Headcomp Partner gives you a dedicated compensation expert who learns your company, your people, and your constraints. Not a ticket queue. A person who picks up where you left off, every single time.
Candidates come back with competing numbers. You don't have pay bands, so every offer is a judgment call. Some of those calls are going to haunt you in 12 months when tenured people find out what the new hire makes.
How big should the merit pool be? Who gets what? How do you handle the top performer who's already at the top of their band (if you even have bands)? These questions need real answers, not a template from Google.
New hires are coming in above people with three years of tenure. You can feel it. You just don't have the data to quantify it or a plan to fix it without blowing your budget.
"What's our pay equity posture?" "How do we compare to market?" "What's our total comp spend as a % of revenue?" If you're scrambling to build slides instead of having answers ready, you need a partner, not a search engine.
Your onboarding call covers everything: headcount, org structure, open roles, existing pay data, where comp has been a problem, and what's keeping you up at night. Your expert takes detailed notes. You won't repeat yourself.
Send comp questions whenever they come up. Your expert moves them to the front of the queue with priority email support during business hours. For complex topics like review cycle planning or equity strategy, you get 60 minutes of video time per month with your expert — booked as one long session or split across shorter calls, whichever fits the conversation.
Every month, your expert reviews your pay data against current market benchmarks and sends a Compensation Health Report. Market shifts, compression flags, attrition risk, and specific dollar recommendations. You'll see problems coming before your employees do.
Hi David,
Just saw your note. Here's how I'd handle this.
The candidate's counter of $310K base is above P75 for VP Eng at your stage and headcount. But it's not unreasonable given they're leaving a public company. The real question: does this create internal compression with your current Directors at $240–260K?
My recommendation: hold at $285K base, increase the equity grant from 0.4% to 0.55%, and add a $30K signing bonus. Total first-year comp goes up ~$45K without inflating the base that everyone else's raise math is built on.
If they push back again, I'd walk. At $310K base, you'll spend the next two years explaining to your Directors why their new boss makes 25% more than market for their level.
Happy to jump on a 15-min call if you want to talk through the conversation. – Kirstin, Headcomp
Hi David,
Here's your monthly snapshot. Three things to look at:
1. Engineering is drifting below market. Your IC4s are averaging $172K against a P50 of $188K. That's a 8.5% gap that's widened since February. Two of your four IC4s have been here 2+ years and haven't had a market adjustment. I'd flag both for off-cycle increases totaling ~$28K.
2. Sales comp is competitive. Your AE OTE at P60 is right where you want it for your stage. No action needed.
3. New hire offers are running hot. Three of your last five hires came in above P75. That's fine for critical roles, but if it becomes the pattern, you'll create the same compression problem we just fixed in Q1. I'd recommend capping standard offers at P65 and requiring VP approval for anything above.
Let's use our Thursday call to walk through the IC4 adjustments and the offer guardrails. I've attached the detailed data. – Kirstin, Headcomp
Data: Radford Q1 2026 · 50–200 employee SaaS · US multi-geo
Your expert knows your levels, your teams, your budget constraints, and who's a flight risk. Every conversation starts where the last one ended.
When a candidate has another offer on the table, half a day matters. Partner questions jump to the front of your expert's queue — answered before everything else.
The monthly health report catches compression, market drift, and offer pattern issues before they become retention problems. You stop being reactive.
Review cycle planning. Equity refresh strategy. Reorgs. Some conversations are better live. 60 minutes of video time per month with your expert — use it in one block or split it up.
Five times the volume of Concierge. Enough for companies with active hiring across multiple teams, ongoing comp reviews, and a board that asks questions.
Full access to Headcomp's compensation toolkit: job architecture builder, salary range engine, role pricing. Your expert helps you configure them for your specific setup.
That's 6 topics and 30 minutes of video time. You still have 94 topics and 30 minutes left.
Concierge is great for reactive, day-to-day comp questions. Partner is for companies that need a compensation expert woven into their decision-making. Someone who knows your team, your budget, and your goals well enough to tell you things you didn't think to ask.
| Concierge | Partner | |
|---|---|---|
| Email topics | 20 / month | 100 / month |
| Email support | Fast | Priority |
| Video time with your expert | – | 60 min / month |
| Dedicated expert | – | ✓ |
| Health report | – | Monthly |
| Premium tools | ✓ | ✓ |
| Census intake | ✓ | ✓ |
A full-time compensation manager costs $150–200K per year fully loaded. Partner costs $36K per year. You get the same expertise, applied to your company, without the headcount.
Partner subscribers get a discounted path to our full Consulting engagements. Your Partner expert already knows your company, so the engagement starts where your relationship left off. No re-discovery. No wasted ramp time.
Most comp tools are built by software people guessing at what comp teams need. Headcomp is different. We've sat in the seat, built programs, defended budgets, priced offers under pressure, and then built the tools we wished we'd had.
Our team has built compensation programs from seed stage through IPO. Leveling frameworks, pay bands, equity refresh cycles, and everything in between. We've seen what works and what breaks.
We've also built market-leading compensation software used by thousands of companies. The tools you get aren't afterthoughts. They're built with the same rigor as the advice.
Every recommendation is backed by benchmark data, not gut feel. We cite our sources, show our math, and explain our reasoning so you can defend the decision to your CFO.
A 50-person startup and a 500-person scale-up have different comp problems. We don't give you a framework deck. We give you advice sized to your stage, your budget, and your constraints.
If you don't see the value by the end of month one, we'll refund you in full. We're confident you'll want to stay. But we'd rather prove it than promise it.
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