There is a misconception in the market that support jobs are exclusively for inexperienced students. Say, this is the first step, and further career will develop in "depending on ...". In practice, a good support specialist, like, for example, a good tester, is a calling. It is quite possible and career and salary growth.
Market analysis from developers Okdesk.
We communicate daily with dozens of people who provide service support and subscription services, it became interesting for us to figure out what the Russian job market is like in this part. What is "customer" and "technical" support? What is the difference? What are the "levels" of expertise. Is it possible to earn money on this and how much? The answers of the first such study under the cut. If someone is too lazy to read, then the main important figures and conclusions are at the very end of this publication.
A few important notes before reading
- The official open reports of “HR” in this part have not been updated for a long time - SuperJob has the latest data for 2013 (before that - for 2011), so we will rely on 2 sources: the mentioned “official” report and our own searches in the Yandex database. Work aggregating data from different personnel portals (for July-August 2017).
- The given quantitative estimates (shares of vacancies, depending on experience, etc.) were carried out by the number of companies, not ads. We believe that this did not affect accuracy, since the number of ads does not carry a semantic meaning: some companies post several ads to fill one vacancy, others - one ad to hire an entire department. That is, we definitely did not introduce any additional error.
- In total, the vacancies of 1025 companies throughout Russia were considered, of which 930, when published, attributed their proposals to the IT segment. Only 436 companies (394 from IT) showed salaries in the ads, but it is not always clear from the text of the ads whether the figure is before or after taxes (white or gray). Citing the numbers in this article, we assumed that this is the income that the employee receives in his hands. However, we will also dwell on the “multi-colored” salaries at the end of this post.
With a positive response from the community, we will try to make such reviews regularly, and we will also use your comments as a source of initial data.
Support classification
Before talking about income, it is necessary to dot the issue of terminology.
Support can be divided into:
- "Technical". That is, the one where the focus is on solving technical problems (usually with infrastructure, supported software or other equipment).
- “Client” (Customer Service or Customer Support). The one where the key focus is on meeting customer needs. This type of support is popular primarily in b2c. And this part of the support is aimed at building long-term relationships with impersonal users. It is primarily used in banks, online stores, etc.
Quite independently of this, it is possible to single out internal and external support, although it is still difficult for our country to single out something other than “technical” in “internal support”.
We wrote more about the classification of support and automation systems designed for each of these classes. и .
It is also indicative that recruitment agencies that publish resumes, vacancies and analytics rarely share these areas of work, calling everything “technical support” and distributing candidates only by the formal title of the position. During the analysis of Yandex.Works offers we found only 48 companies whose jobs matched the queries “customer support” / “customer support”. Moreover, some of the vacancies (in 7 companies) actually implied the performance of technical support duties, another 9 companies used this wording to search for the head of a call center or the same technical support department.
In the Western market (more on this in the next note), you can see a clear division of vacancies into client and technical. At the same time, the requirements for candidates are very different. As part of customer support, it is more important to be a “psychologist” and be able to communicate well. In technical support, specialized knowledge is important. And “techies” who love and know how to communicate with customers are generally worth their weight in gold.
"Table of Ranks" from personnel officers
In addition to the obvious difference in positions (operator / specialist / engineer / manager), recruitment agencies use a classification based on the responsibilities stated in the vacancy and the requirements for knowledge and work experience. Sometimes their classification by levels is confused with the division into support lines within a particular company. But in general, these concepts cannot be confused. Support lines within the company are about business processes, often unique for each company, and personnel “levels” are about the expertise and experience of a specialist.
“First line of support” or starting positions
Contrary to the above caveat, the identification of the first career level and the first line of technical support in terms of business processes is quite acceptable. The first line of support has minimal requirements for specialized knowledge, respectively, people with minimal experience and competencies are needed here. However, salaries are also lower.
Standard requirements include:
- a general understanding of the “material part” (for example, PC hardware, peripherals and office equipment, if we are talking about IT support);
- politeness;
- stress resistance and other qualities that determine the ability to adequately communicate with users.
At this level, there is no need for higher education, and a foreign language is almost never required (with rare exceptions).
First line of support. Salaries
Salaries traditionally vary depending on the city where the employer is located. Most of all they are in Moscow, least of all (among large cities) - in Volgograd.
In 2013, at this level, one could count on income from 11 to 25 thousand rubles. At the moment among vacancies with an announced salary, the offer varies from 15 to 35 thousand rubles.
Formally, there are vacancies on the market with a higher upper salary limit, but usually, after studying their content, it becomes clear that they belong to higher levels - they require work experience in related fields, non-standard skills or specific education. It is difficult to take them into account in general statistics.
Another caveat - at “this level”, only 45% of vacancies contain salary information. A all work without experience offer 20% from all published vacancies in technical support.
Level “We swam-we know”
Judging by the texts of published vacancies, positions at the “second level” work experience of 1-2 years is required, but specialists who do not have experience in technical support can also apply for it. However, in this case, experience in related areas becomes important, for example, in the sale of any equipment.
According to SuperJob four years ago, at this level, specialists can count on income from 15 to 30 thousand rubles.
“Expert” technical support
Candidates get to this level in terms of SuperJob after a year of work and with basic “administrative” knowledge:
- the ability to find faults;
- understanding of the operation of computer systems and networks;
- Experience in installing and configuring hardware and software.
Ads are more likely to require higher education. Knowledge of English - mainly for reading documentation.
