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Comp Engine vs Indeed Salary Search

The Betts Team
December 23, 2024

Job boards such as Indeed have increasingly incorporated compensation analytics into their toolsets, but these solutions still suffer from many of the same drawbacks that plague job search engines broadly. Solutions like Indeed Salary Search do not provide a granular level of data, while Comp Engine by Betts Recruiting is designed to provide tech startup hiring managers with actionable insights tailored to the unique pain points of talent acquisition in the SaaS sector.

Indeed Salary Search

Indeed implemented Salary Search to solve for the disadvantages of compensation surveys, namely the fast pace at which earnings evolve in the modern job market. It provides salaries on given roles updated as frequently as daily, sourced from job postings made on the platform, with data aggregated from millions of featured jobs. 

The downside of this approach, however, is that these insights are still relatively surface-level and hard to verify between variations. While Indeed Salary Search gives a better view into compensation it cannot adapt to the nuances of total compensation packages or the specific needs of specialized roles within tech companies. For example, an Account Executive (AE) at a small startup may have a vastly different OTE (on-target earnings) structure than the same title at a large enterprise, a distinction that analytics for job boards like Indeed struggle to capture.

Indeed Salary Calculator

The Indeed Salary Calculator is another tool that allows you to get a personalized pay range for a given job title by entering key details like location, seniority level, and experience. It leverages a vast database of data to compare your compensation against others in similar roles across industries. While helpful for individual job seekers looking for a ballpark figure, this tool also relies on broad aggregated averages and may not accurately reflect the competitive landscape for unicorn tech talent.

Comp Engine

The Comp Engine by Betts is a specialized tool designed to help technology companies optimize their compensation planning and recruiting strategies. It offers granular insights into salary and earnings trends, particularly for go-to-market (GTM) roles in sales, marketing, and customer success. By leveraging intelligence sourced from Betts Connect, it empowers hiring managers to make more data-driven decisions when crafting competitive compensation packages that attract top talent.

Cost-Per-Hire Calculator

In addition to Comp Engine, Betts Recruiting also offers a Cost-Per-Hire Calculator that allows companies to measure how much they are spending on talent acquisition for any given GTM role, based on current compensation averages and your hiring volume. This first-of-its-kind tool provides greater insight into the long-term costs of your go-to-market recruitment strategy year-over-year and its impact on your ROI. 

Comp Engine vs Indeed – Comparing Salary Tools

If you are a job seeker or small business, Indeed might be enough for general salary insights. But for tech startups, particularly those focused on recruiting for GTM roles, Comp Engine is the best choice and offers more accurate, actionable, and curated compensation data. These analytics are better tailored for hiring managers and talent acquisition teams in the SaaS sector, where earnings vary significantly between different variations on titles, experience level, technical knowledge, job history and many other factors that shift salary averages considerably between roles. 

Comp Engine provides your team with the data you need to get ahead of these shifts, bringing several advantages over Indeed’s salary insights, including:

FeatureIndeed Salary DataComp Engine
Data SourceJob postings on IndeedPlacements from Betts Connect
TimelinessDaily, aggregatedReal-time, updated manually
Industry FocusGeneral roles across industriesTech-specific GTM roles
Compensation LevelBase salary, hourly to annually rangeBase salary, equity, OTE & variables
Direct SupportNoYes

Here is a more in-depth breakdown of Comp Engine versus Indeed Salary Search (and Indeed Salary Calculator):

Features for Hiring Managers

Indeed’s tools offer basic salary information and estimated ranges, which can be helpful for initial research and piecing together general trends. However, as far as functionality goes these solutions are still pretty surface-level and built more for job seekers to see average compensation rates than for recruiters or hiring managers. Comp Engine is designed specifically for talent acquisition teams – or team managers filling in – to be able to gain more granular insights into how salaries and OTE are evolving for unicorn GTM talent in real-time.

Total Compensation Visibility

One of the key advantages of Comp Engine is its ability to provide a more comprehensive view of total compensation beyond just base salary, including equity, bonuses, total OTE, and variables between each of these and for top performers. This level of detail is crucial for tech startups, where comp structures are often more nuanced depending on title, specific experience, availability, the funding stage of the company, and plenty of other factors.

Directly Sourced Data

Indeed relies on publicly available data from job postings and user submissions, which can be subject to inaccuracies and inconsistencies. Comp Engine’s data is directly sourced from actual placements facilitated by Betts Connect, providing a more accurate and reliable reflection of current market rates and variations between titles, industry market and performance level.Betts Connect features one of the largest networks of pre-vetted sales, marketing and customer success talent in the tech space, meaning that this data is narrowed down to rates in the technology sector without being diluted by data from other industries aggregated into broad averages.

Unicorn Seller Metrics

Comp Engine goes beyond basic salary data by analyzing compensation through a performance lens, showing key factors such as expected Time-to-Hire at different pay bands. This KPI (key performance indicator) focus is particularly valuable for attracting “unicorn sellers” – a top-performing sales professional that brings specific experience in your market and uniquely aligns with your existing sales motion and culture. Many competitors in SaaS are seeking the same types of sales unicorns in a limited talent pool, which places even more pressure on your hiring managers to create attractive compensation offers for these candidates.

Streamline Your Tech GTM Hiring with Comp Engine

Sign up for Comp Engine and gain access to comprehensive compensation data and expert insights to optimize your tech sales, marketing, customer success and revenue operations recruiting. Whether you need to hire a single unicorn seller or build an entire go-to-market team, Comp Engine empowers you to make data-driven decisions and attract top talent for tech.
Sign up here for access to Comp Engine today and capture the compensation insights you need to transform your GTM talent acquisition.