Salary.com For GIS Professionals

Eric Pimpler

Let’s take a look at the Salary.com website and investigate the many features provided by this site for both employers and employees in the GIS profession. As an employee, job seeker, or student, Salary.com can provide answers to questions such as the following:

• Am I being compensated fairly for my skill set, level of expertise, education, years of experience, and geographic location?
• I'm considering taking a position in another part of the country. How does the cost of living compare?
• What can I expect to earn in an entry-level position?
• What kind of compensation can I expect to earn by gaining various GIS skills?
• What are the various GIS positions and at what level are they compensated?

In addition, Salary.com provides other valuable information and services for job seekers including negotiation skills, interview tactics, salary advice, a benefits calculator, timely articles, and more.

For employers, Salary.com provides many benefits including compensation market studies, job descriptions, surveys, compensation analysis, and many more valuable features.

Let’s take a look at how Salary.com can assist the GIS professional. Open an Internet browser and point to http:///www.salary.com. There are three main sections to this site including Personal, Small Business, and Enterprise. In this article we will focus strictly on the Personal section. Begin by entering the phrase “GIS” into the Job title text box. If you’d like enter a ZIP Code or Select a State/Metro to geographically constrain your search. If you leave these entries blank, Salary.com will report results at a national level. Go ahead and click the Search button.

The Search Results will return roughly fifteen GIS job titles and descriptions from “Entry Level GSI Analyst” to “Level V Analyst”. Each job title will contain a detailed job description as well as alternative job titles. Find the category that best describes your current situation. In addition to job titles and descriptions you can obtain base pay, bonus, and benefit information for the position and geographic region that you selected. In addition to the free information provided by Salary.com you can also obtain a personalized report if you’re willing to pay a fee ($34.95 as of this time). This personalized report will be generated using more detailed information such as the number of employees in your organization, industry, reporting structure, education, experience, and a number of other factors.

The Base pay link for each job title returns a nice graph and table showing the salary range that you can expect for this position. For instance, if you select the “GIS Analyst V” job title for the San Antonio, Texas region the following figure below will appear.

This graph shows the median salary that you can expect for this region along with various percentiles, and can give certainly give you a good starting point in salary negotiations.

Notice that there are additional links provided just above the graph that will also detail the bonuses, benefits, and net paycheck estimate for this position in the geographic area that you have chosen. The BONUSES link will provided a new chart that provides total cash compensation view including base salary and bonuses together.

The BENEFITS link shows total compensation for the position including salary, bonuses, healthcare pension, and other factors.

Finally, the NET PAYCHECK ESTIMATE link gives you an idea of what your take home paycheck will look like after various federal and state taxes have been withheld.

Salary.com provides a great place to start gathering information regarding compensation for various GIS positions across the country. However, it is always best to consult more than one source of information for comparison purposes. Salary surveys are great sources of additional information, and in future editions of this newsletter we will discuss how to obtain these surveys for doing further research.