Degrees and professional experience play an important role when it comes to salary levels. However, if you want to get a salary increase by changing jobs, you should apply for positions that require you to learn new skills. This is what the results of a new McKinsey study say.
“Human capital at work: The value of experience” – this is the name of a study published at the beginning of June by the management consultancy McKinsey. One of the crucial results: If you have to learn new skills for a new job, you can almost be sure of a salary increase.
Salary increases of 30 to 45 percent occur in almost half of all job changes
The information portal Merkur refers to the study and explains: In Germany, the salary increase for professionals who change jobs an average of five times is 30 to 46 percent. The test subjects from all the countries studied by McKinsey (Germany, Great Britain, India and the USA) changed their jobs an average of two to four times within ten years. With each change, they received an average salary increase of six to ten percent, although cases of involuntary job changes with decreasing salaries were also taken into account. 40 to 50 percent of the test subjects also received a large salary increase of 30 to 45 percent when they started a new job.
Salary increases for job changes outside the industry are particularly high
McKinsey divides professionals into five salary levels. According to the publication, 32 percent of working people in Germany are currently facing a salary increase that will take them up a level.
They can control to a certain extent how much more salary they earn after changing jobs: According to the study, those who switch to a different industry and have to learn new skills for the new job have a better chance of getting a decent salary increase than employees who stay in their comfort zone. McKinsey refers to the proportion of required skills that need to be relearned for the new job as “skill distance”. In Germany this is on average 40 percent, although in all countries included in the study a skill distance of 35 to 50 percent was required for a large salary increase. The higher the value, the higher the new salary will usually be.
Expert: Good job prospects await outside the comfort zone
Of course, the new skills to be learned are not the only factor for the level of the new salary: in Germany, professional experience accounts for around 40 percent of the salary of employees – depending on the industry and qualification – after ten years of working time, and after 30 years it already accounts for around 60 percent.
Whether a lot of work experience or little – Angelika Reich, partner and expert at McKinsey, draws the following conclusion for employees: “The results should be taken into account that in Germany due to the Digitalization By 2030, around 6.5 million employees will have undergone significant retraining and many of them will have to change careers. Anyone who shows the courage to acquire new skills and leave the comfort zone has good job prospects and the prospect of a decent salary increase.” She is quoted as saying this by Merkur. And she recommends that companies learn from the study results and actively support their employees. Because: Further training opportunities are one of the most important selection criteria for choosing a new employer.
Editorial team finanzen.net