When you’re looking to move up the career ladder and get yourself a high-paying job, it’s natural to assume that you will face some intense competition for it. After all, everyone wants those jobs that pay the big bucks, don’t they? However, it is possible to find jobs that offer a high salary without having to fight off hundreds of other applicants.
Resume.io has researched the highest-paid jobs that come with the most and the least competition both in the USA and the UK and the results are fascinating. Did you know that in the UK, the average number of applicants for an aircraft pilot (salary = £68,713) is one? Sadly this doesn’t mean that you can simply apply to be a pilot and get the job, more likely the numbers are low because of the high (sky high) entry bar.
In the USA, the best paid job with the least competition is Assistant City Attorney, which can earn you $76,028 a year if you can convince them that you are better than other 0.2 candidates, because the average number of applicants is just 1.2.
Those are both excellent salaries of course, but if you want to aim higher you could try and get a job as Senior Vice President of Operations, which pays on average $170,674. Unfortunately, it would be a tough challenge, because it’s the most competitive high-paid job in the USA with an average of 159 applicants going for it. So you’d better get working on that resume.
Over in the UK, the most competitive job is Vice President of IT, with tech bosses earning around £86,500 a year if they can overcome the rest of the 162-field of candidates. You don’t need to be an Excel ninja to realise that those are some tough odds. IT isn’t the only ultra-competitive discipline either, with top tops in Marketing, Operations and the Managing Director position all also attracting more than 100 applicants.
However, all of the top ten UK jobs in the study have no more than one other likely candidates, so there’s hope yet, even while the Covid-19 pandemic is hitting the economies of both the USA and the UK particularly hard, and jobs are at a premium right now.
The research still shows that there’s a wide range of well-paid jobs out there that attract relatively small fields of candidates, like being a Psychiatic Nurse in the USA, which can earn you $108,623 if you can come out on top of a crowd of just 2.7 applicants.
There’s also good news on both sides of the Atlantic if auditing is your game, with the lowest number of applicants in the accounting and finance worlds in both countries going to auditor roles. In the UK a Senior Manager Auditor can earn £63,808 with just 1.2 applicants, while an Auditing Manager in the USA can get $90,726 with competition from just six other people.
If you’re thinking of taking a step up the corporate ladder, why not have a look at the results and see which roles offer you the best odds of earning top money without too much competition?
