What Am I Worth? Free Online Tools to Research Your Salary

One of the most important aspects of any job is compensation. It's essential to know your worth and ensure that you are being paid fairly for your work, well before the interview starts. However, researching your salary can be a daunting task, especially if you don't know where to start. Luckily enough, there are a number of ways to research your salary and ensure that you are being paid what you deserve.

PayScale

PayScale is my favorite website to search salaries. It's a salary database that provides salary information based on job title, experience, location, and industry. They have a free salary survey tool that allows you to compare your salary to others in your industry and location. You can create a profile based on your current job title, if you're looking to negotiate your current pay, or you can create a profile based on your targetted job title, so you know what to ask for.

Glassdoor

Glassdoor is a job search and review website that also provides salary information for various job titles and companies. Current and past employees join the website to leave reviews, including how much they made. You can search for salaries by job title, location, company, and job function. Be careful though, some of these salaries may be out-of-date, depending on when the employee posted them.

Salary.com

Salary.com is a salary database that provides salary information based on job title, location, and experience level. They also provide salary reports for various industries and job functions. This tool has a ton of data and an infinite amount of job titles, so it can be very difficult to find appropriate salary ranges. For the best results, search for 3-5 job titles that are similar and look at those salaries to create a salary range.

Job Boards

More than ever before, employers are sharing compensation in their job postings. Simply by looking on Indeed, Monster, and LinkedIn, you'll find compensation might be listed in the job posting. On some of these sites, you can search by salary, but note, this means companies that didn't list salaries will be removed from the search results. Some of these websites, like LinkedIn, provide premium memberships where you can get salary insights. For example, with LinkedIn's premium plan, LinkedIn will tell you what they think the compensation range for a position is.

Remember that while these websites can provide helpful salary information, they are not always 100% accurate. It's essential to use multiple sources and talk to colleagues in your industry to get a more complete picture of what you should be earning.