Let’s say you’d like to find out what salary you can command in today’s U.S. electrotechnology job market. You can get a rough idea by talking to colleagues and doing some research online. But wouldn’t you rather get a more precise picture of your market value?
The IEEE-USA Salary Service offers IEEE members precise estimates of base pay and primary-source income (bonuses, commissions, and net self-employment income) for a wide range of technical fields and geographic areas within the United States. The hallmark of the service is the Web-based IEEE-USA Salary Calculator, with which you can find out very quickly what you’re worth in today’s job market. The Salary Service also has online tools for employers to benchmark technical professionals’ compensation.
Individual IEEE members will find the Salary Calculator invaluable. It factors in numerous variables in a regression model based upon annual survey data obtained from more than 15,000 U.S. IEEE members and is considered the most precise salary estimator ever developed for electrotechnology professionals.
Gregg L. Vaugh IEEE-USA vice president of Member Activities, who is chair of the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, says he often speaks to IEEE student members and recent graduates to make sure they know about the Salary Calculator. And he uses the calculator to promote IEEE membership to nonmembers.
“Young engineers can use the Salary Calculator to estimate what their salary should be,” Vaughn says. “When they interview with companies and receive offers, they don’t have a basis for comparing the salary of the position they’re considering or have been offered. Sometimes all they know is what they’ve heard from friends that a company has good pay, but they don’t know what that means.
“Armed with the salary service, they can analyze an offer to see how it compares with other salaries in their area of expertise.”
The Salary Calculator also is useful before an annual salary review and in evaluating a prospective career change or a move to another part of the country. A good compensation level in one part of the United States might not be good in an area with a higher cost of living.
“The calculator allows applicants who are considering a move to different parts of the country to compare offers,” says Vaughn. “Otherwise, how do you know which one is the best financially? This service allows you to know. You’re not walking in the dark, basing your judgment on what your friends might have told you.”
Members may obtain free, unlimited access to the Salary Service for one year by going to http://salary.ieeeusa.org or log in using your IEEE Web Account and complete the Salary Survey. Once the survey is submitted, you may log in again at the same site to use the Salary Calculator.

FOR EMPLOYERS
By linking powerful relational databases and sophisticated regression modeling with IEEE-USA Salary Survey data, the service provides employers with detailed information on ever industry, line of business, job function, technical specialty, and U.S. location in the technical workforce.
“Employers can use the service to gauge compensation for a large number of technical employees or for a specific individual,” says Jean Eason, IEEE-USA vice president of Professional Activities and chair of the organization’s Employment and Career Services Committee. “Just as an employee doesn’t want to be underpaid, a manager or employer needs to know the current market rate for the technical workforce.”
Employer versions of the Salary Service, which come in standard and premium packages, also include analytic tools not found on other compensation products on the market. The premium package has a Satisfaction Analyzer that helps optimize employee compensation with employee retention. This allows employers to find out how compensation for positions with specific characteristics varies according to employees’ job-satisfaction levels.
The Recruitment Analyzer, also included with the premium package, enables its users to focus their recruitment efforts in areas of the country where professionals with the characteristics they seek are most likely to be found.
For a demonstration of the Salary Service employer version, visit
http://salaryapp.ieeeusa.org/rt/salary_database/about/salaryservice.