Making the most of pharmaceutical industry salary tools includes enhancing your efforts to move beyond traditional pharmaceutical pay trends and questionnaires. Search for ways to direct employee attitude toward their jobs. Utilize pharmaceutics salary surveys that ask if professionals feel valued by their employer. Ask if workers believe they fully utilize their skills when on the job. Find out if they would leave their jobs if another opportunity arose. Poll employees to see how many feel their job is secure.

Many traditional pharma salary tools estimate cost of living. For example, some resources calculate the difference between living costs in the employee's city versus the city where he plans to live. You could take it a step further and explore earnings tools that measure how much employees would have to make in the new city to maintain their current living standard. Making the most of pharmaceutical industry salary tools means exploring different ways make pay information meaningful.

1. Join a community forum to track careers and pharmaceutical salaries.

2. Work with employment placement agencies and health outcomes professionals who are familiar with pharmaceutical industry salary tools.

3. Review research articles about the pharmaceutical field and pharmaceutical pay.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Interact with individuals who seek pharmaceutical industry salaries

Discuss career plans and pharmaceutical salary options in community forums. Interact with other industry professionals. Use the forums to gain knowledge from others with experience or to give advice to novices. Sometimes called a discussion board, many forums offer national and global networking opportunities.

I recommend: Review the forum at Science Careers. Read discussions about job options for specific degrees, networking basics and other questions pertaining to the biotech and pharma industry. Find the companies who pay the best salaries in the pharmaceutical industry at City-Data.com. Register for this free forum to connect with thousands of members.

Add job placement companies and health economics to your pharmaceutical industry salary tools

Job placement companies rank high on the list of resources. Use their services to list career opportunities, attract new hires and post pharmaceutical pay and other information. Pinpoint top professionals with pharma sales, marketing and biotechnology backgrounds. On another note, health outcomes services provide other resources including training, industry publications and career insight.

I recommend: Contact Pharmahorizons.com to place your leading career candidates in the job best suited for them. Employers and recruiters can access the services of employment placement agencies such as this one. Get in touch with HealthEconomics.com to access pharmaceutical industry salary, career information and a host of other resources pertaining to the pharma industry. Review their comprehensive list of biotech and pharmaceutical companies, journals and newsletters.

Peruse publications to monitor pharmaceutical salaries and other industry issues

Read medical journals to follow controversial news and developments. Some journal articles may not directly discuss pharma salary but they do cover pressing topics such as the role played by pharmaceutical professionals in medical prescribing habits.

I recommend: Access PLOS Medicine, a peer-reviewed publication published by the Public Library of Science. Gain an international perspective of issues that affect health care, including articles about the pharmaceutical industry’s connection with nurses. Contact BMJ Publishing Group and review information that challenges pharmaceutical pay to medical journals for advertising purposes.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Utilize creative ways to use information about pharmaceutical industry salaries to keep employees interested and engaged in a career with your company.

Pharmaceutical sales salary varies as widely as the list of different pharmaceutical products on the market. So how do you set appropriate salaries? There are a number of resources you can access to help you with the task of setting competitive salaries but also sticking to your bottom line.

Pharma salary should first coincide with your business objectives as it impacts recruitment, retention and performance. Creating an effective compensation policy will help strengthen your sale force with the hopes of sending your company to new profit heights. Especially in the sales arena, a compensation package should include motivating factors.

While a sales rep in pharmaceuticals in the US can expect to make, on average, $56,425 annually, there are many factors to consider when setting salary, including:

1. Salary for pharmaceutical sales is usually incentive based and includes performance bonuses, commissions or other perks.

2. A good benefits package can add much worth to pharmaceutical salary.

3. Experience counts when setting a pharmaceutics salary.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Research pharmaceutical industry salaries

A number of companies are in the salary survey business with reports available for purchase online. By using salary survey tools to help you factor in location, size of the firm and other considerations, you can come up with an average salary which will help you set base pay.

I recommend: Browse through salary surveys offered by Vault.com. View the kinds of surveys available from Pearl Meyer & Associates.

Add software to your pharmaceutical industry salary tools

Technology provides solutions to a variety of business-related issues, and salary is no exception. Software can help you set up salary policies, benchmarks for pay raises and other strategies. Most software options are easy to use, but you can usually demo potential software before purchasing.

I recommend: Incentive compensation management is the key function of a user interface software system offered by Varicent. Request a live demo or free trial of eCompensation software from Halogen Software.

Keep up on news and trends as they relate to pharmaceutical salaries

The pharmaceutical industry is in constant motion. It's important to stay up to date on trends and other information as it relates to finances, thus impacting your capabilities to offer salaries and bonuses.

