You will be able to compare salary sources and explain why each one gives a different number.
Ask three people what a data analyst earns in Singapore and you will get three numbers. A friend in a bank quotes one figure, a recruiter on LinkedIn quotes another, and a salary website gives a third that matches neither. Each of them may be telling the truth about their own source. The sources measure different things.
Your plan from module 1 needs a salary range you can defend, because it decides whether a direction passes the market circle and what you ask for later. This lesson walks through the four kinds of source you will use, what each one actually measures, and why they disagree. Wei Ling, who chose supply chain data analyst as her first direction in lesson 1.4, Shortlist your directions, is the example.
The Ministry of Manpower publishes Occupational Wage Tables based on its Occupational Wage Survey of employers. You can look up an occupation and see monthly wages for it, broken down by industry, with a spread rather than a single number. Most people look at the median, the figure in the middle, and then at the lower and upper figures either side of it to see how wide the range runs.
This is the most solid source of the four. It comes from a large government survey of what employers actually pay, which makes it harder to distort than an ad or a sales document. It has limits you need to know about. The occupation categories are broad, so "data analyst" may sit under a heading that also covers roles you would not count as similar. The tables describe pay at the time of the survey, so they lag the market a little. And they tell you what people in the occupation earn across all levels of experience, which may not match the level you are aiming for.
The tables report basic wage and gross wage separately, and in roles with allowances or regular overtime the gap between the two can be large, so write down which measure you used each time.
Many recruitment firms publish an annual salary guide for Singapore, usually free in exchange for your email address. These guides list ranges by role and seniority, often split by industry, and they are more specific than the government tables. A guide may separate a junior supply chain analyst from a senior one, which the wage tables cannot.
The catch is where the numbers come from. A recruiter's guide is often based on the roles that firm places and the offers it sees. Recruitment firms tend to handle mid and senior roles at larger companies, which pay more, so their figures can tilt high compared with the market as a whole. A guide is also a marketing document for the firm. Read it as a good view of the upper part of the market, and look elsewhere for the typical salary.
MyCareersFuture is Workforce Singapore's job portal, and listings there show a salary range. That makes it the best source for one question the other two cannot answer: what employers are offering right now, for roles open today.
One listing tells you very little. Ten listings for the same role start to show a pattern. Note the bottom and top of each range and look at where most of them cluster. Watch for ranges that are very wide, such as S$3,000 to S$9,000, which usually mean the employer is open to several levels of seniority. These tell you less than a tight range does, and you may want to set them aside.
Ads describe offers, and offers are not the same as final pay. Someone who negotiates well may land above the advertised range, and some ads set the range wide to attract more applicants. Treat the listings as the market's opening position.
Sites where employees post their own pay, such as Glassdoor, can be useful, especially for a specific company. They also have weaknesses you should keep in mind. The samples are often small, so a figure for a role at one company may rest on a handful of posts. People choose whether to post, and those who feel strongly about their pay, high or low, may be more likely to. Job titles are entered by users and do not always match what the role involves.
Use these sites as a check on the others. If the government tables, the recruiter guide and the job ads all point to one range and a self-reported site says something very different, look at how many entries it rests on before you let it move your number.
Wei Ling looked up her role in all four places and found four different answers. The wage tables gave a median lower than the recruiter guide. The recruiter guide's junior range sat above most of the job ads. The self-reported site had six entries and a wide spread.
Each source was answering a different question. The tables answered "what do people in this broad occupation earn?" The guide answered "what do the roles this recruiter places pay?" The ads answered "what are employers offering today?" The self-reported site answered "what did a few people choose to post?" None of them was wrong, because each one was measuring a different group of people and jobs.
The skill is to keep the sources separate and note the range from each, instead of blending them into one number too early. In lesson 2.4, Build a market sheet for your target role, you will combine them into a low, typical and high figure with a source for each. Salary negotiation itself belongs to Negotiation: salary, deals and everyday asks. Here you only need a range you can trust.
The activity asks you to do what Wei Ling did for one target role: look it up in the wage tables, in one recruiter guide and in ten MyCareersFuture listings, and write down the range each one gives you.
Look up one target role in MOM's Occupational Wage Tables, one recruiter salary guide and ten MyCareersFuture listings, and note the range from each.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).