SalaryScout is a just launched salary comparison site that does many of the things that previously profiled site PayScale does but incorporates more of the social features typical of new developments on the web. It has a nice lightweight feel to it. Almost everyone wants to know if they should be making more money or feeling proud about how much they make relative to other people in similar lines of work. There’s definitely a demand for this kind of service, but most sites are too onerous to use and provide little value until users pay a subscription fee. I like SalaryScout because it’s simple.
Users on SalaryScout submit a relatively small number of anonymous details about their jobs, including job description, spot in a workplace hierarchy, benefits and other information. In exchange for contributing information about your job and compensation, you’re able to access detailed information about other peoples’ jobs.
Users are able to rate other peoples’ profiles, flag profiles as bogus, leave comments and subscribe to an RSS feed for searches. The support for RSS is the one thing that saves SalaryScout from being worthless before it gains a large userbase – a common pitfall for social software. Even if there are not a lot of (or any) search results now for jobs that fit my interests, I can subscribe to all future entries in SalaryScout that do fit my criteria. If none ever do, then no harm done, but there is nearly no obstacle at all to easily monitoring the site in the future.
Other salary comparison sites try to offer various forms of added value but end up with poor navigation and a frustrating user experience. SalaryScout is simple and much easier on the eyes than some of the sites we’ve been pitched by who are doing salary comparison.
There are any number of ways that this could be monetized – advertising and aggregate data sales being the most obvious. If site creator Ben Thomas maintains the service as a side project there’s no reason why he couldn’t make a small amount of money while doing his regular job (whatever that it – all the data here is anonymous.) I like the way the site has been developed and though without heavy promotion, full scale business practices and corresponding site bloat – a little site like this is unlikely to ever offer a whole lot of information – it’s nice to use casually. I’ve subscribed to an RSS feed for writing jobs and will be interested to see what if anything other people submit. Who knows? Perhaps SalaryScout could become the Craigslist of salary comparison sites – though the hippies that drove Craigslist in its infancy are unlikely to be interested in comparing salaries, you never know.
These simple parts of what’s called Web 2.0 – user comments, user ratings, flag as inappropriate, RSS feeds – they’ve all evolved for a reason and as is evidenced by SalaryScout you can put them all together with a good visual design and have a solid web site.
On a related note, readers here may also be interested in the newly launched personal finance site Wesabe.
logo is really bad; its unreadable…
Its too early to comment on salary scout. I am the 58th user to get registered. Its a good start and cool. But need to refine tweek the UI. Graphical representations will suit this website to know trends.
I agree. Its too early to use. Plus there are a plethora of salary sites out there that already tell me what other people are making. I didn’t register because of lack of interest.
Although the idea isn’t new, I like the different take. Its a nice twist on the normal video/social/bookmarking/(insert web 2.0 word here) stuff we see on TC.
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again, we visited salary sites when you guys looked at payscale… Neither site stacks up to http://www.salary.com...
Salary.com is set to go public… We will see what happens….
Salary.com Inc., which develops compensation software, plans to go public, despite a long trail of red ink.
The Waltham, Mass.-based company said it plans to raise $50 million through an initial public offering, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. If successful, Salary.com would trade on the Nasdaq stock market under the ticker symbol SLRY.
The company, which relies primarily on subscriptions and advertising, took in $15.3 million in revenue in the most recent fiscal year, which ended March 31, up 53 percent. But it lost $3.1 million, compared to a $2.3 million loss the year before.
“We have not been profitable since our inception,” the company said in its SEC filing.
In the most recent quarter, ended June 30, Salary.com took in $5.2 million in revenue, up 64 percent from the same period a year earlier. It lost $834,000, compared to a $722,000 loss the year before. As of June 30, Salary.com said it had an accumulated deficit of $21.8 million.
Thomas Weisel Partners LLC, William Blair & Company LLC, Needham & Company LLC, Wachovia Capital Markets LLC and Pacific Crest Securities Inc. are handling the underwriting.
Todd Wallack can be reached at twallack@bizjournals.com.
Tired to register but it kept on erroring out on the page about the job and job description.
Greg, the job description has a character length requirement. Hopefully that helps.
I don’t understand how a social network feature really adds any value to a salary comparison site.
Social networks can provide first level feedbacks for salary comparison site. But this site is still unproven.
well, the site looks okay and it doesn’t go on an error on me… but, yeah, it’s still too early for me to judge it, too.
Sounds great. Their are managers and directors who will try to the sabotage this great service. What is being done to filter irrelevant data?
Interesting concept but the reality of anyone’s pay scale is the old supply and demand adage. If you have the skills that are in demand you will get paid for it, if not then you are the supply. Having spent 10 yrs in recruiting, recruiters use these sites as guides not end all be all. Our product integrates search engine marketing with job boards to produce quality candidates that employers pay for and have been approached by all of these tools, however if you are capturing active job seekers this is not what you want as it’s the passive you need.
the browse/search features are really lacking. it makes it very difficult to sort by industry, location, etc. it order to be useful, I have to be able to find the relevant info to me. most recently updated and added is useless. i might be curious what a firefighter in arkansas makes, but not really the point of the site (imho)
Nice site, though I’m not sure I really want to give quite that much information away.
What’s a hippie?