I recommend: Sign up for a subscription to BioWorld Today to keep up to date on the financial aspects of the industry and how they can affect your bottom line. Download a demo showing how Lawson Compensation Management can help you award merit pay increases, and download the Aberdeen Report on compensation.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Bonus structures in pharmaceutical pay vary from company to company. Some companies apply an annual cap to their bonus payouts. Others have unlimited bonuses. In either case, bonuses of usually paid on a quarterly basis and are contingent on the expectation that reps attain or exceed all of their targets or goals.

Track pharmaceutical industry salary tools news and trends with resources for both employees and employers. Look for detailed reports that provide wide-ranging salary information. For instance, some reports offer earnings grouped according to company size. Other analyses show wages based on gender. Additional tools discuss pay according to educational level or job experience.

The more exhaustive the resource, the more effective the salary tool for assisting employees or your employer. Study in-depth reports, publications, salary surveys and other intelligence to stay abreast of pharmaceutics salary developments. In addition, access the news media for timely updates on pharma salary.

1. Acquire comprehensive pharmaceutical pay reports.

2. Discover pharma salary resources written from an insider's perspective.

3. Follow news reports about pharmaceutical industry salaries.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Search for all-inclusive pharmaceutical industry salary tools

Look at tools that calculate wages based on personalized data such as job title, years of experience and city where the job candidate lives. Find resources that include earnings by company size and employer type. For example, salaries by company size may show pay rates for businesses with more than 50,000 employees versus earnings for companies with less than 5,000 workers. The point is to find pharmaceutical industry salary tools that provide in-depth, categorical information.

I recommend: Peruse PayScale for reports about salaries in the pharmaceutical industry. The organization offers figures about several careers in the pharma field such as earnings for sales representatives, project managers and clinical research associates. Access the annual career survey at Pharmaceutical Technology. Their yearly report covers pharmaceutical industry salary and employment-related issues. More than 1,000 industry employees participate in the survey that outlines job experience, wages and benefits, career challenges, and other issues relevant to pharmaceutical salaries and employment.

Explore non-traditional pharmaceutical salary tools

Stay informed of remuneration in the pharmaceutical industry with articles written from individuals working in the career field. Gain first-hand intelligence from biotechnology and pharma industry professionals.

I recommend: Subscribe to Pharmaceutical Representative to read reports about issues that may affect employee salaries. Contact BioPharm International to read articles such as their review of the challenges facing industry sectors like biopharmaceutical manufacturing. The company also features a career section to find and post jobs.

Access breaking news and employment lists for trends in pharmaceutical pay

Tap national and international headlines about the pharmaceutical field with news-media resources. Monitor pharmaceutical salaries from a global perspective to gain knowledge about industry wages and trends from a broad point of view.

I recommend: Review MSN on a regular basis to see the latest headlines about biotech and pharma employment. Review JobStar Central for employment and salary information for careers in scientific career fields including pharmaceutical and biotech.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  When reviewing pharma salary information, consider the level of experience, job duties and educational background before making any comparisons.

There are many aspects that can affect salary aside from the amount of pay included on a pay check. Some of these factors, which are also key terms, can determine whether or not an employee wants to work for your company. Factors that can affect salary include the structure of pay, bonuses and benefit packages. In order to be competitive in the pharmaceutical industry, you'll need to use salary tools to help you evaluate your compensation packages.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Incentive-based pharmaceutical salary

Many pharmaceutical companies use an incentive-based system to pay their employees. This type of system can be commission-based or it can involve quotes and other types of measurements that an employee must meet in order to achieve a specific salary.

I recommend: HowStuffWorks offers an overview of incentive-based salary. It covers the benefits of using this type of system.

Pharmaceutical base salary

A base salary, also called base pay, is the minimum amount a pharmaceutical employee can earn in an incentive-based system. The base salary is usually set at the time of hiring, and employers may raise it when an employee passes a review. The employee may gain additional income through bonuses and commissions.

I recommend: YoursDaily.com examines compensation for pharmaceutical sales representatives and includes information on base pay.

Pharmaceutical benefits

Like most employees, pharmaceutical employees often consider the benefit package as a part of their compensation package from a company. An employee may take a lower salary, if he knows the benefits cost less and provide more than other companies offer.

I recommend: Cirrus Pharmaceuticals provides information on the benefit package it offers employees. You can use it as a salary tool to determine whether or not your business offers a competitive package.

Software management

Some pharmaceutical companies like to use software as a salary tool. Programs that offer software management can calculate salary based on commission and other incentives.

I recommend: Varicent is a company that offers software management designed to work with incentive-based compensation.

Pharmaceutical salary surveys

Pharmaceutical salary surveys give you an overview of aspects affecting salary. It can include bonus structure, benefit packages and other factors.

I recommend: Pearl Meyer and Partners offers salary surveys based on industry. You can learn more by visiting its website.

Placement companies

Placement companies often know what salary potential employees expect to make. In some cases, placement companies offer resources to employers that can include salary surveys and other tools.

I recommend: HealthEconomics.com is a resource designed to help business owners in the pharmaceutical business.