Career in finance brings in the cash
The financial sector is still one of the most lucrative fields to get involved in when looking to build up wealth, while it is also still the best option to seek a job in Gauteng.
This is among the findings of the Quest Salary & Staffing Trends 2014/15 report, which for example shows that the median monthly salary of the highest paid job function with less than five years experience is a Chartered Accountant (CA), who gets paid around R42 500 monthly.
This is 14.2 times higher than the lowest median salary, that of a cleaner or tea lady, who earns R3 000 a month.
Also lucrative is jobs like being a business analyst (R23 000) or sales representative (R15 000), while it does not pay to do office jobs such as typist (R7 000) or receptionist (R7 000).
What is interesting is that management positions pay almost the same when it comes to different fields of employment.
Examples include (again, five years of less experience in the job) financial manager (R29 000), HR manager (R26 000), marketing manager (R29 000), sales manager (R27 000), IT manager (R29 000), infrastructure manager (R27 000), procurement manager (R29 000), communication manager (R27 000) and branch manager (R28 000).
All of these jobs naturally spike when experience of five years or more is obtained.
This is especially true in the construction and engineering fields, where the salaries of all job functions included in this industry increase substantially when staff have five or more years experience.
Often the salaries are more than double those of their counterparts with less than five years experience.
It should be noted that salaries of employees with less than five years experience in Gauteng are 7.3 per cent higher than the national median level.
The report also found that 64.4 per cent of respondent companies employ temporary/contract staff in addition to their permanent staff.
The highest paid temporary staff are to be found in the industrial and manufacturing industry. This industry pays substantially higher salaries for every temporary job function, when compared to the national median salaries for temporary staff.
As a group, engineers, analysts and quantity surveyors earn the highest salaries in comparison to all other positions reviewed in the survey once they have five or more years experience.
Also found is that Key Account managers are the highest commission earners, earning commission equivalent to 55.3 per cent of their salaries, whereas sales managers and sales representatives earn commission equivalent to 18.6 per cent and 34.8 per cent of their salaries respectively.
Andy Quinan, managing director of Database Solutions and co-editor of the report, says salaries can also be influenced by the type of industry and the size of the company.
Someone working for a company who employs 50 people cannot compare his salary with his counterpart who works for a company with more than 500 employees.
* The report does not cover all job types, but it provides a salary data for 38 key job functions that are prominent in most companies as well as some other industry-specific roles.
The survey is an effort to provide various employment-related benchmarks to employers and employees alike and to gain insight into salary and staffing trends.
Conducted in June and July this year, the web-based questionnaire was aimed at chief executives, human resource and finance managers.
