Middle managers expect employers to pay 20% to 30% more than what is offered

Applicants for mid-level management positions expect employers to pay 20-30% higher than what they are actually offered, experts from the UTEAM recruiting company have calculated. At the same time, only a third of employers are ready to meet applicants halfway – since the demand for middle managers is now limited (with the exception of production managers). Recruiters suggest that the overestimation of these salary expectations is affected by the shortage of personnel in another category of leaders – top managers.

Salary expectations of middle managers overtake offers from employers by 20-30%, follows from the analytics of the UTEAM personnel company. A comparison of vacancies and resumes of managers for January-July of this year showed that, on average, applicants for managerial positions across the country expect a salary of 174 thousand rubles, in Moscow – 238 thousand rubles. In general, over the past two years, salary expectations for this category of workers have increased by 25-30%. At the same time, the average salaries offered to top and middle managers during this time increased by only 10%. As a result, in a number of industries the gap between expected and real wages is 20-30%.

The biggest difference is in the IT sector. On average in Russia, applicants applying for the position of CIO expect 450-500 thousand rubles, but employers offer them an average of 100 thousand rubles. less. In other categories of middle management, the gap is slightly lower. So, applicants for the position of financial director would like to receive 395 thousand rubles, but they are ready to offer them 368 thousand rubles, for commercial directors the figures are 378 thousand and 327 thousand rubles, for operating directors – 335 thousand and 310 thousand roubles. HR directors claim 290 thousand rubles. with a salary offer of 255 thousand rubles. Only every third company (34%), faced with higher salary expectations, is ready to adapt its vacancies to them – this is possible if the candidate matches the position profile to the maximum.

“70% of applicants are people who managed small teams, with no experience in managing an entire company or a large division. Another 30% already have work experience in a top management position and expect a salary two to three times higher than the average,” says Irina Antonenko, head of the UTEAM recruitment department. According to Olga Voroshilova, a partner at the Cornerstone recruiting company, the demand for executives is now heterogeneous – mostly employers are actively competing for production managers. “For example, the salary offer for the head of the shop can now be 500 thousand rubles, which brings him closer to the category of upper middle management, even if he does not quite correspond to it in terms of a set of powers,” the recruiter says.

Probably, the overestimated salary expectations of applicants for middle management positions were the result of a shortage in another category – top managers. As Dina Akimova, managing partner of the Ruspartners recruiting company, notes, now employers are having difficulty filling senior management positions – this is due both to the departure of some specialists abroad and the growth in the number of new businesses with new tasks. “Against the background of the excess of demand over supply, the level of wages increased by 15-40%. This does not always apply only to the fixed part of the salary, since a significant part of the income of managers is built on the basis of bonuses, bonuses and long-term payments,” says Anna Sus, partner at the consulting company Odgers Berndtson Russia. Perhaps, says Oksana Morsina, managing partner of the RosExpert consulting company, under these conditions, middle managers are guided by the future increased demand for their services – after all, companies that are ready for long-term investment in the personnel reserve can grow top managers from such personnel who are ready for long-term investment in the personnel reserve .

Anastasia Manuylova