7 Ways to Find Out Exactly How Much You'll Make in a Role (Before You Apply)

Salary transparency can truly help you in your career. Understanding how your salary compares to your peers in your field is empowering evidence that'll help you to negotiate your pay and ask for raises.

After all, women still make less than men — and that's not OK. Yup, despite slow progress, the gender pay gap still exists. In 2016, women earned just about 80% as much as their male counterparts — $0.85 for every dollar men made. While that was up from 79.6 cents in 2015, it's the first statistically significant annual increase since 2007. And progress has been sluggish since.

So how can you make sure that you're being offered fair pay in your next job interview? Do your research to know what the industry standard is. Understanding what other people in your field at your level typically make can help you set rates and salary expectations that you deserve.

Here at Fairygodboss is a great place to get started! You can read company reviews by women who've worked at them to learn more about the company cultures and how they treat women in the workplace. You can also learn more about how to negotiate your salary, how to negotiate a raise or promotion, as well as a whole host of other career advice to confront the gender pay gap.

In addition, here are seven online calculators where you can find the average salary for your job.

Salary.com offers extensive compensation data that you need to make the pay you deserve. All you have to do is type in your job title and your location, and then you can compare yourself against others. Searching salaries and benefit information is totally free, but if you want more information, you can purchase more detailed reports. 

PayScale.com is another free salary calculator that offers to tell you "what your skills are worth in the market is constantly changing." Just ask "what am I worth?" and click on your pay report. You can choose whether to find salary information for your "current job" a "job offer" or for "just exploring." For a job offer, just enter your expected job title, your years in the field/career and your city. Then choose your pay type: annual salary, hourly rate or "I do not have an offer for this job." Type in the salary offer, select the number of hours you're expected to work and choose any additional compensation (like bonuses). From there, you'll have to choose three skills for the job, any relevant certifications and whether or not you'll be supervising anyone. Then you'll have to choose the employer type, explain the type of business, share relevant details about benefits and give some information about your own background. And voila: your pay report.

Glassdoor.com offers up salary information for specific companies and by position. These are numbers that are provided by Glassdoor users themselves. Glassdoor's Know Your Worth calculator can also help you to understand your earnings. With it, you can discover your current worth in the job market, find out if you are being paid fairly and explore ways to increase your pay. It uses an algorithm that factors in salary reports and market trends in order to provide a base figure.

SalaryExpert.com offers up global salaries and cost of living information so that you can confirm you're being paid fairly and afford your lifestyle. It provides data that's trusted by the majority of the Fortune 500 powered by ERI’s Assessor Series. You can calculate your salary by typing in your title and city, or you can research salary information. You have to mention whether you're a job seeker or currently employed. Share your education, skills and employment experience, as well as your current salary. SalaryExpert.com will then tell you the average salary for your job and it will let you know the percentage comparison with your current pay.

The Salary Project™ is a database of more than 10,000 salaries from women all over the world. In less than just 10 minutes, you can access thousands of salaries and see how yours compares with women working in your state, city, industry, current role, dream job industry and more. Rebecca Jarvis of Good Morning America called The Salary Project "one of the best resources out there [to] find out what other people in your field are making, so you know you're in the realm of a respectful ask." Just submit your anonymous salary data, review your personalized salary report, complete one more quick salary survey and then gain access to the complete salary database.

LinkedIn Salary rolled out nationwide at the end of 2016. While it's fairly new, it has hundreds of millions of users to provide insight on their salaries. Discover your earning potential by typing in your job title or company and then searching your location. You can also search by popular job titles. This tool offers a look at the future by calculating how salaries can expect to change based on field data.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is a great place to look for salary information. Search wage data by area and occupation. You can search wages for over 800 occupations in about 400 industries in 395 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) and over 130 nonmetropolitan areas across all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The data is all classified using the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) System. BLS wage data by area and occupation are from the National Compensation Survey, Occupational Employment Statistics Survey or the Current Population Survey. (Other BLS programs that publish wage data —though not by detailed occupation — are Employment Cost Trends, Current Employment Statistics and Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages).