Second installment of low bars every job posting should meet. Meeting these bars helps you and the applicants save time and ensures you get thoughtful applications better targeted to your organization and the position. If you can’t meet them, you may have more fundamental issues to address before you’re ready to hire someone.
You know your budget and what you plan to pay the person in the position. The applicants don’t. Don’t play games. Share this valuable information in your post.
Pro Tip 1 – Some states have pay transparency laws requiring you to include salary information in your posts.1 Since it is typically the case that legislation lags behind best practices, even if your states don’t have such laws, best practice dictates you post the salary range.
Benefits of posting a salary range
Benefits to the applicant – You don’t waste time applying for a job you can’t afford to take. There are other important benefits I will discuss under fairness and equity.
Benefits to the prospective employer – You don’t get applications from people who are unable to work with your salary range. This saves you application review time. You also don’t waste time going through an interview process, only to have the candidate bow out because your salary isn’t something they can work with.
Pro Tip 2 – An enormous salary range is about as a bad as not posting a range. It introduces the same issues of fairness and equity.
Fairness and Equity
It’s so surprising to me when employees don’t post a salary range that my first thought is to be charitable. Maybe it’s an oversight, albeit huge, since employment is all about trading labor for money. Maybe there is a temporary, technical hiccup in whatever online hiring portal they’re using that accidentally erased that field.
However, it happens enough I don’t believe charity explains it all.
Maybe the salary isn’t posted because the employer hasn’t figured it out yet. If so, WOW!
Pro Tip 3 – Don’t make a job posting until you have the salary range figured out.
Maybe the salary isn’t posted because it’s so low the employer worries if they share that detail they won’t get candidates. I don’t know if this happens. It just crosses my mind as a possibility. Right after which, I think WOW, that would be deceitful and feels like entrapment and also a waste of time per the above discussion.
Pro Tip 4 – If your wages are so low you worry about getting candidates, you have fundamental issues to attend you that should be your primary focus of attention.
I am guessing that most of the time when an employer intentionally leaves off the salary, it’s because they hope to entice the candidate with the lowest possible salary.
I don’t have the energy right now to cite the studies and many articles written about this practice and its disparate impacts. You can google it. Promise you there is copious stuff out there on this topic. You may not even have to google it because you already know who is rewarded for haggling over pay.
Reflection – In discussions of the disparate impacts, I sometimes see a tendency to focus on who is willing to negotiate. The suggestion is that women and others marginalized in workplaces, e.g., people of color, disabled folks, etc. may not be as comfortable asking for a larger salary as white, temporarily abled men. Sure that might be true, sometimes. But, even if and when it’s true, it’s not the meat of the matter. A deeper question is: If and when some of us are not as comfortable negotiating over salary, why? Often it’s talked about as if our lack of comfort is some inherent quality of us perhaps related to our early socialization. Maybe. Maybe in some cases. I am not sure about that. However, even if and when it is the case that we internalized have social messaging that we are less worthy, what is often the next suggestion — work on your sense of worth/speak up for yourself — feels like shifting the responsibility.
First, people are social creatures. A primary sense of self is how we’re treated. So, the initial and primary responsibility does lie at the feet of society at large.
Second, those of us who have spent our life being told by society we’re worth less than others, are likely already working on our sense of self worth by finding community and spaces where we’re valued. It’s necessary for survival.
Third, about this particular issue of negotiating salary, I think the more important question is not about who is willing to negotiate but rather who is rewarded for negotiating.
To the extent that we’re less willing to assert our worth and negotiate salary, what if a primary reason why is because we’ve been punished when we have done so in the past or have seen others similarly situated be punished for doing so. Punished for being assertive, aggressive, uppity, demanding, over-confident, etc. Or maybe we’ve simply been told, “No, take the offered salary or leave it” while our white male temporarily abled counterparts are rewarded for asserting their worth and negotiating. Rewarded with that higher starting salary.
I believe we would do well to think less in terms of who is willing to negotiate and more in terms of who is rewarded for negotiation. This puts the responsibility where it belongs, on the system of practices and structures which uphold pay disparities and which contributes to social messaging and ongoing socialization that some people are worthy of being paid more than others.
You know your benefits. Share the basic details in your job posting. If you’re not sharing benefits because you don’t have any, be honest and state that clearly. See above analysis of why this is a best practice and a fair and equitable practice.
