One of the most common reasons for the employees to become job-seekers is because of “being underpaid”. According to the findings of the research done by Salary.com, about 80% of those who thought to have been receiving inadequate compensation, were actually not. In fact, 17% of workers were actually overpaid. For around 30% of people the reason for the salary not corresponding to the market range was the over-titling of the employees. It means that they performed and were paid for the responsibilities of the position of a lower title. The higher title was supposed to substitute the necessity of pay increase.

So, if you wish to find out whether or not you are in reality underpaid and have a right to claim a higher salary, you should:

1. Match your position to a corresponding benchmark job (you can use Salary Wizard on internet for this). Your responsibilities should be similar while titles may differ, since companies name positions in different ways or you may be, like those 30% described above, over-titled.

2. Match the objective factors that influence your pay – industry, company size and geographical position – to the employer factors of other similar firms (a helpful on-line tool is The Personal Salary Report). Remember, that bigger companies tend to pay more for the same position than smaller ones.

3. Match your personal factors (experience, education, performance, etc.) with the factors that increase the pay (how they correspond to what you possess).

So, the main factors you should match to the corresponding positions are:

- job responsibilities;
- industry size;
- company size;
- geographical location;
- your personal educational background;
- level of experience;
- performance rating.

After you have considered all the above written, you may objectively estimate whether or not you are underpaid. If yes, you may raise the question of pay rise with your employer or set out to find new job with better perspectives and compensations.