【X-Deal (2011)】

For all of LinkedIn's career-building tools,X-Deal (2011) one area where the professional network has fallen short is in helping shed light on the black box that is salary information. That is now changing.

The company introduced a new tool called LinkedIn Salary that aims to help users learn more about the salaries in their industry and how making changes to their current career impacts how much they make.

Enter a job title and a city and the tool turns up results showing the median earnings for individuals with that job title in the city you selected. In addition to base salary, it takes into account forms of compensation like bonuses and stock options.

LinkedIn, which is increasingly focusing on a data-driven approach to its services, will also let you dig into the salary data so you can get a better idea of how different factors impact salaries in a given field. For example, it will show how salaries for a certain role vary by company and how company size and education level impact earnings.

LinkedIn is not the first company to try to bring more transparency to salary information. Glassdor has a similar tool for helping people determine whether they're being paid fairly. But LinkedIn says it's more focused on helping users maximize their potential rather than assessing fairness or whether a particular salary is competitive.

Instead, the goal is to "help professionals around the world make better career decisions and optimize their earning potential now." And the company says we can expect to see it integrate salary information into more parts of its network in the future. (LinkedIn Premium users will see salary details in the site's job search results.)

LinkedIn Salary is available to all the site's users, though those who don't subscribe to a paid tier will need to first enter their own salary before they can access all of the information. Premium users can see everything without handing over their own details.