Salary requirement conundrum

Prothet_of_Doom

30 years old and £19K ? Are you serious ? That's NOT even a graduate starting salary. Stop undervaluing your experience and go in at a higher level.

19lottie82

Prothet_of_Doom wrote: »

30 years old and £19K ? Are you serious ? That's NOT even a graduate starting salary. Stop undervaluing your experience and go in at a higher level.

Yes, that does seem ridiculous, especially for London.

Price yourself higher than that, you have the experience.

I wouldn't like to try to survive in London (high rents and transport costs) on that wage, or anything like it.

[Deleted User]

Blimey. I remember looking to move to London from my job in Cardiff (and this was 8 years ago) and even then, entry level web design jobs were paying around £18-19k .. which would have meant a pay cut anyway.

Web design pays really badly compared to the skills it requires. Salaries may be worse in London because of more competition (just a thought..)

The least I'd want to live in London is £23k. You won't be living anywhere nice though

C22DTJ

Well I'm glad you've all said that, because my instinct agreed.

The position in question is actually a staff writer position rather than designer, I haven't had any responses from my design applications unfortunately. Ironically, those are the ones that do pay in the 24-26k region.

I actually didn't think my folio was that bad but given the resultant silence, I may have been wrong.

[Deleted User]

I always found it odd, that in the world of web design, you're expected to be a graphic artist, copy writer, software developer, user interface designer AND a database admin. But get paid nothing like the salary of any of those jobs.

MrChandlerBing

Living in London on 19k will not be worth it. You're going to be living in a hovel and spending all your money on transport.

bargainbetty

Have you spoken to recruitment consultants in the industry that are based in London? They often have jobs that are not advertised (not as publicly anyway). Take a day off and set up meetings with three or four agencies. Go over your CV and folio with them, and they will give you a far better idea of the salary you could expect to receive.

Best of luck

InsideInsurance

C22DTJ wrote: »

I suppose I just meant that work in my 'folio reflects a lower standard of work than what is commonplace in London. .

I suspect you arent comparing apples and apples.

Central London is as expensive for businesses as it is for residential and yes in central London you do get some top design agencies and they have large amounts of staff, big name clients and will have fairly high standards.

In central london but more in the wider greater london there are plenty of smaller companies that are aimed at SME clients and have a more basic level of standards. I suspect these are a better comparable to what you are looking at in Warwickshire than M&C Saatchi

ringo_24601 wrote: »

I always found it odd, that in the world of web design, you're expected to be a graphic artist, copy writer, software developer, user interface designer AND a database admin. But get paid nothing like the salary of any of those jobs.

You arent an expert of any of them, and that is the problem.

If you get into larger companies then these are all separated into roles, or at least logical clusters, and you then start seeing larger salaries and more potential as well as the emergency of things like project managers and business analysts etc.

C22DTJ

Thanks guys, I'll broaden my search a bit and get in touch with some creative recruitment agencies.

lkmc01

I don't know about London but we are a family of 4 living on an income of 20k a year.