LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LKND) users will now be able to compare their salary to others doing similar work, as well as finding out if any additional education or skills will result in a pay raise.
The new feature, called LinkedIn Salary, launched on Wednesday in the United States, Canada, and the U.K. It shows salaries for specific job titles as well as analyzing other factors that could affect income--things like location, company size, education level, and so on.
Users have been asking for such a feature for years, saying it was the only thing the social network really lacked. We’re all curious about our salary, and nobody wants to make less than a peer doing the same job for a different company. A crummy salary is one of the biggest reasons why people leave jobs.
LinkedIn Salary works something like this. A user first has to input their salary into the service before they can see what others make. No individual salaries will be available, the site just analyzes all the data and gives a sort of average. The user can then look at data from different regions or company size to figure out how to maximize their total compensation.
Security is obviously a concern, especially after LinkedIn revealed data from more than 100 million accounts had been lifted in a 2012 data breach. Any salary data will be encrypted the instant it’s submitted, and will remain private. Even LinkedIn employees won’t have access to it.
Ultimately, LinkedIn is a data company. More information will prove valuable over time, especially data we’re all interested in like salaries.
