Hiring the best people is not all about compensation, but that is a significant piece of it. This article is targeted to those who are seeing some (or all) of the following:

If you are a hiring manager, HR manager, or in a similar position, and are experiencing what seems like salary inflation within the plastics industry, I can explain: There is salary inflation happening within the plastics industry.

For us, this is mostly anecdotal right now, but will show out in subsequent surveys. Surveys are always backward looking. The norm right now for candidates we are placing is about 10 to 15% above the compensation target that the company originally is targeting, with overall increases typically in the 20 to 30% range. If you just said, “Wow,” I agree.

But there is another factor that is not new, and that many companies either are not consciously aware of or are in a bit of denial. It can be summed up like this:

Picture a simple bell curve for compensation for all polymer chemists with a master’s degree and seven-plus years of experience. The mid-point of that range is about $121,600, per salary.com (they call it Chemist IV). Looking at this, you might reasonably establish a hiring target in the $113K to 130K range, based on the midpoint plus or minus about 7%.

While that seems reasonable at first, the compensation at the 75^th percentile is $133,750, and at the 90^th percentile, $144,800. This means that the top performers will currently be in the $125K to 140K range, and anybody you hire will be expecting at least a 10 to 15% bump in this market.

About the author

Paul Sturgeon is CEO of KLA Industries, a national search firm specializing in plastics, packaging, and polymer technology. If you have a topic you would like to see discussed, a company that is growing, or other ideas for this blog, e-mail Sturgeon at [email protected].