Does salary.com add up?

Salary.com has a free Salary Wizard that allows you to view an estimate of salary, benefits, and bonuses for specific job titles in your area. Salary.com also offers a premium product (in other words, it costs money) that it says will provide more accurate information.

Here is what they say about how they come up with their numbers: "Our consumer database begins with hundreds of employer surveys covering millions of employees. The Salary Wizard does not report salaries specific to an employer size or industry, but gives an average across all sizes and all industries. The Salary Wizard can report a free answer that is "good enough" for many purposes."

If it works it would be great to weed through those job postings where there isn't any salary information or provide a response to the employer question about "salary expectations."

So how good is the Salary Wizard? I tested it with several job titles that I had compensation information for and got mixed results. Here is my advice for using the wizard:

1. Try alternate job titles. One of the positions I tried was my former position. I had to try a more industrywide job title that fit my role to get information. The good news is that the salary I got back was right on the money, so to speak. However, there were some job titles that didn't come up at all. Yes, I can use "Software Developer" instead of ".Net Developer" but as we all know the language/platform can make a big difference in the salary range.

2. Compare the job descriptions, not the titles. I found differences in how the posting job description and Salary.com described the experience necessary for the job. So if you are looking at a job posting for "Project Manager II", I suggest making sure you check the details to make sure you're comparing apples to apples in the Salary Wizard. (However, I will note that these descriptions come up in pop up windows that often don't work in my browser.)

3. Think of the complete salary range, not just the midpoint. My former job role fell right in the Salary Wizard midpoint. However, the job postings I reviewed that had posted salary ranges fell below the Salary Wizard midpoint. For example, a job posting for a Project Manager with 5 years experience had a salary range of $57K-64K. A Project Manager II with 4-7 years experience had a midpoint range on Salary.com was $70K-92K. The midpoint range of a Senior Java Developer on Salary.com was listed at $82K-108K. The position advertised a range of $75K-90K.

4. Think of it as research for negotiation. Knowing all this, I would suggest using this information to back up responses to those uncomfortable questions about salary expectation. "I have researched salaries for this type of position and they fall within the range of XXX in this area." Or if the range is different than the posted salary (if there is one), you can consider negotiating based on research. However, I would recommend doing other research besides Salary.com.

Does anyone else have experience with Salary.com's accuracy? Has anyone used their premium product? Has anyone used any of the other salary estimating tools?