Your Career Crystal Ball

Several months ago I wrote a post about how to find out your market value prior to salary negotiations. One of the resources I recommended in that article was a website called Payscale.com. In this post I would like to re-visit Payscale to discuss a really cool feature that they recently introduced (or that I recently noticed). The feature is called: GigZig.

GigZig is essentially a crystal ball that allows you to gaze into your career future. To use the tool you are asked for your current job title, and in return the system gives you a list of titles that you may find yourself holding five years down the road. The titles are ranked from most likely to least likely. The website also tells you the average salary that comes with each of your possible titles. So here are a couple of interesting examples of likely career tracks according GigZig:

A Hotel Waiter (avg. salary $27,400) is likely to be an Administrative Assistant (avg. salary $30,000);

An Auto Service Technician (avg. salary $39,540) is likely to be an Auto Service Manager (avg. salary $53,000);

A Marketing Manager (avg. salary $60,000) is likely to be a Marketing Director (avg. salary $87,000);

My personal favorite: an Actor (avg. salary of $41,000) is likely to be a... Receptionist (avg. salary of $24,000) or an Art Teacher (avg. salary $40,000);

GigZig is a fun tool to play around with and it may be an interesting tool to use if you are just starting your career, considering a move to a new industry, or are just trying to figure out what your salary prospects look like. If you try GigZig and get an interesting result, leave a comment and let me know.