How to Increase Veterinary Technician Salary

Becoming a veterinary technician allows you to work in helping profession that deals with animals without actually becoming a veterinarian. This can be a great way to get your feet wet, so to speak, with the profession. It’s also a rewarding career in its own right. It’s fairly easy to see that this is rewarding in terms of the satisfaction you get from assisting animals in need. How rewarding is it, however, from a financial perspective? The answer is that it pays only moderately well. However, there are ways to maximize the salary you can expect to be offered. This article will take a look at some of these methods. But first we need to get a sense of the general salary ranges.

Average Veterinary Technician Salary

The current US veterinary technician salary statistics are roughly as follows: For those starting out in the field, the salary tends to be around $20K to $35K a year. That’s considered the media range. Thus, the national average falls around $28K annually. This is a quite livable salary, but it is obviously somewhat moderate as far as salaries in health fields go.

Once you get some more experience, say about 4 or 5 years worth, you can expect your salary to rise. Salaries can rise to about the $35K to $40K range after this much experience. This is quite a comfortable salary. It’s not enough to make you filthy rich, but it is quite livable.

Ways to Insure Best Salary

There are a number of things you can do to maximize the potential of being offered the best salary possible. How much you make will depend, of course, on a particular employer, on your own skills, education, and experience, on economic conditions in the area where you are seeking employment and on a number of other factors. But these tips can point you in the right direction as far as getting the kind of salary you want.

Create a Great Resume

A great resume will give you an edge salary wise. This is true for any profession, and veterinary technology is no exception. The key is to have a good mix of experience, education, and general background. If you have any experience at all in a medical context, put that down. You can also include administrative/office experience not directly related to veterinary work. The point is to emphasize that you have at least some experience that can be useful for the veterinary tech position. If you do have some actual experience being a veterinary technician so much the better.

Today’s resumes emphasize brevity. Don’t go into lengthy paragraphs that detail everything you’ve ever done or what a wonderful employee you will be. Numbered lists or bullet points are the norm. If you do use paragraphs, they should be brief and concise.

Apply to Many Facilities

Simply multiplying the number of facilities you apply to can give you a greater range of salaries to choose from. Subsequently selecting the highest salary offers will then make the average salary of the jobs you’re apply for go up. This is simple and numerical. It’s a “numbers game” if you will.

Have a Clear Salary in Mind

You can also approach the issue of maximizing your salary potential by having a clear salary in mind when applying for a veterinary technician position. This sometimes impresses employers by showing them you know what your work is worth. You can also negotiate with potential employers based on how much other employers have offered you. You can say, for instance, that a certain employer has offered you a salary closer to your wage goal, and if the present employer can match or exceed that, you will take the position. In this way you can approach a salary standard that you yourself have selected rather than merely taking anything an employer offers. There is no reason why, if you are well trained and dedicated, you shouldn’t receive the kind of salary you want as a veterinary technician.

Using the tips will tend to move you up in the veterinary technician salary offers scale. In general, be confident in your salary potential as a veterinary technician. This will show employers that you mean business and that you value your abilities and will give the job your best. That is worth a lot.