Question:
I wonder if you will be able to help me. I am working with a Fortune 500 company who may be interested in hiring a Competitive Intelligence Analyst and/or a Competitive Intelligence Manager to run their CI department. They are interested in learning about the salary ranges currently being offered for these positions across the US. I know that region and industry will influence salary ranges but would you be able to tell me the average salary bands for a CI analyst position and CI manager position within Fortune 500 companies today?
The company may also be interested in hiring your firm to perform the recruiting for these positions once they are posted. Any information you can provide would be helpful. Thanks so much!
Answer:
That’s a far more complex question than it seems. I’m glad to help as much as I can, but it’s probably more of a conversation. There are many variables in play, but I’ll do my best to cover it real quick.
The salary range highly contingent based upon a couple of key elements.
- The hard and soft skill sets needed.
- How strategic the hire will be.
At it’s core, competitive intelligence is information gathering and sharing of fairly basic and not overly manipulated data . If that’s all someone is doing, and the gathering, digestion, dissemination process is pretty much in place, then it’s a more junior hire. Maybe $35-50K with a degree and a few years of dedicated competitive intelligence experience. What drives the salaries up are when you want someone who can and will be more strategic when it comes to the gathering process (knows what info to find/develop and how). Someone with the experience and ability to digest and share information in concise sound bites for all their various audiences within the company (management to executive level) will command a higher compensation…maybe $5-15K+ above the norm.
Perhaps more importantly is how strategic they will be. Think of a 10 point scale, with 1 being a librarian who gathers and points users to in-stock information, and 10 being a trusted competitive intelligence advisor to the company’s top strategic managers (C-level, SVPs)…someone who works with management on corporate strategy, competitive positioning, mergers and acquisitions, pricing, marketing and so on. Obviously, the more strategic they are (closer to a 10), the more technical skills are needed and the more soft (interpersonal) skills are needed to work with management at that level. I have seen highly strategic client side competitive intelligence folks make in the low to mid six figures with ~10 year of experience. If they are in a vertical niche (such as pharma, media, CPG) those industries will pay more for that background relative to years of experience. Sr Managers somewhere in-between those two descriptions will be in the $50-90K range, depending on widely varying factors (experience, abilities, vertical industry, location, manage CI teams, etc.).
That said, competitive intelligence positions were hit incredibly hard recently. The key issue for these professionals is how hard it is to tie competitive intelligence to the bottom line. Some competitive intelligence folks do it instinctively (better marketing minds), and it creates a nice degree of job security. Others find it difficult…either they lack the necessary skills, management is resistant to ideas/information/change, or both. What your client needs to decide is how strategic they want this person to be. Is it someone who simply hunts down information for their manager or is it someone that works collaboratively with senior management to develop strategically relevant insights and information streams? If I had a better idea what the answer to that question was, I could be more specific.
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