The members of TEK often work as senior salaried employees. The collective agreements for senior salaried employees do not typically include salary provisions, or minimum salaries agreed under the collective agreement. Instead, your salary will be based on the salary you ask for, which is negotiated with the employer. Deciding what your desired salary should be is not easy, especially if you are just starting your career. TEK’s starter salary recommendation can help you make this decision.
TEK's starter salary recommendation is not based on nothing. It relies on the TEK Graduate Survey, which gathers responses from a large share of the academic engineers and architects graduating in Finland. When drafting the recommendation, we also consider the forecasts of future economic and salary trends. The starter salary recommendation is decided by TEK’s Private Sector Committee, whose members are familiar with the issues of TEK members in the labour market. Many of them work as employee representatives in their workplaces. TEK’s Youth Committee is also asked to provide a statement before the recommendation is given.
TEK aims to improve its members’ salary development and this is taken into account when forming the recommendation. The recommendation is therefore not the average salary that has been earned by graduates in the past six months or so, but slightly higher.
The recommendation was recently changed so that the salaries are now given as a range. Salaries vary depending on the region and the field of work, for example. The idea is that the starter salary recommendation is a good starting point for requesting a specific salary as a new graduate. When thinking about your desired salary, you might also want to take a look at TEK's Salary Surveyor and salary statistics and keep in mind that it is ultimately up to you to decide what your desired salary will be. The salary level depends not only on the industry and the labour market region where you work, but also on the demands and duties of the job, the size of the employer and your prior work experience.
Bear in mind that your desired salary typically serves as the starting point for salary negotiations. You should therefore leave some room for negotiation. Our salary recommendation is not a minimum salary that everyone is automatically entitled to. You should prepare for salary negotiations carefully and be prepared to express your desired salary and the reasons why you deserve it. The starting salary is important, because if you start out too low, it may be difficult to make up the difference later.
Congratulations to new graduates and we wish you the best of luck and success in your salary negotiations!
