EverCV's new salary estimator: know the range before you apply

The salary negotiation feature I shipped last week helps you counter an offer. This one is different: it tells you what to expect before you have an offer in hand.

Knowing the market range matters at two specific moments:

1. When a job application asks for salary expectations. Entering a number without data is either leaving money on the table or getting filtered out for being "out of range."
2. Before a phone screen. Recruiters often ask what you're looking for in the first call. Answering "I'm flexible" is a negotiating disadvantage. Answering with a number grounded in market data is not.

What it generates

Send it your role, location, years of experience, and tech stack:

{
  "role": "Senior Backend Engineer",
  "location": "New York, NY",
  "years_experience": 7,
  "tech_stack": "Python, PostgreSQL, AWS, Kafka"
}

You get back:

• Range: low / median / high in dollars (integers, no ambiguity)
• Negotiation floor: the number below which you shouldn't accept
• Context: 2-3 sentences on why the range is what it is
• Confidence level: high / medium / low
• Confidence note: always mentions the training data cutoff — I'd rather the AI be honest about what it knows than false-precise

Why a negotiation floor

The range gives you the market. The floor gives you the walk-away number. They're different. The floor accounts for your specific situation — location, experience depth, competing offers, cost of living. It's the number I ask you to set before you talk to a recruiter, because in a live phone call you need a number, not a range.

Honest about its limits

AI salary estimates have a known failure mode: they're confidently wrong about recent market shifts. Layoffs, a hot new framework, remote vs. hybrid normalizing — these change the numbers faster than training data captures.

The confidence note always tells you how fresh the data is likely to be, and high-confidence answers still suggest cross-referencing with Levels.fyi or Glassdoor for the specific company. The tool is for calibration, not for replacing real research.

How it fits the job-search lifecycle

EverCV's Pro endpoints now cover the full arc:

• Before applying: salary estimator → company research → tailor CV → gap analysis
• Applying: cover letter → warm intro → applications tracker
• Interviewing: interview prep → post-interview follow-up
• Offer stage: reference request → offer comparison → salary negotiation → offer acceptance

The salary estimator specifically bridges the "before applying" and "offer stage" work — you use it early to calibrate expectations, and again when an offer arrives to confirm whether it's in range.

EverCV is a continuous CV for working engineers. Pro plan adds 16 AI endpoints that cover every stage of the job search. $15/mo, cancel anytime.