Research the right salary for any job offer

Most salary research starts from the wrong place. People Google their title, find a range, and anchor on that — without accounting for scope, company type, location, or what the job description actually says. This prompt reads the job description itself and builds a market-rate compensation picture from the role up, not from what you currently earn.

Your current salary has nothing to do with what a role should pay. The market determines that. This prompt helps you find the market number.

Copy this into ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity. Paste the full job description where indicated.

I'm evaluating a job offer (or preparing to negotiate for a role I'm interviewing for). I want to understand what the total compensation for this position should realistically look like based on the market — not based on my current salary.

**The job description:**
[Paste the full job description here]

**What I need from you:**

1. **Role analysis**
   Identify the key signals in this job description: seniority level, scope of responsibility, technical requirements, likely team size, and any domain signals (regulated industry, growth-stage, enterprise, etc.) that would affect compensation.

2. **Base salary range**
   Give me a realistic base salary range for this role in [city / remote-US / specify your market]. Break it down by company type if it varies meaningfully:
   - Startup (Series A–B)
   - Growth-stage (Series C+, pre-IPO)
   - Public company / enterprise
   
   Be specific. Give actual dollar ranges, not vague bands.

3. **Total compensation breakdown**
   For each company type above, estimate the full annual package:
   - Base salary
   - Annual cash bonus (typical target %)
   - Equity (typical grant size and 4-year value at fair assumptions)
   - Sign-on bonus (common for this role/level? typical range?)
   - Any other material comp elements common at this level

4. **What this role signals about leverage**
   Based on the job description, is this a hard-to-fill role, a common hire, or something in between? Does the scope suggest they're willing to pay a premium, or is this a standardized hire? What does that mean for negotiation room?

5. **Red flags or discounts**
   Are there any signals in the job description that typically correlate with below-market pay — excessive scope, vague title, unusual requirements, or language that suggests a small or cost-constrained team?

6. **My negotiation anchor**
   Based on all of the above, what specific number should I counter with if they offer me the low end of the range? What's a reasonable stretch ask?

Please be direct. I don't need career advice — I need market data applied to this specific role. If there are things you can't know precisely, say so and give your best estimate based on available patterns.

Why current salary shouldn’t factor in

The question “what should I earn?” is different from “what do I earn now?” A role’s market value is set by what companies pay people who do that job well — not by what you happened to earn at your last job, in a different city, at a different company size, possibly years ago.

Using your current salary as an anchor is a negotiation mistake that benefits the employer, not you. The job description tells you more about what they should pay than your pay stub does.

Tips for better results

• Paste the full JD, not a summary. The more signal you give, the more accurate the analysis. Bullet points about requirements, reporting structure, and scope all matter.
• Specify your market. Remote-US, San Francisco, New York, Austin, and London all produce different numbers. Be explicit.
• Run it in Perplexity or ChatGPT with web access. These tools can pull recent Glassdoor, Levels.fyi, and LinkedIn Salary data to ground the estimates.
• Don’t skip the red flag check. A job description that asks for “5+ years of experience” at a salary band that suggests they’re pricing for 2 years is a common pattern. The AI will often catch this.
• Use the output as a floor, not a ceiling. The ranges AI produces are usually conservative. If you have particularly strong domain experience, push higher.

After you have the number

Once you know the market range, use the company research prompt to understand what this specific company can afford to pay — funding stage, revenue signals, and headcount all affect how much room they actually have.