Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Is salary everything?

Of course not! What you are getting paid is only a small part of the equation. When dedicating the majority of your waking hours to a job or career it shouldn’t be just about getting paid. I’ll be honest, money and benefits are important, however it alone is not very fulfilling. Its not enough just to tolerate work. Life is at its best when you love work, and work becomes play. Follow your dreams, follow your passions, live life to its fullest!

How can SalaryScout help you?

Have you ever bought or sold anything of significant value such as a house or car? If you’ve ever been in a situation where you’ve had to negotiate, I’m sure that you quickly realized that the more information you have, the better decisions you are able to make. Imagine trying to sell a house but having no idea what it is worth. That is essentially what most people do when negotiating salary. What are you worth? How much value can you provide the organization? SalaryScout is a research tool that can help you determine more precisely how much your skills and abilities are worth. Information truly is power.

What’s different about SalaryScout?

Salary research data has been available for years and each industry has different ways to acquire it. For example, in Information Security, several prominent magazines publish annual professional salary surveys. Also, there are other sources on the Internet that publish this data. My biggest frustration has been that there is very little ability to tie aggregated data back to individual jobs. Also, there is no way to interact with others to find find additional details. Everyone’s situation is different and aggregating this data often does not do it justice. Also, I have very little confidence in the accuracy of aggregated data. Although the annual salary surveys are pretty good, how can I be sure that the information found on other websites isn’t stale? SalaryScout allows you to view real jobs and real salaries, which can provide you with greater leverage during negotiation.

Who is the target market/audience?

The target audience is quite simple, anyone with a job, or looking for a job. That’s about everyone isn’t it? Seriously though, I predict that the first 100,000 users or so will skew more toward IT. That isn’t a bad thing, it’s just that us geeks are early adopters.

Should you be concerned about privacy?

Absolutely! In fact, I’ve been called a privacy-nut more than a few times in my life. If you’re concerned about privacy there are several things that you can do to ensure that your true identity isn’t revealed.

1. Choose a username that is in no way associated with your physical or virtual life. Choosing a username completely at random is your safest bet.

2. Use more general but equivalent job title or occupation rather than something specific. For example, if your real title is ‘Oracle Business Systems Analyst,’ it may be better to choose ‘Business Analyst.’

One other point, you can completely trust SalaryScout with your email address. It will never be disclosed to third parties without your expressed consent. Also, email addresses with never be publicly displayed or associated with your profile. If you need your username changed or profile deleted, please make a request to bugs a/t salaryscout.com
What happens if you notice a bogus profile?

To ensure user profiles remain legit and high quality, a reporting system has been created. If you feel that a profile is bogus, simply ‘Click to report bogus profile’ and it will be marked as questionable. After enough users report the profile as being bogus, it will be disabled and inserted in the queue for review. False profiles will be removed and the user will be banned.

What is the purpose of the rating system?

The rating system will allow you to find out what others think about your job. Is it really a dream job? Yeah right! Also, if you see other profiles that you feel are well under or over paid, the rating system is an easy way for you to give the other user feedback with just 1 click.

What is the value in commenting?

In some cases, you may feel that a simple rating just isn’t enough. In fact, the user may have it so bad that you want to notify them about another open position, or the user may have it so well off that you want to ask them for tips on how to get ahead. Commenting gives users the ability to interact over specific salaries, rather than strictly aggregated data.

How can I take advantage of RSS?

For those of you who don’t know, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS Feeds gives you the ability to have content pushed directly to you, rather than having to go fetch it. How does SalaryScout use RSS? Basically, RSS is tied to the search functionality. For example, if you search for ‘programmer louisville’ and like the results, at the bottom-right of the page you’ll see an RSS icon. Simply subscribe to that URL in your feed reader and you’ll be able to new entries that appear that meet your search criteria. You can track as many search terms as you wish. If you simply wish to track a region or country, enter that as your query and pick up the feed. Be creative!

What if I forget my password?

That’s an easy one. Near each login box, find the forget password link and continue to that page. You will be asked to enter your username and a new password will be emailed to you. Don’t forget to change your password when you login again.

Why isn’t my country/language fully supported?

Having lived abroad for a year, I understand the importance of building a site with a global audience in mind. I understand how frustrating it can be for many users across the world to find new sites that only focus on the United States. Sadly, most developers take the path of least resistance when it comes to international support. I attempted to break that mold. Due to time and resource constraints my brain and my heart had to compromise and I decided to focus initially on countries with a significant English speaking population (either as first or second language). Also, I felt that it was important to include extended support for widely used currencies and regional money formatting standards. Unfortunately, it was not feasible to initially include support for multiple languages and character sets. However, it is my intention to continue to improve support and expand to other languages.

Why isn’t the site 100% XHTML/CSS?

This answer is similar to the one above. It is simply an issue of time and constrains vs. getting a functional beta version out the door for users to begin using. Although I would love to get rid of that evil table-tag, I do not see it as important initially. The time required to ‘do it right’ outweighs the potential benefits received. My focus has solely been on execution and getting a working product out-the-door. It can be refined at a later point in time. Before you flame me, consider donating your time.

Are you really in beta?

I know there has been a lot of recent discussion about the appropriate use of the term beta. In a sense, Google made it fashionable. Initially, I wanted to avoid its use completely. However, as I was developing SalaryScout I realized that the site has a long way to go. At the end of the day, this is just an experiment anyway. The site’s logo was created in about 2 minutes, that should be case enough.

What about the business model?

As you might expect, I have to slap some advertising on the site to help pay for pay for bandwidth. However, it is definitely not my intention to saturate the site with advertising. In fact, I prefer less advertising to more and only see it as a stepping stone to a more diversified revenue stream. Additional sources will be announced and rolled out at a later date. My immediate focus is building a strong user community.

Is SalaryScout part of Web 2.0?

You can make that decision for yourself. Actually, to be precise, there are so many definitions of Web 2.0, I’m sure SalaryScout fits one of them. To be honest, I don’t really care. Yes, the content is user generated, it has RSS feeds, a rating system, comments, and a few rounded corners, but is that Web 2.0? I doubt it. What doesn’t it have? Slick-ajaxy-shineyness. Let’s just say SalaryScout is Web 1.5 and leave it at that.

Who should I contact if I discover a bug?

If you find a bug, please, please, please let me know. Shoot an email to bugs [@] salaryscout * com. If its a bug in Internet Explorer, I really don’t want to hear about it. Just Kidding!

Who should I contact if I need my username changed or deleted?

Send account requests to bugs /a/t/ salaryscout.com. Please indicate if you would like the account name changed (include new name), or if you would like it completely removed. Please allow up to 5 days for the change to take place.