A compensation analyst works out what jobs are worth and how to pay people fairly. You collect salary survey data, compare it to your company's pay, and recommend salary ranges, raises and bonus rules that managers and employees can understand. Most of the work happens in Excel, with regular checks against laws like the FLSA, the Equal Pay Act and state pay transparency rules. This roadmap teaches you why each skill matters before how to do it, and every step uses free resources. You build in order: HR and pay basics, then Excel and data skills, then job evaluation and market pricing, then pay
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Stage 1 of 4 · about 8 weeks
Learn how pay works and why: base pay, bonuses, benefits, FLSA exempt vs non-exempt, minimum wage, overtime, and the Equal Pay Act. Get comfortable in Excel with formulas, sorting, filtering and basic charts. Practice by calculating overtime and percent raises on sample data.
How pay works: the total rewards vocabulary
Every task in this job, from pricing a role to explaining a benefit to an employee, assumes you can tell the pieces of pay apart. If you mix up base pay and total cash, your numbers will mislead managers.
Wage and hour law: FLSA, minimum wage, overtime, exempt vs non-exempt
Getting classification wrong is one of the costliest mistakes in HR. Employers owe back overtime, penalties, and legal fees when they misclassify. You will be asked to advise managers on this early.
The Equal Pay Act and pay fairness basics
Pay decisions can create legal risk if men and women, or other protected groups, are paid differently for similar work. Knowing the basics early helps you spot problems before they become claims.
Excel essentials for pay data
Nearly every task you do, from checking overtime to comparing pay, happens in a spreadsheet. Clean, correct formulas build trust; one broken reference can cost real money.
Calculating overtime and percent raises on payroll data
This is where law and Excel meet. Computing overtime and raises correctly is a core daily task, and mistakes mean unhappy employees or legal exposure.
Then 3 more stages (about 60 weeks in all) with lessons, drills, projects, 10 interview questions with strong answers and free resources.