A minority: specialist claiming an impressive salary

Labour market experts most often cite company managers, law publishers and IT specialists as the highest paid specialist. “According to Sodra, air traffic controllers are still the best paid profession, but experts note that not all aviation workers earn the highest salaries. And how much does the specialist earn?

Must be a little hungry for more

However, Oleg Abramenko, Sales Manager for Training and Engineering Support at FL Technics, believes that aviation is a big money game, and it is not only air traffic controllers or pilots who earn good money: “It is one thing to sell pens with transactions amounting to €100, but it is another thing to sell aviation services with amounts ranging from tens of thousands of euros to several millions.”

“The sells manager must be a little hungry. If potential employees expect to come to us and get a large fixed sum and feel very good, I can tell you that is not going to happen. The starting salary we offer is not high, but it’s also not insignificant – a worker may not think about making a living, he may be able to calmly pay the loan and not worry about anything, but if he wants to buy a new car, he has to earn that salary from sales, and we allow that. I can’t disclose the exact amounts, but the salaries of our best salespeople are really impressive”, says O. Abramenko.

The system of the salary is not right

However, Karolis Blaževičius, Director of Indigroup, an executive search and recruitment firm, criticises the salary system, where the base salary is a fraction of the total salary. “The basic salary should be the base, and the bonus only part of it. When the bonus exceeds 50%, i.e. more than half of the salary, it is already bad practice. That is why normal companies, large companies, try to make these parts of the salary more or less equal and offer a bonus that is not half or more of the salary. Unfortunately, in Lithuania, this practice, where a person earns most of his or her salary from bonuses, is still the most popular,” says a labour market specialist.

According to him, although it is popular to say that there is no salary ceiling for sales managers, this is not true.

The sales specialist does not have a salary ceiling – it is not true

“In general, a sales manager working in Vilnius should receive a minimum salary of EUR 1 000. Of course, if a person is working globally and with large clients, his salary should be high, but if he is working with the local market, he will definitely not earn 4-5 thousand euros like the best company managers. Such cases are in the minority. In the aviation business, the clients are really big, so I think that the salaries of the specialist in such positions should definitely be higher than the average Lithuanian salaries. However, it is certainly not true to say that people in aviation earn significantly more than in other fields.”

“According to data from Sodros, the highest earners in July 2016 were air traffic controllers (average earnings of €3852.7), pilots and other related professions (€2933.4), and legislators (€2395.1). Software developers (€1,723.2) and another aviation profession, flight safety electronics technicians (€1,384.7), were also in the top 30 highest paid professions. Sales managers – whatever their field – are not in the top 30.

Full article on Delfi