Private Sector Salaries

[mamaes]

Hello

Does anyone want to enlighten me on private sector salaries?

The job adverts always say competitive which is extremely unhelpful.

I have always worked within the public sector so salaries have always been very transparent.

I was also wondering about the structure. I have a few people on LinkedIn who are directors or associate directors in consulting firms, banks etc. They seem relatively young to be in such senior positions. Is the terminology different to the public sector? Public sector directors are generally SCS up?

Thanks!

Depends on the sector, the organisation and the role.

I've always been told that the private sector is where you make money but the companies that DO publish their salaries seem to pay a lot less in my field.

It depends on the company. I know of some where everyone is an associate director or something or other manager when they're actually fairly junior.

I've applied for jobs with 'competitive' salaries and there is a big variance. Some are higher than public sector while others are on par or lower. I'm civil service and have been approached about similar private sector roles that are £10k either way.

If there was a role I wanted to apply for I would contact them direct to understand the range, if I'm going to the effort of tailoring a CV, going to interview etc I need to know the salary is acceptable. In my field you can literally be paid anything from £30,000 to £140,000 for my role depending on how it is prioritised by the organisation, to some it's very important, to others they take the risk and invest less (obviously I can sort of deduce from the type of organisation where it will likely sit in that range but it isn't always obvious) I would always be a bit wary of no salary advertised, but if I loved the look of the role I would enquire.

Possibly depends on sector etc.

I've worked in both and private sector was by far the worst salary-wise, plus no progression (public sector had incremental salary steps) and no gradings so couldn't compare with others. Much worse pension scheme, less annual leave. Benefits such as enhanced maternity leave were much worse. Training opportunities also better in public sector - although not money for expensive conferences, but actual day-to-day training, especially in soft skills was a lot better.

I work in private sector and the pay is classified as "competitive". It's £0.03 over minimum wage.

And yes terminology is different. Marketing makes me laugh as they always have snazzy titles and yet the salaries can be quite low! That said civil service isn't always transparent, I've been in organisations where "Team Leader" had to be G7, but in my current it could be HEO, and "Head of" has to be G6 in my current organisation but have seen it as SEO in another.

I wouldn't pay too much attention to job titles in any sector.

Not even just by organisation. Within my team SEO can be massively varied, we have 4 SEOs and one has no management responsibility, 2 have 1 direct report and the other has 5. All paid the same (and goodness would I be livid managing 5 people for the same pay as someone without that!).

All of those grades are management grades. EO’s can also be team leaders, but a G7 for example will be in charge of those whole dept - in my place around 15 teams, with different priorities, issues etc and around 150 people. The EO will lead one of those teams, generally managing a team of AO’s, and so on. It can be common in the CS to have staff at all of those grades managing and some not managing. Depends on the terms of their role, some have a very involved job which isn’t leading teams but a grade specific role which needs a more senior person to do. It varies across each department too, but most jobs have been subject to rules around grading etc

@Darbs76 I know, I've moved around the CS a fair bit, my point is just that a job title doesn't always tell you very much in the CS, it will mean different things in different organisations/departments. You can't tell what someone's grade is by their job title, except perhaps SCS but even then it wouldn't always be evident what level of SCS in many organisations.

What sort of jobs are you looking at? Perhaps we can give you a steer?

One recruiter laughed when I said I might not agree that the salary for the job he was advertising was 'competitive'. I ended up getting the job.