Creating a poll: your step-by-step guide
Salary Confidential gives you precise, private compensation insights by letting you create your own poll
01
Start your poll and first survey
Decide how many results you want to collect (minimum of 4) and purchase those respondent slots. This creates your poll and your first survey peer group — the form your peers will fill in.
02
Design the content of your poll
Choose what you want to ask. We make it quick with pre-selected compensation elements that matter around the world — but it's your call whether to focus on a simple "total comp" check, or dive into specifics like bonuses, equity refresh, car allowance, or parental leave. Short and simple, or a fuller picture — it's your choice.
03
Identify the right people for your peer group
Use LinkedIn to find peers who fit: Comparable roles, Similar companies, Backgrounds aligned with your own. These are the respondents who will make your data most relevant.
04
Onboard the interview
We guide you through a short intake where we ask about your goal and the peers you've identified. From there, our AI drafts LinkedIn intro messages — casual to formal — tuned to your industry and career stage. You don't need to worry about perfect wording.
05
Generate invitation tokens and share your survey
Send your intro message and survey link to the people you've identified. Each message contains a unique invitation token that can only be used once, so your survey cannot accidentally be leaked beyond the specific peers you want to invite. Beyond this, each intro message explains:
- What your search is about
- How their answers remain anonymous (no triangulation possible)
- That they'll get access to the final report once the survey closes
- And importantly: we also introduce the peer circle you've identified for this poll. Their profile attributes are shown in broad strokes — specific enough to prove relevance and make participation exciting, blurred enough to protect anonymity.
06
See your results
Partial results appear in your dashboard once 3 responses are in. The survey continues until all slots are filled. Respondents also see the final report when it closes.
07
Add more, anytime
Need deeper insights? You can always buy additional slots while your survey is running.
08
Run multiple survey peer groups in one poll (optional)
If you're comparing different roles or peer groups, you can create more than one survey under the same poll. Each survey gathers its own respondents and generates its own report, while your poll-level report rolls everything up into a broader view.
Ready to get started?
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