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Not sure if you guys have come across this but hopefully it's helpful for people here in terms of salary comparison purposes.

And that of Hays?
HAYS ASIA SALARY GUIDE


This post has been edited by none: Aug 24 2018, 07:57 AM

Why the banking and finance section they don't cover more junior roles? Min I see is AVP with 8 years of experience. Fresh grad how?

Robert Walters, Hays, Jobstreet and as mentioned above Kelly Services all publish annual salary guides.

What I would like is for more Malaysians to post their salaries on the like of payscale.com and glassdoor.com. I like the crowdsourcing model more than depending on these companies.

sometimes i doubt on these figures.

There are still tons of engineers getting 3-4k salary in those small / medium private company.

They should have highlighted this guide only applicable for MNC or big corporation

Take it with a pinch of salt. They're a guide/ indicator but may not necessary be a true reflection of the job market out there.

Same thought, the lowest level they start in the banking sector is from branch manager

yes, agree with you to take it with a pinch of salt, but will you wonder, if you fall below the market or out of the lower range, how would you feel?

for an instance, for my own, in the kelly services report, i'm 2 years short of the min 10 years experience but my basic salary is merely on the min side, i feel just okay, nothing great because i'm only at the bare minimum.

for my industry, most of these reports didnt cover the juniors level, only start from the mgr/avp level, how about those lower ones?

As they may not be a true reflection, it's best to check other reports and compare then derive your own conclusion. It's merely as a reference. Salary is offered by companies based on qualifications, role, experience, responsibilities etc. It's hard to see apple to apple as even the role of a "Marketing Manager" could vary. For example, there are companies outside who advertise high salary for "Marketing Manager" but when you read the role, it's actually for a Sales person/ sales role which they term as "Marketing Manager". Titles can be deceiving. I believe cases like these are also captured in the report (if it's merely based on title) and thus would not be an accurate reflection.

Thus depends on how you see it. The usage of such report can be 2:

1. See where you're at. If you're at the lower receiving end, you can try your luck and show it to your HR/ management and request for a salary adjustment.
2. Know where you're at and self evaluate to see why you're not at the higher end. Craft the next steps to get to where you want to be.

Salary is just one thing. If it's a job that takes away the freedom and time over the weekend, I'll say "thank you" and reject even if the pay is triple. As such, it also depends. The higher the pay, the more the responsibility and load of work.

Salary is one thing. There are high and low earners that's for sure. But nowadays, iregardless of the wages, we no longer can get a dime for a dime. A dime today will only worth half a dime tomorrow.

Best example for all Malaysian earners to ponder:
Kelly Malaysia:
10-year experienced professional earner - RM10,000 (SGD3,333)

Kelly Singapore:
1-year professional - SGD 3,500 (RM 10,500)

This renders the above salary guides pretty much useless.

Should Malaysian grads
1) spend 10 year working locally to with triple effort to climb up to 10k position
OR
2) spend 1 year slogging in SG to get SGD3.5k

Let's assume it's easier to find jobs here (which is not given all the costs and racial barriers of doing business here with low-spending population), would the statistics in Kelly Services Malaysia or other similar salary reports help in attracting and inspiring the talents to our industries?

Let's face the fact. For now, our weak currency can only attract the likes of brute labours from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal etc as well as 2nd or 3rd stringers professionals (mostly in IT) from the likes of India.

Even the Indonesians have ditched Malaysia for greener pastures elsewhere. Yet our leaderships are still sleep-walking with the latest plan to for 3rd national car, which surely will be a disservice by denying more than half of the population the comfort of the imported quality cars.

Forget about attracting talents and reversing brain-drain if this continues.

I apologise for my bitching above.

This post has been edited by abc2005: Aug 26 2018, 11:31 AM

I sometimes think that a lot of professions are missed by youngsters here since they might not exist or be very small here. For example, the report doesn't cover the academic side in finance at all, just the industry. This is probably because there is no major research based business school in Malaysia at all so that the "real" academic side (research, not teaching) does not exist at all here though INCEIF might just about get an honorable mention but is nowhere near the big Indian or Chinese schools in research, leave alone the Sin/HK ones.

