TalentUp | Salary Benchmarking Platform Documentation

Salary benchmarking is not a one-time project. It is an ongoing practice that keeps your compensation strategy connected to a market that changes constantly. This guide walks you through a repeatable six-step benchmarking process using TalentUp, from defining your objective to monitoring results over time.

TalentUp Market Salary Search interface showing Position and Location fields, filter panel with Sector, Type, Number of employees and Funding settings, and Search History on the right — The Market Salary Search: TalentUp’s core benchmarking tool for looking up market salaries by role and location.

Step 1: Define the Purpose of the Benchmark

Before opening TalentUp, decide what question you are trying to answer. This shapes which roles and locations you search, which filters you apply, and how you will use the results. Common purposes include:

Salary benchmark result for Frontend Developer in Barcelona showing 35,600 EUR total market compensation at 50th percentile, pay table by seniority level, and market insights — A completed benchmark report: total compensation, pay ranges by seniority, and supply and demand insights for a specific role and location.

Annual compensation review: checking whether your current pay ranges are still competitive across roles and locations

Geographic expansion: understanding what competitive pay looks like in a new city or country before you hire there

Department-specific analysis: focusing on a team such as Engineering, Sales, or Operations to identify where your pay is most out of step with the market

A clear objective keeps the exercise focused and ensures the output connects directly to a decision or an action.

Step 2: Identify the Roles and Locations

Before you start searching, prepare a prioritized list of the roles and markets you need to benchmark. TalentUp gives you the most useful results when searches are specific rather than broad.

Job titles: use precise role names such as “Senior Backend Engineer” or “Product Marketing Manager” rather than broad categories

Cities or regions: select the locations where you hire or operate. TalentUp covers 200+ cities worldwide

Seniority levels: decide whether you need data for entry-level, mid-level, senior, or lead positions. The Pay Table breaks salaries down by level so you can see the full progression in a single search

Step 3: Run Your Market Salary Searches

With your list ready, go to Market Salary Search in TalentUp and run a search for each role and location combination.

Enter the job title (for example, “UX Designer”) and city (for example, “Berlin”)

Apply filters to match your peer group: industry, company size, and funding stage

Review the full compensation breakdown, which includes: Base salary ranges at P25, P50, P75, and P90 Bonus potential (annual or quarterly) Common benefits such as remote work, relocation, or health insurance Stock options and equity

Base salary ranges at P25, P50, P75, and P90

Bonus potential (annual or quarterly)

Common benefits such as remote work, relocation, or health insurance

Stock options and equity

Pay particular attention to which percentile aligns with your compensation philosophy. P50 is the market median and a common reference for “competitive” pay. P75 and P90 are used for hard-to-fill roles or when you are competing directly against companies known to pay above market. Defining your target percentile in advance makes your benchmarking consistent and your pay decisions defensible.

Step 4: Compare Against Your Internal Salaries

Market data alone tells you what the market pays. The real insight comes from comparing that to what you actually pay. Use Internal Pay Analysis to run this comparison across your entire team at once.

Go to Internal Pay Analysis in TalentUp

Download the Excel template and fill it in with your employee data: job title, location, current salary, and seniority level

Upload the completed file

TalentUp will automatically match each employee to the market benchmark for their role and location, then surface:

Employees paid significantly below market, flagged as “Risk loss” — these are your highest retention risks

Pay equity concerns flagged as “Unequal” — positions where similar roles are paid inconsistently

Your team’s average Compa Ratio — the single most useful number for summarizing your overall market positioning

Step 5: Export and Share Your Findings

Once your analysis is complete, export the results to share with the stakeholders who need to act on them.

Export to PDF for compensation committee meetings, board presentations, or executive briefings

Export to Excel for further analysis, budget modelling, or data to share with finance teams

Use the outputs to document the rationale behind salary decisions, support pay policy revisions, or feed into headcount planning

Clear, well-sourced documentation also strengthens your position if salary decisions are ever questioned internally or during an audit.

Step 6: Build a Regular Benchmarking Cadence

Markets move. A benchmark that was accurate six months ago may be meaningfully out of date today, especially in high-demand sectors like technology or data. TalentUp refreshes its data every 1 to 2 months, so the platform is always current. To stay ahead:

Run a full benchmarking review at least quarterly, or ahead of any formal salary review cycle

Revisit salary bands proactively when there are signs of market shifts: inflation, new funding rounds in your sector, or higher-than-usual turnover

Use Internal Pay Analysis on an ongoing basis to catch new pay misalignments as your team grows and evolves

Organizations that benchmark regularly shift from reacting to compensation problems — turnover, counteroffers, complaints — to preventing them. TalentUp is designed to make that cadence easy to sustain.

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4.1. How to Use TalentUp Salary Benchmarking Platform to Conduct a Salary Benchmarking