Dan Magallanes, CEO of Headhunter Manila, says your salary should be four times your age. Meaning if you are 30 years old, you should be getting P120,000 monthly – at least.
Bink, blink, blink.
I make a mental roll call of my acquaintances and close friend and find that I can pull out only 10 percent of the names in my roster that meet this rough rule of thumb. CEOs, senior management in a multinational firm or entrepreneurs who have already made it big in their chosen businesses are what their calling cards say.
What does that mean? If we are not getting this kind of pay scale, we should get a career consultant to fix our sagging careers, Magallanes says. I admit that the previous sentence is laced with a bit of jaded flippancy, but the headhunter makes an impassioned case on why paying a career consultant a hefty fee is worth it, even when our salaries are languishing.
I have observed that most of our executives and professionals at any point in their career would rather buy a high-end mobile phone or an expensive designer bag than pay a career consultant for their stagnant or sagging career. They tend to forget that they have to live on a parallel lifestyle based on their position in the company and of course their take-home pay. If you are bent on having a good career, you have to focus on how you will attain it at a certain paradigm. It is not wanting but not doing anything.
He cites several cases to drive home the point. Here’s one: a 38-year-old who graduated from a “not-so-known college in the southern part of the country” gets half-a-million per month on top of dizzying perks, besting nine other candidates from top universities. He even got a sign-on bonus of $50,000. He had no MBA and does not intend to get one.
Raising your eyebrows yet? Here’s another one:
Magallanes says he plucked this 28-year-old communications officer who graduated from an up-town college in the south from an international NGO and placed him in a blue-chip company for three times his salary in the NGO. This blue-chip company was bought by another giant, so Magallanes advices him to get a job somewhere else. Three months of searching ends up a dud and guy gets nervous. Magallanes tells him to be an entrepreneur. On his first month, he earned his salary for the first quarter of the following year.
I would love to meet this guy and get him to coach MoneySmarts readers next year. In a country where UP, La Salle, Ateneo and UA&P lords it over all the others, a guy who says he does not look for MBAs from top universities has something important to say to Filipinos. But here’s the most controversial part in his article:
“The best career is in the Philippines nowadays. Blue-chip companies are coming our way. This is the place to become successful. The most comfortable life is here. You leave the country because you feel you cannot make it here. If you cannot make it here, you cannot make it anywhere.”
True or false?
Read the entire article here.
October 8th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
I doubt it, particularly the last statement …
“The most comfortable life is here. You leave the country because you feel you cannot make it here. If you cannot make it here, you cannot make it anywhere.”
Blink. blink. blink. Ask our OFWs here.
Of course, the most comfortable life is always here -at home. Leaving a country does not mean you cannot make it here. It is that you took the opportunity to make it big somewhere else.
And oh, about that salary 4x your age, i think it is an overstated goal considering the level of salaries here in the country. I guess no one in any business would give a fresh grad of 20 years old some 80T a month (oh well, maybe true for a Ponzi scheme). That is why considering the cost of having a career consultant, most Pinoys would opt to buy those “tangible” things to satisfy their short term wants. I am not saying these things are “all bad” but career wise, most of us Pinoys would not invest in a career consultant because of the cost, the limited opportunity here, and others. After all, each of us know what we really want in our career.
I wonder how old is Dan Magallanes.
October 8th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
“your salary should be four times your age.”
- on the contrary, one reason why i stopped taking a peek at salary surveys of some online job hunting services is that they put the price tag on IT pros way below what a lot of peers expect for the tough responsibility. it is pretty interesting to find a different take from another headhunter on the matter though.
i guess that salary = 4 x age formula’s another reason to think about moving on to the 10% herd in the 90-10 rule.
“The best career is in the Philippines nowadays. Blue-chip companies are coming our way. This is the place to become successful. The most comfortable life is here. You leave the country because you feel you cannot make it here. If you cannot make it here, you cannot make it anywhere.”
- he has a point there since the signs that BPO’s are on the way up are there and seem to stay for a good number of the coming years. however i still think it’s oversimplified to say the least.
at least for IT, i’ve seen people build great careers because of skills acquired through overseas employment early on. also i know people who made it big elsewhere in IT as well contrary to that rule of thumb laid down there.
of course such trends could change depending on how much the Philippines would be able to partake of the globalization pie going Asia’s direction in upcoming years.
October 8th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
false. the guy is raising his own job’s worth.
Millions of OFWs continually disprove this theory. these people who cannot “make it” here, make it abroad. in fact, I’d go so far as to say Filipino talents get recognized abroad. rarely here.
equal opportunity is rare in the Philippines. you see this starkly in job ads more than anything else. exclusions listed in the ads. not more than 25 y/o. only from UP. only with college degree. will not entertain those w/o above qualifications.
you cannot make it here, you cannot make it anywhere? watch me.
October 8th, 2007 at 11:38 am
senseless!!!
October 8th, 2007 at 10:55 am
I guess Mr. Magallanes have a lot of real life examples of people to back up his controversial statement regarding having a career in the Philippines.