Six free tools for Chiefs of Staff and Executive Assistants
Each answers one question you're probably already sitting with: what the role pays, whether the offer is good, whether you're ready, what to do in week one, and what's open right now. All six are free, and none holds its answer behind an email.
Start with the question, not the tool
Each one also says what it can't tell you, because you're the one who has to defend the number.
What should this role pay?
Pick a role and a stage or market and it returns the strongest observed comparisons, kept apart rather than blended: employer wages, recruiter starting pay, incumbent surveys, and live postings.
What it doesn't do It won't give you one number, and it won't average unlike sources. A title with no published sample gets a labeled mean.
Open the benchmarkerShould I take this offer?
Enter the components and you get a readout rather than a grade: base against a named benchmark, guaranteed first-year cash held apart from target cash, and which terms are still open.
What it doesn't do It never calls a package strong or weak, and it never adds an unvalued equity grant to your cash.
Open the evaluatorAm I ready for the seat?
Twelve questions across the six competencies Chief of Staff hiring leans on. It asks how often you actually do specific things, then names your weakest two. Two minutes, no email.
What it doesn't do It isn't a validated hiring instrument and it can't predict an offer. It scores your own read of your habits.
Take the quizI start Monday. Now what?
A working 30-60-90 plan built for this job, not an empty grid: the listening tour, the one system to ship in month two, and the readout that ends the quarter.
What it doesn't do Progress saves in your browser only, so clearing your data or switching devices resets it. It's a default to edit down.
Work the planWhat is actually open right now?
Executive assistant, exec ops, and Chief of Staff openings, rebuilt from their source network at 7am daily. Every apply link goes to the original posting rather than to us.
What it doesn't do A role whose source published no pay never appears, however good it is. The floor is the annualized midpoint of the published figure, so a band that starts below $100,000 can qualify, and you'll see the whole band.
See the boardWhat is the market actually posting?
No inputs to fill in. You slice the pay published on our own board by role family, metro, source type, and work arrangement, and every slice carries its sample size.
What it doesn't do These are advertised ranges, not what anyone is paid, and the population is the board's, so it's the top slice of the market rather than a sample of it. Its median isn't comparable with the benchmarker's.
Explore the dataTwo of these measure pay, and they don't agree
The benchmarker reads surveys of what people are paid. The explorer reads what employers are advertising right now on our own board. Both are worth asking, and the numbers are far apart.
The gap is mostly structural. The explorer's population is filtered by the board's pay floor, which makes it the top slice of the market rather than a sample of it, while the surveys behind the benchmarker cover the whole distribution. Its median sitting well above the benchmarker's is not a finding about the market, and the two medians are not comparable.
How the pay floor actually works
One rule sets the population for both. A role is admitted when its source published a comp figure and the annualized midpoint of that figure is at least $100,000. Hourly postings are annualized at 2,080 hours for the test only, and are still shown as the rate that was published.
That is not the same claim as every posting paying $100,000 or more. A band of $90,000 to $120,000 has a midpoint of $105,000, so it qualifies and the whole band is shown. A band of $75,000 to $105,000 has a midpoint of $90,000, so it never appears.
A role with no published pay is excluded outright, and nothing is estimated or inferred. Sources that write "competitive" instead of a number lose their listings, including some good ones.
Questions people ask
Are these tools really free?
Yes, and none of them holds its answer behind an email address. You get every result without signing up.
Which one should I start with?
Start where you are. Weighing an offer, the evaluator and then the benchmarker. Breaking into the role, the readiness quiz. Just signed, the 90-day plan. Looking, the board, then the explorer.
Is my data stored anywhere?
The salary, offer, and quiz tools run in your browser and send nothing to us. The 90-day plan writes your notes to your own browser's local storage, on that device only.
Keep going
The reasoning behind the tools sits in the written work.