Career Chart: Salary and sense of purpose

by Dr. Liva LaMontagne , Editorial Research Manager

For two years, between June 11, 2013 and June 11, 2015, PayScale.com collected data from 2.7 million people across all job categories about their salaries, sense of purpose and job satisfaction.

Click here to see a printable version of this chart

They asked, "Does your job make the world a better place?" The answer options were "Very much so", "Yes", "A little", "No" and "My job makes the world a worse place". The "Percent High Meaning" in the chart represents the percentage of respondents with the given job who answered "Very much so" or "Yes" to the question.

Jobs with a high sense of purpose

Not surprisingly, overall the highest sense of purpose was found among professions clearly contributing to the well-being of other people and the society at large, such as the military. 88 percent of military-affiliated participants responded that their job makes the world a better place compared to 85 percent in community and social service professions and 80 percent in education, training and library.

On a more specific level, the job categories with the highest sense of purpose were religious activities and education directors, English language and literature teachers, clergy and surgeons.

Although there were exceptions where sense of purpose was high and salary low (or vice versa), generally jobs with higher levels of sense of purpose tended to have higher salaries. The correlation between the two was .30.

Also not surprisingly, people with higher sense of purpose were more satisfied with their jobs. The correlation between sense of purpose and job satisfaction was .59.

Jobs with a low sense of purpose

Perhaps the most interesting statistics lies in the answer to the question "My job makes the world a worse place."

The highest percentages of those answers came from fast food workers (25%), pickers (21%), table games floor supervisors (20%), merchandise planning managers (18%), Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategists (18%), valets (18%), paralegals or legal assistants (16%), laundry attendants (14%), garbage truck drivers (14%), commercial photographers (13%), cash posting clerks (13%) and financial sales consultants (13%).

Aubrey Bach, Senior Manager of Editorial and Marketing, PayScale.com, had the following advice on finding purpose: "In general, I tell people that if they are stuck in a career rut and disheartened by their job, they should think back to whether or not their job is helping them achieve the guiding principle that drew them to their career in the first place."

Since MarketingSherpa serves marketers, the SEM strategist statistics were especially interesting. 18% of SEM marketers believe that their job makes the world a worse place. However, 36% of them answered the question, "Does your job make the world a better place?" with "A little". 27% chose "No", 9% chose "Yes" and 9% chose "Very Much So."

Given the wide range in their sense of purpose, I reached out to SEM strategists to find out what attracted them to this career, when or under which conditions they find their job meaningful and when they don't.

How SEM strategists construct the meaning of their work

I received answers from 22 SEM strategists and specialists to my questions, "What attracted you to this job?" and "What makes it meaningful (or less meaningful) for you?"

Quoting all of the responses is beyond the scope of this article, but here are the five broad categories of motivating factors that emerged from SEM strategists’ stories.

The following categories can be related to each other, and the people quoted as examples for one category could have mentioned motivating factors from other categories as well.

Constant learning and testing

"Search Marketing is constantly changing as new technology is introduced, and I enjoy the challenge of understanding and working my way through such changes," Celina Levin, Technical SEO and Web Design Associate, Majux Marketing, said.

"One has a theory, one tests it, reviews the results, determines if the hypothesis was correct or not [and] then sets up another experiment to test a new hypothesis and/or to confirm the results of the previous test," Lynne McNamee, President, Lone Armadillo Marketing Agency, said. "The greatest thrill is when you're wrong. People are complicated, interesting, illogical, fascinating. SEM gives concrete insight into motivations (via word and image choices), plus how someone acts once their interest is peaked (conversions)."

"Tearing apart that data and understanding what story it [is telling] you makes the job fun — i.e. on what organic [or] paid keyword phrases are competitors placing their bets, what’s their monthly investment in these phrases, what keywords are they not investing in — aka the hidden opportunities, and how they’re framing their ad copy," Tony Faustino, President and Founder, Faustino Marketing Strategies, said.



Lucrative opportunities

One of the features that attracted SEM strategists to this career were the financial opportunities of a growing field of business, and the opportunity to make a niche for themselves professionally by being the first in a developing space.

"I love that it's a growing industry," Jason Rothman, President, Rothman PPC, said. "The online search advertising business is still growing by 15 to 20% a year, and it's so much easier to make money in a growing industry than a stagnant or declining industry."



Helping small businesses

"I started my business in 2006, with the goal [of helping] smaller businesses compete against the big guys," Jeremy Skillings, Founder, YouCanBeFound, said. "I get a lot of joy out of helping people succeed and understand a complicated subject and also helping people to learn to help themselves and avoid being scammed, which is very common in our industry because it confuses people."

"Search engine marketers help great businesses/products get found online that might have otherwise been overshadowed by bigger brands," Oleg Korneitchouk, Director of Marketing, SmartSites, said.



Competitive environment

"What makes it interesting, fascinating and exciting is I get to compete with some really good minds and some really big companies every day and still beat them consistently day in and day out for our clients," Andrew Anderson, Profit Consultant, Easy Anderson, said.

"It is a game against the search engines and against the competition. The highest URL is the winner," Tim Detmer, Founder, Jiffy Rank, said.



Helping Internet users find valuable content

"The most rewarding part is when you are able to create content that the consumer loves and finds value in ... and that also performs well on search engines," Nick Lucs, Blogger, Des Moines Foodster, said.

"The people that come to my websites are typically experiencing some dimension of 'pain' and they’re looking for answers … In this context, I am helping to create digital spaces that streamline people’s decisions … And when you do this, people are able to parse through the information on our pages and sites much more efficiently, which gives them back more of the single most valuable non-renewable resource on the planet — time," Jacob Baldwin, Global Manager of Digital Marketing, Emerson Climate Technologies, said.

"I enjoy the technical side of SEO, […] but I also enjoy figuring out ways that we can make great and interesting content for our clients that is useful to everyone else out there on the Web that gets shared and builds links naturally to get our clients a genuine authority boost in their areas of expertise," Ryan Whiteside, SEO Team Leader, Fathom, said.

To sum up, SEM strategists are motivated by a fast-paced and competitive environment that requires constant learning and by profitable business opportunities. They find that their work makes the world a better place by helping small businesses grow and helping people find valuable content on the Internet.

I will credit all sources here on which the analysis is based, even if their stories did not get quoted in this article.

Sources

DesMoinesFoodster

Dragon Search

Easy Anderson

Emerson Climate Technologies

Fathom

Huge Impact

InboundMill

J I.T. Outsource.com

JAKK Solutions

Jiffy Rank

Lone Armadillo Marketing Agency

Majux

mccardellwrite

Rothman PPC

SEOcial

SmartSites

Social Media ReInvention

Social Shark Media

SoMe Connect

Whiskey Neat

YouCanBeFound

Z Co

Related resources

Subscribe to MarketingSherpa Chart of the Week — Get the data and discoveries you need to better serve customers and improve results, delivered straight to your inbox

The Most and Least Meaningful Jobs (from PayScale.com)

Take a Lesson From Peter Pan to Fight Career FOMO (by Aubrey Bach, PayScale.com)

Marketing Chart: Salaries for digital marketing positions increase by 3%

Rethinking Work (by Barry Schwartz, The New York Times)

Finding Meaning at Work, Even When Your Job Is Dull (by Morten Hansen and Dacher Keltner, Harvard Business Review)

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