When you started your career off, chances are you were offered a pretty standard entry-level deal – and that you took it to get started in your industry.

Since then, the situation will have changed.

You will now have more experience, maybe more qualifications, and yet you may be a lot less aware of what you should be getting paid. 

Feeling like you are underpaid or undervalued is a legitimate occurrence which needs attention.

How do you know if the feeling is genuine or not? How do you know if you can actually get a raise? How do you know if you’re being paid enough? Well, let me show you.

1. Talk to Recruiters

Recruiters are one of the best resources for salary information.

Talk to them and try to build a relationship, even if you aren’t currently looking to go anywhere.

These people are in the business of filling job roles regularly. They will know how much demand there is in your field. And more importantly, they can potentially tell you the salaries of the last few similar people who signed up through them.

This is likely to be an accurate reflection of your own value.

2. Question Colleagues

Often your colleagues won’t be majorly secretive about their salaries, because you’re all likely to be in a similar position.

Try talking to the ones you are friendliest with at first. Always take into account any differences in experience, qualifications and skill/performance levels.

Sometimes this is what makes it hard to get a realistic comparison, combined with vague information, but it’s always worth a try.

3. Network with People in Similar Positions

Lots of industries have networking events centered around them.

Many of them are literally for networking purposes, whilst others are research or marketing related groups.

Use the networking groups to create a list of contacts in your field. You can use this to your advantage in many ways, one of which is finding out average salaries elsewhere for your position.

4. Check Job Listings

One of the easiest ways is to check the listings. See what roles you can fill in your position, and what the pay is for those jobs. 

5. Salary Calculators

You can go online and find salary calculators with a quick search.

These use aggregated information from various employees to show an average figure, usually with an expected range of pay from high to low.

It can be tricky to get an exact figure from these but they are still good for getting ballpark figures and estimates of high and low numbers.

Read also: 5 Tips to Negotiate a Higher Salary in an Interview

6. Public Listings

Some companies choose to reveal their salary information, whilst others have had theirs leaked in the past.

If you’re in a field that is relevant to one of these lists, they can be useful for getting an estimated figure.

7. Compare Value

Comparing your value with other works in similar roles is a quick and reliable way to figure out how your pay stacks up against others.

There are a variety of anonymous apps available which you can do this through, such as Hush. These apps verify the job role then keep the user anonymous while they chat to each other.

Bigger companies are easier to find information on obviously, so if you want to compare an MNC’s salary with yours, this is a great way to do it.