The first rule of salary negotiation is that it is negotiable.

Somewhere in the list is another rule that tells you to know what they are willing to pay you. And, how much you are worth.

So, imagine the cards on your deck if you walk into a job interview armed with vital salary information. Hunting for this nugget of information is not so difficult on the web. The Occupational Outlook Handbook by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is an impartial salary information source you can depend on. Then there are human resource websites like Glassdoor, PayScale, and Comparably.

But now the big elephant has crashed the herd.

The new LinkedIn Salary could help stack your deck as it crowdsources salary information from its nearly half a billion members. The U.S., Canada, and the U.K. get this tool for now, but expect a global sweep in 2017.

LinkedIn Salary could become your default decision tool as you jump jobs. The idea is to be accurate. Information includes base salary, bonus, and other perks that total up. You can fine-tune your compass with other insights like industry, company size, education level, locations with best offers, and experience.

You can make better career decisions by comparing company size to your job role vis-a-vis the salary on offer. For instance, a smaller company might offer less but give you a wider job role. It could be an important step for learning on the job. Or, you could just use it to estimate how a location change will affect your lifestyle.

It's All About Trust

On a job hunt? Start researching your next job with LinkedIn. The salary information you provide to LinkedIn is anonymous and encrypted. Free users get a limited one page view until you contribute to the service. Enter your salary information for one year's unlimited access. LinkedIn Premium members will have access to LinkedIn Salary without the give and take of their salary information.

The LinkedIn Blog tells us more. The 14th most-popular site wants to be the single house for all your career related skills. It might hoard your professional information but it will also give you intelligent tools to make career decisions.

Scary or inevitable? You tell us in the comments.