Tried-And_True Skill Sets Still Mean Money

Maybe it isn't front-page news these days, but factors such as age, sex, education and experience still have a strong, pervasive influence on the level of compensation received by managers, salespeople, and technical staff.

For nearly all of the 13 separate categories CRN studied, the more education a person has, the more he or she is paid, according to results from the 2000 CRN Salary Survey. Men are more highly paid than women, and the gap is growing. And compensation also increases strongly with age and experience.

Of course, some of these factors, such as age and experience, tend to be interrelated. And because experience is a key factor in compensation, women,many of whom entered the world of technology later than men,tend to have lower levels of experience and therefore lower compensation.

And in a world where the bottom line is under constant scrutiny, compensation is being tied more closely to performance,both by the individual and by the company,and in many cases this factor is at least as important as the other considerations mentioned.

Despite all the attention being paid to dot-coms, Vidya Shaker, director of recruiting at SeraNova Inc., a solution provider in Edison, N.J, said the market will adjust in time and compensation will reflect what people truly bring to the table. "There are a lot of people out there in school that are going to get into the IT industry, and this will help balance out the situation."

But these factors do not explain all the differences that are so evident in the survey results.

The gender gap, for example, is growing among the 1,014 solution provider personnel CRN surveyed. For men, the median level of total compensation (the sum of salary, bonus and commission) was $62,000 in 1999, compared with $48,000 for women. This represents a difference of 29.2 percent, up from 26.7 percent a year earlier.

The gap is also large (21percent) in the managerial category, and especially big (38 percent) in the sales area. Part of this, however, is due to differences in the level of experience between salesmen and saleswomen.

Interestingly, the pay gap is smallest in the technical staff category, the area where women are the least represented. Only 5 percent of the 526 technical staff people CRN interviewed were female, but their median level of compensation was $56,500 last year, only 2.5 percent below the $58,000 figure for men.

Taken as a group, men received a larger increase in their total compensation last year compared with women. Among the 911 men surveyed, the median level of compensation jumped 8.8 percent last year, compared with 6.7 percent for the 103 women who were surveyed.

Nor are women making much progress in cracking traditionally male-dominated job categories, such as managers and technical staff.

Among all the 1,014 personnel surveyed, 90 percent were male, a figure little changed from last year. In the case of technical staff, the figure was even higher at 95 percent. Nearly nine out of 10 respondents in the managerial category were men.

Only in the category of sales personnel are women making significant progress. Twenty-two percent of the 190 respondents in this category were female, up from 18 percent last year.

But nearly all of the gain was concentrated in the junior salesperson level, representing those with less than five years of experience, and the median level of compensation for these women was 22 percent below their male counterparts.

At the senior sales level,those with more than five years of experience,the percentage of women remained unchanged, and the pay gap was even larger at 27 percent.

The fact that more and more women are entering the sales ranks, however, bodes well for the future. As women gain more experience, the pay levels should begin to become more equal. And the most experienced women could move up into the sales manager category, an area where only 12 percent of the people CRN interviewed for this survey were female.

And at some solution providers, these percentages are much higher. Ed Crosslin, recruiting manager at Nuforia Inc., (now doing business as Red Sky Interactive), an Internet and e-commerce solution provider in Houston, said about one-third of all technicians at the company are women. "Our philosophy is to get the best people we can no matter whether they are male or female," he said.

Among other factors affecting compensation, business leaders, educators and government officials have long argued that education is a key to higher earnings and advancement in the workplace. For the third straight year, CRN's Salary Survey data provide strong evidence to back up this claim.

The differences in compensation depending on the level of education are stark and pervasive, cutting across the managerial, sales and technical staff categories.

Among all respondents with a high school education, for example, the median level of compensation in 1999 was $35,150. But for those with advanced degrees (master's, M.B.A., Ph.D., etc.), the figure more than doubles to $75,000.

