Can anyone out there give me an idea of how much moola someone with 5-6 yrs POP design experience can resaonably ask for when interviewing for jobs? For now I am focusing on the Midwest (St.Louis, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis) so I know that what somebody will make in NYC is quite a bit different than in Missouri.
I checked Salary.com but I am not sure about the range it gave me ($61,000 - $75,000). That seems a little inflated, but what do I know?
Can anyone offer some insight?
It’s really hard to say how accurate Salary.com’s figures are. To me, they’ve always seemed a bit high.
Typically, whenever I’ve changed jobs, I’ve always taken my current salary, and tacked on 20%, and used this number as target for my salary negotiations. Sometimes I’ve gotten it, sometimes I haven’t. This is assuming that you’re either staying local, or relocating to a comparable priced city.
POP is rough right now because retail is taking a hit and very few places want to shell out a lot of cash on fixtures. That is part of the reason why I left a POP job in KC almost a year ago.
Last time I checked in KC the market for 5 years experience was problably in the $40,000+ range.
I’ve been in STL for the past year working on other things but from time to time I get companies asking if I’m interested in taking ID jobs. Those have ranged anywhere from $35,000 - $45,000 and I have 4 years experience.
Just see what you can get away with, but watch out because there are some really cheap bastards here in the midwest that could care less about your work as a “Designer”. They just want a CAD monkey to push around. I’ve told several “thanks, but go screw yourself” this past month alone.