Many employers use market surveys to validate their own job evaluation results. For example, job evaluation may place purchasing assistant jobs at the same level in the job structure as some secretarial jobs. But if the market shows vastly different pay rates for the two types of work, most employers will recheck their evaluation process to use whether the jobs have been properly evaluated. Some may even establish a separate structure for different type of work. IBM sets pay according to market conditions for each separate occupation (finance, engineering, law). Thus, the job structures in the external market. Reconciling these two pay structures is a major issue.
Rather than integrating an internal and external structure, some employers go straight to market surveys to establish their internal structures. Such “market pricing” mimics competitors’ pay structures. Accurate market data is increasingly important as organizations move to more generic work descriptions (associate, leader) that focus on the person’s skill as well as the job. Former relationships between job evaluation points and dollars may no longer hold. Accurate information and informed judgment are vital for making all these decisions.