Democratizing the Job Offer Market

Comparing job offers once yielded simpler comparisons. As the job offer market is becoming more competitive, offer packages are composed of more moving parts. The addition of extra benefits and compensation to potential employees might just win them over against competitors.

Companies are tapping into a variety of different incentives and perks such as stock options, bonuses, 401k match percentages, healthcare benefits, and even office perks such as free lunch. The overall compensation an offer package provides is no longer a straightforward calculation.

This has left potential employers facing difficult decisions about which job offer package is more beneficial. To further illustrate the complexity of the problem, let’s look at the case of Sam, who received two offer packages from Company A and Company B.

Company A

Base salary: $120,000

Stocks: $80,000

Bonus: $0

401k match percentage: 6%

Company B

Base salary: $100,000

Stocks: $95,000

Bonus: $5,000

401k match percentage: 5%

Upon opening her offers, Sam sees the base salary of company A and is immediately drawn to this package. However, after more scrolling, Sam is perplexed. What are stocks compared to bonuses? Is the 401k match percentage that important? Sam is left unable to cohesively understand her packages and makes an educated guess as to what package is better.

Noticing Sam’s struggles, we decided to bring an end to overly complex offer packages. VisuOL takes Sam’s situation and outputs a visual comparison tool that shows how different offers stack up against each other. As offer packages have entities such as stocks and bonuses, the net salary is time-dependent and may grow at a non-linear rate. Hence, it is important to consider packages and their prospective growth in years to come.

Want to visualize your offer letter and understand the full potential of its value? Create an account with VisuOL now. VisuOL will create an interactive graphic that helps you understand the current value of your offer as well as its projected growth.

The offer itself

Let’s take a look at the offer from Company B.

After inputting the offer package information, Sam is presented with the above page. The sliders at the top allow Sam to try out different growth rates for her salary, bonus and equity. These differences are reflected in the bottom graph, which shows her compensation over the span of 6 years. Sam is also able to input her savings strategy to see how this affects her overall compensation. When inputting the offer, Sam also includes the state she will reside in so that taxes can also be taken into account. Sam had no idea she had to consider all of this! Yet VisuOL is able to do it all for her.

We leveraged the graph library Recharts to visualize the data input by the user. After retrieving data from the database, we processed it and fed the final figures into the graphics.

Comparing offers

Now the fun part. After inputting both her offers, Sam can view them side by side with VisuOL’s comparison tool. After playing around with growth rates between the two, Sam can gauge a much better understanding of her offer letters as well as their projected growth.

Sharing Offers

VisuOL is set up to also provide a platform for recruiters and potential employers to communicate and share offers. When creating an account, a user is able to choose between a recruiter profile and an individual profile. Upon inputting offers, recruiters are able to share offers with their clients and vice versa.

Health Care Packages

Alongside monetary compensation, another significant benefit to consider is health care. VisuOL provides users with beneficial information which helps users make an informed decision about the type of health care package that works best for them. The below Health Care FAQ outlines the most common packages offered.

The Future of VisuOL

VisuOL is committed to providing a tool for users to help understand their offer letter package. We want to continue to accommodate for further factors that might influence one’s decision over a certain offer. Some include city taxes and cost of living, number of sick days and leave days, further health benefits and other work-related benefits.

The team

VisuOL was created by five senior computer Science majors at Dartmouth College: Raymond Chen, Eddie Ma, Nina Paripovic, James Verschleiser, Austin Zhang.