However, the compensation in the academic side of finance far outstrips the industry salaries mentioned in the guide here (even accounting for cost of living) though one has to take the salaries in India, China, Sin/HK, the US etc as the base. For eg., the starting salary offered this year at one of the major Indian business schools, the Indian School of Business, is reported to be about Rs. 8.5 million or about RM 500k (annual). While India is more expensive than Malaysia, ISB offers excellent subsidized accommodation (used to be 3000 sq. ft but the new units are supposed to be larger) to compensate for the relatively low pay. Starting salaries in HK are the next lowest in the major league and still seem to be only about HK$1.2 million (RM 600k) (I know - I was here and could only look in envy at those in mainland China or even India looking at that accommodation ) but increments are higher there. Singapore is about S$250-300k (RM 750-900k) and some Chinese business school starting salaries have been reported to be the highest at RMB 2 million/yr but this is reserved for the superstars.

Of course, the preparation for these jobs is far longer and more intense than the industry jobs - officially could be done in only 5 years after graduation for the PhD but the realistic time frame except for the super genius who is also super lucky is about 7-8 years (masters + 6 years PhD). One also obviously has to be in the top 1-2% of their class.

This post has been edited by physdude: Aug 27 2018, 03:27 AM

It is actually much harder to get a job here as a well-qualified Indian as compared to Singapore. Singapore has the personalized employment pass which allows you to go there and look for a job while ensuring that your visa has nothing to do with your employer and that you can switch jobs without restriction and be unemployed for a while as well. The only requirement is that your last drawn salary was S$18k or more when applying. I actually took up this pass myself when I was still deciding whether it is better to live here without working or working in Singapore.

I didn't even really consider working in Malaysia as the employment pass is tied to your employer and there are a lot of restrictions about changing jobs, cannot be unemployed on it etc etc. There was also the point of there not being really any place for me to work here and the low wages but I didn't even need to consider those. They do have this TalentCorp thing but you actually must have worked in Malaysia for 3 years under those highly restrictive employment visas before you can get that. If Malaysia really wants well qualified Indians to work here, they need to make an attractive employment visa - Canada and Australia even offer direct permanent residency, even the EU has the blue employment visa which is more flexible etc. I definitely don't think Malaysia is so much higher on attractiveness for employment than Singapore, Canada, Australia and the EU that they can afford to provide such a bad choice by comparison.

The TalentCorp visa looks really absurd to me as the salary requirement is very weak (just RM 15k a month!) so it seems to be catering for lower rung professionals and has this strong restriction of having worked in Malaysia for 3 years so a person who is on this must have been attracted to the really unattractive standard employment visa in the first place which must mean either that they couldn't get the more attractive options to work or that they must have some other reason to work in Malaysia. Overall, it seems like a visa policy to attract a very unusual set of people. I would have really liked to be a fly on the wall for the meeting that decided that! (just to know how they think if nothing else)

OTOH, MM2H is pretty easy and has few restrictions except that you can't work. So Malaysia is essentially much more welcoming if you don't want to work than if you do. OTOH, Singapore doesn't seem to even have an option for Indians to stay long term without working or looking for work. So for an Indian who wants to be here, the logical choice is Singapore if you want to work and Malaysia if you don't.

My guess is that there is zero interest in the Malaysian government to attract well qualified professionals and those that do come here to actually work are mostly by chance or necessity (posted here).

But the low wages here do mean really cheap house cleaning services, grocery shopping+delivery (happyfresh), food (of course!) etc. I am actually paying less in RM for my house cleaning than I was paying in US$ when I was in Chicago despite that being 10 years ago and my apartment here being twice the size! Geo-arbitrage handily beats inflation any day.

This post has been edited by physdude: Aug 27 2018, 05:13 AM

Very interesting... Thanks for sharing, TS.

although i find myself above this kelly's curve now but i am sad at the state of the max salary for my field
there is a massive shortage but yet the pay is so low

That only means there is a shortage at those low salaries - this is just Econ 101! For example, when US farmers complain that there are not enough laborers to pick the fruits, that only means there are not enough laborers to pick the fruit at the wage they are offering. As Australian miners discovered about a decade ago, shortages disappear even for tough jobs like truck drivers in the desert when the wages get high enough (A$250k or something like that at that point). If they paid US$250k for fruit pickers, I don't think they will any longer have shortages even if they only allowed true blue American born people to do the job.

Thanks for the facts. In fact, as long as we stay where we are, we are going to be left behind and made poorer by our past, present and future policy makers.