Statistics from four years ago show income in the range of 16 to 42 rubles. Current data from Yandex.Works — from 20 to 100 thousand rubles, depending on the city and the share of "administrative" work.
In this case, there are few vacancies with an income of more than 60 thousand rubles, therefore, such a wide range should not be misleading: “stars” get 70-100 thousand rubles in this segment.
Of the total number of vacancies in support, 57% expect 1-2 years of experience, 11% - 3-5 years of experience. More experience is required in some extraordinary cases (at the time of analysis, only 3 vacancies expected more than 6 years of experience from candidates).
From heaven to earth or the real state of affairs
Many large employers - companies that can offer good salaries or great prospects - do not show salaries in ads, preferring to name the final price after personal communication with the candidate.
According to My Circle, approximately one in five vacancies in the IT segment does not contain salary data - and this is 20% of the market! By the way, if you do not rely on the numbers of personnel officers from publications, but open Yandex.Job, then out of more than 1000 companies offering technical support jobs in Russia, Jobs with salary data are published by less than half (in our experiment - a little more than 400).
By the way, the statistics of recruitment agencies include either enterprises expanding technical support (hiring new employees), or industry segments that are characterized by high staff turnover. Hence the rather low average incomes throughout the market - most of the statistics relate to the low price range (the salary of first-line specialists falls into the reports with a greater weight).
Additional goodies
The income of an employee is not always expressed only in money. The lack of salary is sometimes compensated by various paid options - VHI, lunches, corporate transport from the metro, fitness clubs, English lessons and other training.
A number of companies prefer to “grow” technical support for themselves. In this case, the principles of recruitment for open vacancies are initially different. The more it is planned to train candidates, the less requirements are placed on experience and knowledge at the stage of admission, and the lower the initially promised salary. In the personnel market of the largest cities, you can always find several offers of generally unpaid internships. A salary offer to a trained candidate (with good luck) will only be made at the end of the internship.
Multicolored salaries
Another factor is economic. Black and gray salaries exist, and their popularity (according to the same recruitment agencies) is growing despite all attempts by the state to “whitewash” business. It is not possible to offer any intelligible salary distribution taking into account this factor.
Remote technical support and alignment
There are more and more “remote” employees. By the way, in the US, such technical support specialists, on average, get even more than those who work in the office. In principle, we do not have any statistics on remote work. It is only known that there are 3-4 times more responses to remote vacancies; There is a significant demand for such work. At the same time, according to My Krug, every third person in IT industry communities is already working remotely.
In the Russian personnel market, they still like to save on attracting narrow specialists by hiring “multi-station workers”. So, for example, customer support is sometimes combined with sales. As a result, there are advertisements for hiring salespeople with administration / support skills and, conversely, administrators with the ability to sell and support. It is impossible to take into account the salary of such personnel in the general statistics.
On the other hand, many qualified specialists, as we wrote, simultaneously work in several jobs and this is another opportunity to seriously increase their income.
The result of the analysis - the big picture
Although the specific numbers are constantly changing, the general trends regarding the hiring of technical support specialists remain.
Most often, the career of such specialists begins in departments with a more or less strict division of duties - where you can single out the first line with the simplest tasks (and, accordingly, the minimum requirements for the candidate's knowledge). These can be call centers of Internet providers or similar structures. Here they look more not at knowledge, but at “universal” skills and abilities:
- stress resistance,
- literacy,
- politeness,
- discipline,
- pure speech.
If these parameters are not specified in the ad, one way or another, most employers will evaluate them during the trial period.
With the development of in-demand skills, regardless of the level of the specialist, the salary also grows. In many cases, wage increases are affected by:
- higher technical education (or special education, if we are talking about industries like air conditioning);
- foreign language - in most cases English, but there are also non-standard requests;
- knowledge of the legislation in a certain area or the basics of accounting (often the responsibility of support includes advising on financial issues, in particular, the choice of payment methods for services or returns).
Technical skills and the ability to independently solve core tasks allow you to significantly increase salaries. (transition to the status of a support engineer in one of the narrow areas). And the next salary “jump” occurs when a specialist takes on part of the administrative work - he turns into the head of a group or department.
Instead of a conclusion or important figures
Total companies with vacancies in support in Russia in July-August 2017: 1025.
With salary indication: 436 (42,5%).
Companies with vacancies in support in the IT industry: 930 (91% of the total number of companies with vacancies in support).
Of these, with salary indication: 394 (42% of the total number of companies with vacancies in support in the IT segment).
Further, we are only talking about vacancies from IT:
- Without experience: 187 (20% of the total number of companies with vacancies in IT support), of which 85 (45%) are salaried; positions - specialist, engineer, operator.
- Experience 1 - 2 years: 532 (57%), with a salary - 230 (43%); positions - specialist, engineer, operator.
- Experience 3 - 5 years: 101 (11%), with a salary - 33 (32%); positions - manager, engineer, specialist.
- 6 or more years of experience - 3 vacancies in total (with a salary - only 1); positions - engineer and manager.
Companies with vacancies in customer support / customer support - 48. Of these, 9 are senior positions in call centers and technical support; 3 are clearly related to sales, and 7 are actually in technical support (as it becomes clear already from a cursory study of the ad text).
Already in the next publication, we will see how things are abroad: what are the incomes there and whether there is a difference between technical support and client support.
Source: habr.com