Know Your Worth: Analyzing Salary Data and Generative AI Output

Many individuals view talking about pay as a taboo subject. Business students may lack the real-world experience needed to understand an appropriate starting salary given a candidate’s experience, responsibilities, and other compensable factors. Although resources that help students prepare for general on-the-job negotiations exist, these may fall short in effectively preparing students for the nuanced, data-driven, and context-specific salary research and evaluation process. Recent graduates may fail to recognize the importance of conducting robust preparation and evaluating salary data prior to compensation conversations. We share an in-class exercise for use with upper-division business undergraduates in compensation and benefits, career development, or other management courses where career preparation is discussed. We emphasize the importance of enhancing job search self-efficacy, offering a series of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) prompts and reflection through which students gain firsthand experience in researching and evaluating a realistic salary for a specific job role.