Knowing your worth is the key to effective salary negotiation. However, since there is so much variance in executive level salaries within an organisation itself, a jobseeker in India is hard put to identify or glean what a particular job is worth.
Some of the cleverer or seasoned job seekers instead of being caught in the nitty- gritties of salary negotiation simply say they want ‘x’ percentage increase from their previous salaries.
This strategy will work provided you are from the same field. This may not work for job seekers who have transferable skills like who hold Accounts or Administration jobs. Researching job ads or job boards/websites will help, but only if you are seeking to identify average salaries levels.
One tool that can help is the websites having salary calculators. You know those that ask you your designation or the company you are applying for and then working your way through it until it gives you what you can expect.
Sadly, this is something lacking in India and leaves a job seeker with no choice other than the euphoniously named PayScale.
Career & Development Blog post on salary calculators.
