Wondering What the Average Sydney Salary Is for Your Field?
The cost of living in Sydney is always a shock to anyone considering moving. The only way to offset this cost is to make sure your salary is enough to cover your expenses and if at all possible, save some money for fun things like travel and exploring the rest of Australia.
This post is another straight from my inbox and is all about resources to help you out when you're negotiating your salary in Sydney.
Gauging Expenses in Sydney Before Negotiating Salary
My husband has been interviewing with a company in Sydney for a sponsored 482 work visa position. We are currently investigating the possibility of moving there, but have no idea what the salaries are like for his position, therefore, having a hard time gauging our expenses as it looks like they will increase dramatically in Sydney.
Could you provide an indication of average Sydney salary expectations for someone in IT as all the forums that I have visited are too vague?
This is going to be hard for me to answer since there is no mention of a specific position or years of experience, but I’ll do my best to, at least, guide you in the right direction and give you some resources I’ve found online.
Australian Salary Calculators Realistic Ranges of Average Sydney Salaries
Most salary calculators will prompt you to provide your email address in order to access the final result. The possibility of unsubscribing exists, although it may not be necessary since these calculators are typically affiliated with recruiter sites that utilize your entered information to notify you of job opportunities.
PayScale Salary Survey
The PayScale Salary Survey includes numerous questions regarding your “current” job. While some of these questions are mandatory, others are optional. It is not necessary to answer every question in the survey, but doing so will provide you with a more accurate result.
I put current in quotes above because you can instead enter the position you're interviewing for and then use the salary estimate for negotiating after you are offered the job.
Once you're done with the survey, you will have to enter you email to see the results. Annoy I know, but the information is pretty specific right down to the year of experience so it might be worth the annoyance.
Robert Half Salary Survey
Robert Half has an Australia salary survey with a limited selection of job categories to select from but if you take a look, you’ll notice that the salary scale is much higher than PayScale for certain positions.
Michael Page Salary Comparison Tool
With the Michael Page Salary Comparison Tool you can compare salaries for different positions, for example senior systems development vs entry level.
I did a comparison of a Systems Engineer vs a Senior Systems Engineer. You’ll notice that Michael Page is for the average salaries in all of Australia. That doesn't really narrow things down, but it will give you a ballpark for payscale for different experience levels.
Hays Salary Check and Guides
The last resource and I think probably the best is Hays salary check because they even are more specific for job descriptions and they don’t just give you a range, but the typical salary within that range. This is a nice feature especially for those who are in the process of negotiating.
Hays also has more detailed salary guides that you might want to consider.
The one hang-up with the Hays salary guides and salary check is that you have to give them your email address then they send you the guide for your industry as a pdf. The Hays salary guide is packed full of industry information that you might not be interested in. To get to the salaries, scroll to the later part of the pdf.
I would look at least at the Hays guide, but going through all of the salary calculators should give you a clearer idea of what the average salary in Sydney should be in your industry.
Position titles in Australia will, of course, differ from other countries. Just wanted to point that out for when you start looking through the guides.