But you do not need an advanced degree to make more money. For college graduates, the median level of compensation was $65,000 last year, a stunning 85 percent more than high school graduates.

And any college credit is worth more dollars. Survey results show that a person with some college experience had a median compensation level last year that was an eye-opening 42 percent, or about $15,000, higher than a person with a high school degree.

These trends hold true among personnel in the three job categories,managers, sales and service/support,surveyed by CRN, and also within almost all of the 13 individual job classifications. The differences are especially pronounced in classifications such as corporate manager, sales manager and junior salesperson, as well as technical staff with Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP), Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) and Certified Novell Engineer (CNE) certifications.

Critically, the data also show that the difference in compensation between those who are better educated and those who are less educated has widened significantly in the past year, glaring evidence that those without the skills to compete in the age of technology are being left behind.

High school graduates, for example, saw their median compensation increase less than 1 percent last year. Personnel with some college experience, in contrast, realized an 11.1 percent increase. For college graduates, the figure was even higher at 13 percent.

Lori Barbeau, corporate staffing manager at Comark Inc., a solution integrator based in Bloomington, Ill., said people who want to work in the IT industry are taking education much more seriously and are now getting the skills that they need to be successful.

"We are seeing more and more people coming from technical schools and focusing much more on certifications," Barbeau said.

Experience also plays a powerful role in compensation, especially in the sales category, and also among many technical staff areas as well as managerial categories such as chief executive and sales manager.

For example, salespeople with at least five years of experience had a median total compensation level of $69,000 in 1999, some 62 percent higher than the $42,500 figure for salespeople with less than five years of experience. Among technical staff, moving from less than five years of experience to between five and 10 years of experience brings anywhere from a 5 percent to 20 percent increase in total compensation, with the figure highest among those with MCP, CNE or MCSE certifications. For those with more than 10 years of experience, an additional 15 percent to 30 percent in compensation is not unusual.

Experience is also at a premium at the highest levels of management.

In the senior executive (chief executive, chief financial officer, president, etc.) category, for example, a person with between five years and 10 years of experience had a median compensation level of $70,000 in 1999, compared with only $45,000 for a person with less than five years of experience. For those with more than 10 years of experience, the figure increased to $80,000.

It should be noted, however, that in this category factors such as a person's employment record, or job performance in managerial positions at previous employers, are sometimes as important,or even more important,than experience in determining total compensation.

Nuforia's Crosslin agreed experience plays a very important role but said the company looks for the right balance between education and experience.

"A person can be very talented but not have much experience," he said. "An individual like this is going to come in, learn something new and bring a fresh perspective," Crosslin said.

Finally, the survey data show a strong, positive relationship between total compensation and age. This result is not surprising: Older workers tend to be in higher positions, or have more seniority, and receive higher levels of compensation.

What is interesting, however, is the fact that this relationship is much stronger in this year's survey and cuts across more job categories and individual job descriptions.

Even in the technical staff area, where young "geeks" are thought to rule, people between the ages of 31 and 50 have a median compensation level that is 27 percent, or $13,000, higher than their counterparts between 18 and 30.

The effect is strongest in the sales category. The median level of compensation for salespeople between 18 and 30 was $42,500 last year. For those between 31 and 50, however, the level of compensation jumps to nearly $62,000, an increase of about 45 percent. The figure increases an additional 40 percent, to $87,500, for those over 50.

This result is not surprising,many salespeople between the ages of 18 and 30 fall into the "junior" classification (those with relatively few years of experience), who make much less than their older, more senior counterparts who have had a chance to build up crucial relationships with customers. The most seasoned veterans, those over 50, tend to be the highest paid of all.

These trends also carry over into the managerial category, where technical managers and sales managers see sharp increases in compensation with age. In the technical manager classification, for example, people over 50 have a median compensation of $72,000, compared with $61,000 for those people between 31 and 50 and $56,000 for those people between 18 and 30. CRN