Just tell people how much you pay

Okay, so the title gave it away, but the key takeaway here is so important that I don’t want to beat around the bush.

Employers should absolutely list salary ranges on job postings. Just do it. There’s not really any downside to doing it. And there are a lot of upsides.

Also, the Board of Directors should review and approve a salary schedule each fiscal year. Read on to find out why.

When you list a salary range on your job posting, you:

  • Don’t waste people’s time. The biggest reason employers want to hide salary info is because they think it will widen their applicant pool. This may be true for the initial steps, but all that happens is that your best candidates will bow out late in the process — causing frustration on all sides. You’ve wasted your time and you’ve wasted their time. Just share that info up front so that the best-matching candidates can apply, and the others can move on.

  • Don’t discriminate against women or against people of color. Despite years of “common wisdom” suggesting that the gender pay gap exists because women don’t negotiate, research has found that women DO ask for raises — they just don’t get them. White men are seen as assertive leaders when they negotiate, but women and people of color are too often labeled as aggressive for engaging in the same negotiation tactics. Being upfront about the allowed salary range reduces this issue.

  • Don’t limit your candidate pool. When you hide salary information or pretend like compensation isn’t an important factor in the hiring process, you limit your candidate pool only to people who can afford to spend a lot of time on a job application that may not be a good — or even possible — option for them.

So how do you do it?

Instead of just saying “commensurate with experience,” give the salary range. If you can’t bring yourself to delete that phrase entirely, then at least include both: “The salary range for this position is $45,000-55,000, depending on experience.”

This is where the Board comes in: Creating a salary schedule.

You shouldn’t be making up a salary range every time you post a job opening. Instead, your organization should have already developed a compensation policy that includes salary ranges for each position on your org chart.

Alyson Culin