{"id":12088,"date":"2015-04-09T14:04:41","date_gmt":"2015-04-09T19:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.conservators-converse.org\/?p=12088"},"modified":"2015-04-09T14:04:41","modified_gmt":"2015-04-09T19:04:41","slug":"your-conservation-career-resources-for-negotiating-your-next-salary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/2015\/04\/09\/your-conservation-career-resources-for-negotiating-your-next-salary\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Conservation Career: Resources for Negotiating Your Next Salary"},"content":{"rendered":"

In November of 2014, I gave an ECPN Webinar titled \u201cBeyond the Portfolio: Your Conservation Career\u201d in which I briefly discussed salary negotiations (that webinar is here<\/a>). Whether you\u2019re just starting out or are further along in your career, here are two more resources to help you research and negotiate your next salary.
\n1) BUST magazine recently had a short but excellent feature on how to negotiate a salary for a new job. If you\u2019re male, be aware that although BUST is aimed at women, most of the content is great for men, too. Including this article, which you can read here<\/a>.
\n2) The 2014 AIC\/FAIC Compensation Survey is online now, here<\/a>! I LOVE these things! They are gigantic goldmines of data about our profession. But back to you \u2013 here is how to use this survey report for salary research. Start by having an overall look at how the report is organized, and then start to think about which sections and criteria apply to your situation. Page 69 gives an example of how to combine criteria to determine a salary.
\nLet\u2019s use the survey for a pretend scenario:<\/span> you are applying for a full-time job at a medium-sized, private museum in Washington, DC; you have a master\u2019s degree in conservation and 3 years of post-graduate experience. What kind of salary offer should you expect?
\nTo do this exercise, you\u2019ll need to have the survey in front of you. Flip to page 70, Exhibit 3.17. We\u2019ll move back and forth between columns a bit; because you\u2019re a relatively new grad, you can expect your salary to be below the median in most categories. But I also don\u2019t want you to aim too low, so we will stick mostly to the 25th<\/sup> percentile column* and not reference the 10th<\/sup> percentile data. Once you get the hang of this, though, you can figure out a range for yourself with points at the high, middle, and low end.
\nYou can see that a salary in the 25th<\/sup> percentile for a medium-sized museum is 49K \u2013 write that down. It\u2019s not part of a university, so the 25th<\/sup> percentile there is about 47K. Write that down, too. For a private museum, we\u2019re at 46K. Keep writing these numbers down. You have less than 5 years of experience, but here let\u2019s look higher \u2013 you\u2019re really good, right? The 75th<\/sup> percentile for your level of experience is 47K. This would be a new position for you, so 35K. Look at the numbers for gender (yes \u2013 look again, my friends!). We\u2019ll say you\u2019re female. Write down 45K. Nope, that was too painful for me.\u00a0 Erase 45K! Let\u2019s assume instead that your work is worth the same as a man\u2019s; write down 60K. You have a master\u2019s degree in conservation, so write down 45K. Probably no one will be reporting to you, so write down 34K. Will you have input into the department\u2019s budget? Probably not? Write down 34K. We\u2019ll say you\u2019ll be working under supervision, write down 34K. DC is in the \u201cSouth Atlantic\u201d as defined by the survey (which you know, because you paged through it and looked at how the report is organized), so write down 43K.
\nBased on this super basic research, you should be looking at a salary somewhere between 34 and 60K\/year. Add together all the numbers you wrote down (I got 474) and divide by 10 to get the mean, which is 47. 47K\/year would be a solid salary offer that you could feel good about.
\nRemember that you can calculate a salary range for yourself based on the different criteria and percentiles given in this table. Also remember the gender disparity; if you\u2019re female and you feel a salary offer is too low, this survey provides solid statistics to which you can point.
\nFinally, you can use this survey for more than salaries; it gives good data on rates charged by private conservators, and you can also use it to evaluate benefits packages. In case you were wondering, I had nothing to do with this survey. I just really like it. Good luck!
\n* When you use this survey to find a salary range, make sure you use the data in a way that makes sense for your <\/em>situation. This example is written for a recent graduate, which is why I suggest the 25th percentile in most places. If you’re mid-career, look at the 50th percentile. If you’re quite senior, look higher. There are also a few places where the survey data are sorted by level of experience. In these places, look at the midpoints that match your criteria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In November of 2014, I gave an ECPN Webinar titled \u201cBeyond the Portfolio: Your Conservation Career\u201d in which I briefly discussed salary negotiations (that webinar is here). Whether you\u2019re just starting out or are further along in your career, here are two more resources to help you research and negotiate your next salary. 1) BUST … Continue reading “Your Conservation Career: Resources for Negotiating Your Next Salary”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":130,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[294,378],"class_list":["post-12088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecpn","tag-conservation-salaries","tag-ecpn-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/130"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/resources.culturalheritage.org\/conservators-converse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}