If a tree falls in a forest and there is nobody to hear it, does it still make a noise?

It has been a while since I took the time to ponder the answer to this question but I recently found myself facing myself a very similar situation. And I am sure you did too. If a specific job title does not exist in any salary survey and you systematically report your incumbents on a different job code, does it mean that this first job title does not have a different market value?

Let’s take the job “Design Engineer, Analog and Mixed signal“  for example. This job does exist; it shows on a regular basis on Monster, Career builder and other job search sites. Yet, even the surveys that are known for covering a lot of the specific engineering jobs do not collect specific information for it. You usually report your incumbents in this job either in some roll-up position or in the closest position available. But when the head of the department send you an email  to point out that “really, analog design engineers do command a premium on the market and please can you find out what it is so that you can create a specific range for this job”, the only answer you are left with , and let’s face it, this answer is not going to work for the head of the department, is” if there is no specific market data, then, I cannot give you a specific market value”.

Sometimes, the only way to access this type is data is by relying on the “salary calculator sites”, these compensation professionals dreaded sites that tell our employees that with all these years of experience they should be making at least 25 % more that what they are making. I am talking about these sites that are using mostly data provided by employees in opposition as data provided by the employers. It is a little bit the same as building salary ranges using the information in the “salary expectation” of the job application form. However, sometimes this is all that we have, and the analysis of this data reveals some very interesting findings and provides meaningful lessons for your managers: it looks like in many cases, some jobs end up attracting some of the top performers of a function. And when you try to measure a “market premium’ you are indeed measuring the positive effects of years of successful pay for performance policies. And this gives you your answer to that head of department: maybe the incumbents in this job do command a premium but maybe it is because they are more experienced and better performers than others. This means that the solution to the manager’s problem is not with new ranges but with a more targeted utilization of its merit budget, to ensure that the employees with the most critical contribution to the company do receive bigger rewards.