The part of an interview you can prepare with facts
We are not going to hand you a list of answers to common questions; that exists everywhere and costs nothing. What is scarce is the one exchange in an interview that turns on information rather than performance — and the side with the numbers wins it.
- Occupations with a full pay distribution
- 812
- tenth, quarter, median, three-quarters, ninetieth
- Employers with filed wages
- 9,366
- committed to in Department of Labor filings
- Metro areas priced
- 530
- against a national average of 100
Three things to look up before you go
- The range for the work, not the average for it
- A median is one number and a negotiation has two ends. Our occupation pages carry the tenth, twenty-fifth, seventy-fifth and ninetieth percentile for every state, which is the difference between “the average is $78,000” and “the top quarter of this job in this state starts at $96,000”.
- What this employer has actually filed
- Companies that sponsor visas have to state the wage, and those filings are public. It is not every salary they pay and we say so — but it is the only company-level pay data in the United States that somebody put their name to, and it beats an anonymous self-reported figure on a review site.
- What the offer is worth where you would live
- A relocation offer is not comparable until local prices and state income tax come out of it. The same salary is worth tens of thousands more or less depending on where it lands, and that is the calculation to do before the conversation rather than after it.
One thing we will say about the conversation
In a growing number of states the employer has to publish a range before you ever speak, and asking what you currently earn is now unlawful in several. If you are asked anyway, a range for the role is an answer to a question about your salary history — and it is the answer somebody with the figures can give.
Start with what they read
Before any of that: the interview only happens if the file gets through. Drop it in and see the occupation a screening system files you under, and what it pays.
Your file is read by code running in this tab. It is never sent anywhere, and we never see it. Open your browser’s network tab and drop it again — you will see no upload.