Knowing the real market rate for your role before you negotiate can be the difference between leaving money on the table and getting a fair offer. This post shows you exactly how to research salary ranges so you walk into any negotiation with solid numbers.
Why Most People Get This Wrong
A lot of job seekers rely on one salary website and call it research. The problem is that salary data can be old, location-agnostic, or based on a small sample of self-reported numbers.
Pay varies a lot by:
- Location. A marketing manager in Austin earns differently than one in New York.
- Company size. A 20-person startup and a Fortune 500 company rarely pay the same.
- Experience level. "Mid-level" means different things to different employers.
- Industry. The same job title pays vastly differently in tech versus retail.
You need data that accounts for all of these, not just a single average.
Where to Actually Look
Start with at least three sources and compare what they say. Good free ones include:
- LinkedIn Salary (requires a free account, shows real job postings with pay)
- Glassdoor (employee-reported salaries, filtered by company and location)
- Levels.fyi (excellent for tech and engineering roles specifically)
- Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) (U.S. government data, updated annually, very reliable)
- Job postings themselves. Many states now require employers to list pay ranges. Search the role on LinkedIn or Indeed and filter to locations with pay transparency laws like California, Colorado, and New York.
Cross-reference at least two or three of these. If they all point to a similar range, you have a solid anchor number.
How to Track Salary Trends Over Time
Pay ranges shift. A role that paid $70,000 a year ago might now post at $80,000, or drop to $65,000 after a wave of layoffs in the industry. If you are in a longer job search or switching industries, you want to watch how salaries move, not just check once.
This is where a tool like AIDular helps. You set it up once, tell it what to track in plain English, pick a schedule (weekly works well for salary trends), and it emails you a sourced report. No logging back in to check every few days.
Here is a prompt you can copy and paste straight into AIDular:
"Search for job postings for Senior Product Manager roles in Chicago, Illinois. Summarize the salary ranges listed, note any shifts compared to recent weeks, and highlight any companies that have recently posted or removed these roles."
Set it to weekly. AIDular will search the web and send you a clean summary every week. You will see if rates are going up or down, and which companies are actively hiring, without any manual scrolling.
Turning Your Research Into a Number
Once you have a range, pick your target number strategically:
- Anchor at the upper half of the range. Negotiations almost always go down, not up.
- Adjust for your specifics. More years of experience, a niche skill, or a high cost-of-living city all push the number higher.
- Prepare a one-sentence rationale. For example: "Based on current postings for this role in this city, the market range is $85,000 to $100,000, and given my five years of experience I am targeting $95,000."
That sentence is calm, factual, and hard to argue with because it is backed by real data.
A Note on Total Compensation
Salary is only part of the picture. Always factor in:
- Bonus structure and how often it is actually paid out
- Equity or stock options (and what the vesting schedule is)
- Health insurance and who pays what
- Remote work flexibility (this has real dollar value)
Some employers cannot budge on base salary but have flexibility elsewhere. Know what matters most to you before the conversation starts.
Ready to keep an eye on salary trends in your field without the manual work? Try AIDular free at aidular.com. Set up a weekly salary tracking prompt and get the data delivered to your inbox.