Whether we like it or not, we are consumers, not producers. As consuming population, we couldn't care less about the minuscule raw materials exports, which favour cheaper/low value of ringgit. What we care are the power of consumption, which is, how much can we consume with our WEAK currency and HIGH inflation. We might as well make our currency strong so that people can consume MORE in order to BOOST the ECONOMY. When the population starts to spend, it will be the time the economy will grow. Then we can talk about raising interest rate to make our currency even stronger to attract for FOREIGN INVESTMENT in our financial markets.

Our government is just a bunch of short-sighted politicians that know nuts about economy. Why? Because they only care about being producers that the world couldn't care less and are willing to sell us with more quality with reasonable prices . For instance, the imported cars. Why the hell are we still getting into market that is so saturated with competitors? Are PROTON models any better or different than other imported cars?

O&G plays the most crucial part in our national income sources all these years during its heyday of high oil price and paid the most taxes and profits to the government. The question is, where had all the monies gone? I bet you get the picture already.

Being a producer of palm oils, durians, rubber, electronics etc is actually mentality of the poor. Again it's back to foolish policies way back years ago when our economy was in its heyday. Why? Becoming producers of these raw materials are no different than being consumers. They just consumed whatever the nature and environment provided them - a passive producers without creativity. By right, we should have become active producers with more aggressive and proactive mindset. Just one simple example in case you don't know - Japan doesn't produce BANANAS. Now, let's see, why are their TOKYO BANANAS become the favourite among locals and tourist-alike, including Malaysians?

Another example would be rubber. There are many uses of rubber. But why the hell are we still exporting latex or dried rubber to other countries for manufacturing purpose after spending so much resources and efforts in destroying the forest and growing rubber trees until they are tapped for their latex? Why not just make them into FINISHED PRODUCTS, like premium tyres, gloves (well one of the prides in Malaysia -TOPGLOVE) or CONDOMS (you know, huge market across the world), furnitures etc.

You see. There are a lot of potential we have with our god-given resources. But we are not being resourceful enough to tap into these potential. That's because the government only care about export, and export only regardless of what the world needs. Then they can boast about economic growth rates, subject to their own definition or manipulations, whatever that means...Who cares about this rate actually? You, me, LYN forumers? Or our colleagues that are wondering about their bonus rates they would get? The truth is - no one except for the govt news brouhaha items or the so-called ECONOMISTS that still couldn't figure out the way to strengthen our currency.

Sorry I digress from TS original intention.
P/S 12-piece Tokyo Banana cakes (duty-free) - ¥1,429 (RM53). How much does 12-piece banana kuih cost locally?

This post has been edited by abc2005: Aug 30 2018, 08:48 PM

Thanks for your testimonial. MM2H are meant for retirees. That's why there are quite a number of 'wealthy' Japanese couples applying and enjoying, thanks to the cheaper price tags for the items they can buy compared to their own homeland.

OTHH, RM15k is really nothing compared to the wages the talents can really earn elsewhere. The pittance will only attract the ones who are really desperate for a way out like the unskilled labours, and not the real deals that would be able to contribute to building up the industries.

Even if there are willing takers, which are mostly overseas Malaysians, they would have taken a hefty pay-cut and sacrifices to come here for the sake of nation-building, only to see the shitty environment and restrictive policies hovering over their heads. The only way the government can help in any way, is to strengthen the currency to lessen everyone's suffering, in order to compete with the likes of Singapore or Australia in terms of the compatible values and mutual benefits between the various industries, government, as well as the talents themselves.

Just look at Kuwait and Oman. Their strong currencies attract even the Europeans and Americans. Their only main produce = O&G.
(1 KWD = 3.30 USD = 13.60 MYR)

This post has been edited by abc2005: Aug 31 2018, 09:56 AM

Just to point out that consumption in our context here in this thread refers to the consumption by domestic consumers, aka ordinary people like you and me.

Govt spending is different case altogether. Their spending will directly impact our country's coffers and our yearly budget for schools, hospitals, medicine, road repairs, defence forces etc.

SRC, IMDB were Najib's toys that will land him in Sungai Buloh resort. Nothing more and nothing to be proud of. We couldn't even see a sen dropping into our pockets from these entities. Anyone getting benefits from these entities will join Najib sooner or later.