What one ends up factoring in is the ability to get employment in kind. It's an employer's market here for highly skilled QA professionals; there simply aren't that many places for someone like me to job shop given the decline of manufacturing, so that $42K is compared to what other kind of pay I could command, namely a big $30K for a teaching position.

In short, the value equation must also include the demand factor, which varies depending on the economic condition of the area in question.

 

[Wes Bucey]

Well . . .
I understand it is the back end of a holiday weekend, BUT if you are either actively looking for a job or just casually "eyeing the market," you should be aware of what real wages can be expected for the type of work in the geographic area you are searching as well as the considerable difference in wage rates between small companies and giant companies once an employee moves into the management ranks.

In some companies with 100 or fewer employees, the general manager (equivalent to an operations vp at a megacorporation in scope of operations covered if not in dollar value of work produced) may only be earning the same as a shift foreman at a plant with over 1,000 employees.

In my experience, some candidates have turned up their noses at job offerings in small towns where the offered salary would have put them in the top ten per cent of income in that town. They sought jobs in areas with high concentrations of workers where the ultimate pay may have been as much as 25% higher, BUT the cost of living was such that the net income after paying housing and other living expenses was as much as ten or fifteen per cent less than the offering in the small town and the house was much smaller, putting the large company employee closer to the median income for the geographic area.

Perhaps where Jennifer describes income rates there simply are no large companies with over a thousand emplyees at a single location, making the pay squeeze even more apparent.

I can easily understand higher costs for heating and transportation fuel, but I wonder that the housing prices may also be high. Here in the midwest, folks living only fifty miles further from the metroplex than I live can buy a house with more land and more interior square footage than mine for less than half the current deflated value of my house. The real estate taxes are also less than half of mine. We pay similar rates for transportation fuel and home utilities, but conversely, because of sales volume and competition, food prices are much cheaper in my area than there, based on a comparison of grocery ads in the two communities (milk in my community can be purchased for less than $2.00/gallon, but 50 miles away, the cheapest milk is $3.50 for the same brand.) The person who commutes 80 miles each way to work versus 40 miles or less gets hammered in transport costs to and from work in addition to losing the extra commuting time away from home and family.

The question remains - "What do you think the listed job should pay in the midwest location away from a major metropolitan area?"

The entire concept of whether the location is a good one for the type of business is grist for another thread - i.e. do the transportation costs of bringing in supplies and shipping to distant customers offset the [probably] cheap construction and real estate costs for locating far from a commercial/industrial center? Does an organization relegate itself to second grade employees willing to settle for living and working in an area far from a big choice of schools, recreation, culture centers like museums, symphonies, etc.?

 

[Jen Kirley]

According to Careeronestop.com, Maine has 39 employers with 1,000 employees or more. So we aren't quite that provincial.

We do have a problem with adequately compensating skilled people though. We trade quality of life for wages. What I don't pay in real estate for my $187K abode, I make up in heating costs: averaged at $240 a month for heating oil alone.

Businesspeople here cry continually for educated workers, but do not explain how their opportunities will adequately cover living expenses, estimated at at the very least of $14.50 an hour for a family of four, plus college loan bills. The difficulty of negotiating compensation is in knowing how much the other guy will accept, and how the employer will consider the differential.

Four years ago this March, my Quality Director called me, in part because they guy whom the hiring team had chosen wanted too much money - in the Quality Director's view. Now that surely isn't the only source of his lack of confidence in that candidate, but I recently communicated that while I was very grateful to be earning what I am - after all, it's about 2 1/2 times what I earned in the school - people doing my work nationally report an average and median income 1 1/2 times that what I pull.

I doubt it will make much difference. I believe the best chance I have of earning more will be to elevate from this position because the pay scale is likely pretty well set no matter what I do while I'm in it.

 

[Pancho]

Stepping out of our box, the poll numbers here are likely to seem outrageously high to anyone visiting from the developing world.

The market for personal services is perhaps the least efficient in the world. Even within our super-mobile US, wages vary substantially from one place to another because of local economic conditions, high transaction costs, scarce information, substantial risk of change, and many other trade dampers ("labor laws", "professional certifications", "unions", etc.). But all our trade restrictions pale in comparison to the barriers imposed by our world's organization into jealous nation-states.

For some perspective: what compensation would this job command in other countries?

 

[Wes Bucey]

Stepping out of our box, the poll numbers here are likely to seem outrageously high to anyone visiting from the developing world.

The market for personal services is perhaps the least efficient in the world. Even within our super-mobile US, wages vary substantially from one place to another because of local economic conditions, high transaction costs, scarce information, substantial risk of change, and many other trade dampers ("labor laws", "professional certifications", "unions", etc.). But all our trade restrictions pale in comparison to the barriers imposed by our world's organization into jealous nation-states.

For some perspective: what compensation would this job command in other countries?

Right! USA salaries might seem high, but expenses of living are also very high. I seem to recall an index which compared hours of work by an average worker and what each hour of work could buy in utilities, housing, food, consumer goods, recreation, etc.

Twenty years ago, one of my major customers (but considered only medium-size on a world scale - $300 million/year sales) went on a big search to find a director of quality. The company made aerospace and automotive components and job requirements were very similar to the ones listed above. The location was a far northern suburb of Los Angeles, nothing special, just freeways, shopping centers, and hundreds and hundreds of humdrum single-family homes with a few manufacturing plants clustered near freeway cloverleafs. They were offering a pay package and perquisites which would have totaled nearly $300,000. I laugh now, because two candidates turned down their offer because it was not enough money in their estimate to compensate for living in the next county north of LA.

The kicker, of course, is that the sole owner of that company died about ten years ago and his heirs sold the company off to a big foreign conglomerate and the conglomerate swept everybody out who was making over $100,000 in base salary, replacing half of them with drones for half that rate and leaving the other jobs vacant in a "flattening" of the hierarchy. Even the highly-paid engineers (not managers) who designed the products got downsized and not replaced. I haven't seen any new innovations in products since that time.

Why this poll and thread is pertinent to the current job seeker:
The key to getting a job today is research - for opportunities, yes, but also to CYA when and if you get to the negotiation for salary and perqs when you ultimately get offered a job. If you bid too high for salary, you might get dismissed instead of countered with a lower number. If you bid too low and they accept it, you left money on the table. Worse, if you bid too low, they might think you don't value yourself enough and neither should they and so even if you get the job, you will always have a cloud hanging over you as the "dweeb who works cheap."

If you have a salary in mind, for a position at which you have set your sights, you should be armed with as much information as possible to know what the job should pay, how much the company might be willing to pay, the pay scale of the previous incumbent, why the job is open, what happened to the previous job holder, and why. As we progress up the ladder from union worker to middle and upper level management, it is important to know that most companies will negotiate a total compensation package in pay and benefits, IF the candidate can make a good, reasoned case for what he's seeking, coupled with a strong case to show the candidate will deliver more value to the company than the cost of the package.

 

[Martin IT]

Well, in Italy the situation is quite different. For an employe with a couple of years of experience the salary could be about 25,000/35,000 euro per year. This is the pre-tax salary and include old-age pension, disability pension, 4 weeks of holiday, medical care, etc.. After tax the salary is about 18,000/24,000 euro.

In my opinion the great problem is not the salary, but how can you do with this salary! The life cost in my country is realy hight if compared with the average salary.