How to properly evaluate your work: simple instructions.

When a resume requires you to indicate the desired salary, for many this raises a mountain of questions and thoughts. Together with VTB, we have compiled a list of actions that will help you adequately assess your capabilities - and not sell yourself short and not specify an exorbitant amount.

You can find more ways to manage your salary here .

1. Look at employer offers

If you are considering remote work or the possibility of moving, check the offers throughout the country, if not, in your region. Go through the entire list and then explore a few of your favorite options. This will help you understand what salary companies are willing to offer in the specialty you are interested in and what requirements they have for applicants.

If most advertisements indicate “based on interview results,” it’s worth looking at statistics by profession to find out the average salary of specialists in your profile in Russia and the salary level by region. You can find such information, for example, on the Rosstat website or on the Trud.com platform .

2. Determine your professional experience

To do this, open a ready-made resume or start creating a new one. Write down your work experience, education, existing skills and achievements, strengths and weaknesses. It is important to fill out your resume honestly, without embellishing reality or belittling your merits.

Analyze what you wrote and determine the amount at which you value your work now. This is a starting value and will need to be adjusted depending on other factors. So, if you have no experience, then with the average market salary on your resume you will have to look for a job for a long time. In this case, to speed up the process, you need to lower the bar by 10–30%. If you have experience, but it is small or irrelevant, you can settle on the average salary. If the experience is significant and all the skills are available, indicate the amount higher. But you shouldn’t get too carried away: to a potential employer, an applicant with very ambitious salary expectations may seem arrogant.

You can further increase your profits with cashback and other salary card offers. It is not necessary to use the one offered by the employer: in order for the salary to be transferred to the card you need, you just need to write an application to the accounting department. Therefore, it is worth checking the conditions in different banks in advance.

The VTB salary multicard allows you to transfer funds without interest using a phone number to any other card and withdraw cash without commission at all ATMs. For any expenses, 1.5% cashback will be credited to your account, and for purchases from partners - up to 20%. When the “Savings” option is activated and expenses are from 10 thousand rubles per month, the bank will add 1% per annum to the rate on a savings account or deposit in the amount of up to 1.5 million rubles or 3% per annum on a current account in the amount of up to 100 thousand rubles.

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3. Compare your experience with your competitors

It is useful to evaluate other applicants to understand who companies will choose from. If your experience and skills are not up to par with other candidates, your salary expectations should be lowered slightly, but relative to the amounts of your competitors, not statistical values. But if, on the contrary, you fit the job description better than others, settle on an average or even above average salary.

4. Check if there are many applicants for your position

If there are a lot of competitors, high salary expectations can have a negative impact on your likelihood of getting the job. Recruiters will have the opportunity to choose from several candidates, and the choice will likely fall on an experienced specialist with more favorable financial requirements for the company. And vice versa: minimum salary expectations will bring many offers, but there is a chance that some of them will be uninteresting and unpromising.

There is no need to leave the desired salary column blank, as this information can become a bonus. If an employer is urgently looking for an employee, it is more convenient for him to immediately see what the applicant is counting on, rather than finding out about it during an interview.

5. Estimate your search time

After collecting and analyzing the information, all that remains is to indicate the final value of the expected salary. The important thing here is to understand how quickly you want to find a job. If you need it urgently, you should indicate the minimum amount for which you are willing to work: this is not necessarily the smallest amount on the market, it all depends on your experience and the situation with applicants. Let’s say the average salary that competitors are asking for is 70,000 rubles, you valued your work at the same amount, but now you are ready to work for 60,000 - then you can indicate the latter in your resume.

If you have time to look for a new place or you are a tough specialist, stick to the financial expectations you formed earlier. Or try another option: add 10% to the salary from your previous job, but only if the amount was not significantly less than the market average.

It is not recommended to deliberately underestimate or increase the cost of your labor: this may raise questions and doubts for the employer. For example, it will seem strange if a university graduate wants to earn the same as a top manager, or a person with many years of relevant experience plans to get a job with a minimum salary. For top specialists or heads of departments and companies, you don’t have to indicate your salary at all, but simply wait for offers from recruiters.

6. Prepare answers to interview questions

The employer will probably want to know why you indicated the salary you did. You need to be ready to talk about your advantages over your competitors. Answers should be thought up and rehearsed in advance. Write them down on paper or speak into a tape recorder, so you can return to them and eliminate any shortcomings.

Be prepared for the fact that the employer may bargain. How to behave in this case depends on other conditions. If there are few applicants for a vacancy and you are a tough specialist, you can try to insist on your salary, and if the place is popular and you do not have unique experience or valuable knowledge, it is better to agree to the employer’s offer and ask for a salary increase later, when you have already proven yourself.

Maintenance of the VTB salary multicard is free throughout the entire period of use. In addition, it makes it possible to receive a discount on interest on loans and invest profitably: for purchases of 30,000 rubles per month or more, a reward will be credited to the brokerage account, which can be spent on purchasing securities.

To issue a card, it is not necessary to visit a VTB branch . All you have to do is fill out an application on the website - it will take no more than five minutes. It will be ready within five days.

Apply for a VTB multicard