To further empower their members, LinkedIn has just launched LinkedIn Salary, a salary comparison tool that directly competes with Glassdoor’s current offering. Members will be able to compare the salaries for roles, including potential bonuses and other forms of compensation. The results can be filtered through geographical areas, levels of previous experience, company size and qualifications.
The more information you contribute, the more you get back. Members who enter their salary information will be given unlimited access to LinkedIn Salary for one year. There is no need to worry about privacy, as any salary information entered is immediately anonymised. LinkedIn premium members will enjoy unlimited access to the service.
Combining easy access from desktop or mobile with tools such as LinkedIn Salary will turn LinkedIn into a vital resource for researching careers.
How do the tools compare visually?
LinkedIn Salary
Glassdoor Salaries
Glassdoor users can already compare salaries, so why is LinkedIn salary any different?
The quantity of data that each tool has to provide salary insights with seems to be the distinguishing feature, with LinkedIn boasting a network of 460+ million members, as opposed to Glassdoor’s 30 million. LinkedIn’s huge database and existing information on member’s education and work history also make it easier to verify the accuracy of the data entered into the comparison tool.
How do they compare in terms of filtering? Glassdoor offers members the option of filtering results by level of experience and geographical area, and gives the median salary for the searched role. The volume of information that LinkedIn Salary has access to enables more specific filtering that allows you to identify the industries that pay the most for certain roles, which educational merits lead to the best salaries and how where you live affects what you earn.
What do LinkedIn say?
On their official blog LinkedIn’s Product Manager, Ryan Sandler says:
“This is just the beginning of what’s possible. Over time, we anticipate using LinkedIn data to add even more actionable insights to help you make better career decisions. For example, imagine if we recommended which skills within your field or industry can help you earn more.”
Is it ready to go in the UK?
LinkedIn Salary launched globally in 2017. To start the database, LinkedIn asked 1 million of its users to submit compensation data from a variety of roles in different locations. As with all data, however, there will be some discrepancies. LinkedIn has assumed that 10% of the data submitted is inaccurate and has discarded this from the data shown.
What difference will this make to recruitment?
As all this information becomes readily available, LinkedIn Salary could enable us to make more strategic decisions about career moves, or let us negotiate salaries with increased confidence from having a wider industry perspective of our worth. Making an informed decision about that critical career move will become easier when we understand why earning potentially is higher in certain locations and why someone earns a higher amount doing a similar role to us.