Are You Paid What You're Worth?

Rating:
Summary: Does not teach Salary Negotiation or Strategy
Review: In general, this book provides information of how salary schedules and bonuses are determined. In addition, it describes a rather complicated, subjective process of how to determine what your salary should be, but later states that you cannot walk into your bosses office with this information and ask for a raise. There is some information, albeit very brief, of how to prepare for a job performance review and how to ask for a signing bonus with a potential future company, but most of it is common sense.

If you wish to learn how companies set up salary schedules and the like, read this book. However, if like me, you'd rather learn how to negotiate a better salary and benefits with your current or a future company, I'd recommend reading 'Get More Money on Your Next Job..' by Lee Miller.

Rating:
Summary: Superb survey of compensation practices;empowering must-read
Review: This is a brilliant distillation of the quagmire of complexity surrounding all forms of pay-for-work. And it is a very pragmatic book, based upon decades of field-work of an obviously gifted psychologist. It will empower you in a number of ways: (a) you will get paid what you're worth; (b) you will learn where you are on the continuum of workers economy-wide; (c) the astute reader will come away with concrete ideas about where he needs to grow himself to move to the next level professionally; (d) hiring managers and HR professionals will learn to use compensation as a tool for corporate continuity and growth (e) executives and management consultants will likely be provoked to reconceptualize and restructure compensation strategies toward proactively achieving enterprise-wide buyin toward the shared mission of the firm.

Rating:
Summary: Salary.com CEO loves this book
Review: This is the best book I have read about compensation, developing a pay structure and understanding how an organization sets pay. It is written to be interesting and understood by normal people with a slight inclination to learning how organizations set pay. Read just pages 30-70 and you learn most of what the book has to offer. To get the raise you need, read that section and then also research actual pay statistics for free on the web or if you are really serious, even buy premium salary reports that give the same numbers HR people use to evaluate "market pay" from salary sections of websites like Monster, AOL, Yahoo, Hotjobs, Careerbuilder and Salary.com. There are two numbers you need to know to calculate ranges of market pay: what do recruiters say you would earn by switching jobs (ask a headhunter or cruise above job boards to research) and what do HR managers report to surveys (look on salary sites). Having an opinion on these two numbers and then applying yourself to understanding the processes described in this book will make you a winner in the career long pay negotiation game. Good Job Mr. O'Malley. Buy and read this book.

G. Kent Plunkett, CEO, Salary.com