Where to find what others are earning in your company in Nigeria

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July 24, 2024
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5 min read
Image depicting a brown-skinned hand holding a magnifying glass over a sheet of paper with the text "SALARY" in bold letters.

I got a sneak peek into Intelpoint's upcoming report, The Nigerian Workspace Report, and discovered that people who consider themselves experts earn between ₦100,000 and ₦300,000. This is low for an expert, especially in the tech industry. Why is this so?

Pro tip: To join the waitlist to receive the report once it's live in a few weeks, fill out this form. 

Tech HR professional, Weyinmi Barber, explains that while some professionals cannot properly ascertain their expertise levels, they might not have sufficient information about salary data to negotiate effectively.

Additionally, some employers do not have competitive salary structures due to limited access to salary information from other companies where they operate. This ultimately results in a pool of undervalued and underpaid talent.

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Career coaches often advise working professionals to use strategies like estimating based on current pay when negotiating the next salary, while new job seekers are expected to find out from others what competitive salary to demand.

However, access to a specialised salary insights platform can help address this issue. Global companies like Glassdoor and Payscale have made a name for themselves across several markets, including Nigeria, as the go-to places for anonymous company and salary reviews.

But these platforms are not localised to Africa so there is limited access to detailed salary data specific to the local job market and insights on local salary trends.

A quick check on Glassdoor for companies in Nigeria features more data about multinationals and global companies with a presence in the country than for those existing only in the local market.

Company and salary reviews are often provided by job boards and recruitment websites. But there are barely any of these in Nigeria. Why is this service not featured on popular names like Jobberman, MyJobMag, NGcareers, and Jobzilla, among others?

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Fortunately, an expanded search for Nigerian websites dedicated to user-generated salary information came up with only one outcome — MySalaryScale.

Platform spotlight: MySalaryScale

MySalaryScale was founded in 2018 and is a product of MyJobMag, one of Nigeria's top-listed job search platforms.

It was primarily created for company and salary reviews and is currently used in four African countries, including Ghana and Kenya.

However, as the founder, Ogugua Belonwu, noted during a chat with Techpoint Africa, it hasn't grown as it should have for several reasons, including funding, monetisation opportunities, and lack of trust, resulting in people's reluctance to share salary information.

He added that it has the potential for growth as it has added several features since launch, including Know Your Worth, which helps candidates calculate how much they should be paid based on the role, industry, years of experience, and location.

The platform initially leveraged MyJobMag's reputation to source the first set of salary data.

"We did a big campaign where we encouraged users on MyJobMag to contribute. At the end of the day, we had information directly sourced from those people. It's not advisable to look at data provided by employers during job listings because it's a bit tricky. Sometimes, they provide bogus salary ranges or job descriptions different from what was initially proposed."

Even using a familiar platform with no previous cases of breaking anonymity or disclosing data, much effort went into convincing people to contribute.

Belonwu believes that going forward, getting people to voluntarily submit company and salary reviews will largely be a function of building a strong voice in the industry and increased popularity for the platform. He also proposed using incentives to encourage people.

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Reacting to how forthcoming people often are with these details on platforms like Nairaland, Belonwu noted that might not be the best source of intelligence for decision-making.

"On Nairaland, you can't ascertain where the data is coming from. They may be correct, but it's not verified. MySalaryScale does proper vetting. When you publish a salary on MySalaryScale, it doesn't go live immediately. There's back-end work to ensure it even makes sense. With that structure in place, there's a bit of correctness in the data. But it's a lot of work!"

The founder specifically stated that funding might have delayed the business' growth.

"We've done so much with bootstrapping. At this point, we need money to grow big! We'll need to hire more hands to do verification and marketing, develop more tools, for instance, for interviewing, a community feature, and job modules."

Why haven't other job websites followed suit?

On why other job websites with more clout, mainstream reach, and probably deeper pockets haven't attempted to include such an important feature capable of helping Nigerians earn what they deserve, Belonwu highlights the monetisation potential.

Fifteen-year-old Jobberman, for instance, gave this feature a shot in 2019 when it launched a salary insight tool for individuals and employers to provide access to data that would help jobseekers demand market-standard pay. However, the tool is no longer active. We reached out to the company for comments but got no response yet.

Belonwu emphasised the impact of the environment on getting enough data that can be used to drive any form of monetisation. He also pointed out the fact that since launching in Kenya, the platform has received the most entries from the country.

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"I feel Kenyans are more open about salaries than Nigerians."

He also noted how companies barely create budgets for branding, which they can use to control public perception through platforms like MySalaryScale.

Interestingly, these limitations do not exist within Glassdoor's business model, especially the features it has successfully monetised. Glassdoor started as an online job search platform but has grown beyond connecting employers to employees to providing holistic intelligence for employers and employees.

With access to millions of reviews covering companies from various industries globally and comprehensive salary data with detailed breakdowns by job title, location, and experience, companies use Glassdoor to optimise their brand perception.

They also use it to ascertain where they rank compared to other companies in terms of employee satisfaction and workplace culture. The platform offers targeted job advertisements at a cost. All these are add-ons to free features that pull users to the platform daily.

Glassdoor recently introduced community features, a tool Belonwu considers a brilliant strategy. He believes MySalaryScale can adopt it later to attract professionals from different companies who can be converted to contributors or advertisers.

Belonwu is optimistic about MySalaryScale.

"We're investing more in MyJobMag. If we get direct funding for MySalaryScale, we go big immediately. Otherwise, we keep making money from MyJobMag and investing a percentage into MySalaryScale to build more authority and tools, but the growth will be a lot slower."

Belonwu concluded that, while it may take some time to become popular, the Nigerian market is ready for a platform that accurately portrays its realities in terms of competitive compensation based on company size, location, and industry.

Human enthusiast | Writer | Senior reporter | Podcaster. Find me on Twitter @Nifemeah.
Human enthusiast | Writer | Senior reporter | Podcaster. Find me on Twitter @Nifemeah.
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Human enthusiast | Writer | Senior reporter | Podcaster. Find me on Twitter @Nifemeah.
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