Salary surveys & info

[Tred]

Can anyone offer suggestions for good resources on salary information?

I'm starting to look for a new job, and I'd like to be sufficiently prepared for the eventual salary discussion...whether it's next week, next year, whenever.

I've looked at info provided by:
-salary.com
-careerbuilder.com
-Wall St. Journal
-New York Times
-American Society of Mechanical Engineers
-universities where I attended undergrad and grad school

The results from these different resources have all basically agreed with one another...but I'm apprehensive about suggesting a desired salary range to an interviewer and having them balk because my expectations aren't in line with whatever resources THEY use....you know, the ones I've somehow never heard of

Are there any other obvious places worth checking out?

[❤ mollymouser ❤]

A lot of government jobs are at set salary ranges which should be "findable" through research ... but I assume that the resources you've listed would include this information.

[dragonfly7]

My state's workforce services office has decent statistical data on salaries for different areas. If you are staying in California, yours should help ( www.labormarketinfo.edd.ca.gov/occguides/Search.aspx ), although I suppose you could look up other state's guides as well.

I have looked up a few of my prospective positions, but I've found that most of the salaries listed in the job ads fall far below the low end of most salary surveys. I would assume that engineering would be better, though.

[madcitystacey]

I think www.glassdoor.com is really interesting. It's self-reported salaries for different positions within companies. You can only do a few searches without contributing your own salary (anonymously of course) but I find it to be useful to see what local companies and other competitors are paying their people.

[Urban Chicago]

Really, none of this matters when an employer has a budget.
You also have to remember that new hires don't make as much as people who've done the job for years, so the averages might very well be above what an employer is willing to pay a new hire.

[ziyia]

I also like glassdoor. You can find salary scales (mean and range) for specific job titles at specific companies. If you're interviewing at a large company, you can find some decent data.

[Tred]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll be sure to check them out.

As for the comment about budgets...salary surveys actually do matter. Since these sites collect real data (or so they claim), it's useful to reference them to know how competitive an offer is. 10th percentile? 90th percentile? An employer may have a tight budget, but that doesn't mean someone has to accept their offer simply because it's all they can afford. There's another option: keep looking.