Pro Tip 1 – You may legally be required to offer certain benefits. Some legal requirements may be set at the federal level and some may be set at the state level. Before hiring anyone, know the basics of what benefits you are required to provide.
Pro Tip 2 – You can’t avoid providing employers their legally required benefits and workplace tools and space by calling them a ‘contractor.’ It doesn’t work that way.2
Do enough upfront work envisioning the tasks of the position and the required skills and knowledge, that you can confidently state the requirements versus the preferences.
The benefits to doing so are, you guessed it, saving the time and ensuring applications highlight the most important skills.
Pro Tip 3 – If your list of required skills and knowledge is so long, someone can’t address it in a reasonably brief cover letter and resume, you probably need to rethink your list of requirements. Ditto for any list of preferences.
Fairness and Equity
The issues around fairness and equity are vast when it comes to required skills, knowledge, and experience. I hope to discuss this later. For now, consider thinking in terms of transferable skills and analogous experiences.
No surprise deliverables in the initial application
If you use an online application system, don’t surprise the applicants with requests for information the applicant might not expect, e.g., upfront reference contact information or “pop” essay questions. Provide this information in the job posting, so the applicant can collect it and be ready to swiftly move through the online application. Do list any character limits. Nothing is more time consuming or frustrating than writing a great answer to a question and then having to whittle it by half while typing into a tiny text field in an online form and hoping there isn’t an automatic time out!
At this point you, the prospective employer, can guess what the benefit to you is. Applications that provide you better information.
Hot Tip – Job seekers, if an employer doesn’t describe what will be required by the online application, in my unhumble opinion, it is useful and completely appropriate to create an anonymous throw-away account so you can log into an online portal to see what you’re going to have to provide so you can collect it ahead of time.
No surprise deliverables during the hiring process
In the initial job posting, state how many interviews there will be and a rough timeline for the process. I believe it is bad practice to require “test work assignments” of candidates not matter how far they make it through the process. But, if you insist in doing so, then say so up front.
You guessed it. The benefits are less wasted time. Prospective applicants who don’t want to do X rounds of interviews and a special work assignment for the wage you’re offering, won’t apply.
Every so often I see a job posting where the employer is not identified. Usually it’s some recruiting firm, recruiting on behalf of Anonymous Employer.
I don’t even know where to begin with this practice. I just know I have never even considered applying to Anonymous Employer. It always makes me wonder why don’t they want me to know who they are?
Maybe it’s innocuous and they’re just trying to avoid getting random phone calls and emails about the position. Quickly my curious brain goes to nah, they could just say in the post, “Don’t call us or email us about this position. If you do, you’re automatically disqualified. Just apply.” They must have something to hide. Do they do scary, bad things?!!
Then my story-telling brain begins to wander. What if they’re a private investigator firm and they’re testing me to see if I can figure out who they are before they even tell me? Oh, that would be fun, let me see if I can do that.
Once the word ‘investigator’ has entered my head, ‘CIA’ and ‘FBI’ start rolling around inside my skull. I start seeing trench coats, sunglasses, wide-brimmed hats. I know stereotypes. Then I get concerned. Okay when they’re investigating people, including when they’re setting people up, e.g., infiltrating a group, they definitely don’t want the people to know who they are. Maybe this job posting is a set-up by them? Yikes, what if I apply? What will happen to me?
While all this a pleasant giggle break from the tedious and emotionally draining process of searching for jobs to apply for, it sure isn’t getting Anonymous Employer any bites from this applicant.
As I try to return my focus to the ever-fun job search, a last lingering thought wanders through my mind. What sorts of applicants don’t care who their prospective employer is? Who would go ahead and apply? Are they happy to work for anyone for money? Are they that desperate? Wow!
P.S. I am really curious. If you’re Anonymous Employer, please drop a note to explain why you are. What’s the purpose? And if you have ever applied to Anonymous Employer, drop a note. I’m curious why you did.
Would you, the employer, accept an anonymous application? If not, then don’t make an anonymous job posting. Say who you are.
Benefits
I’m tired of typing and by now you know the benefits of telling applicants who you are. Better tailored applications and less wasted time.
Reflection – It occurs to me that removing your name and any other personal identifying information from your application, e.g., dates you graduated from high school or college, might actually help counter implicit bias. So, maybe employers ought to accept anonymous applications, even if they should never post a job anonymously. This deserves more thought later.
- Pay transparency laws may cover a variety of issues related to pay transparency, not just the issue of posting the salary range in a job posting.
I haven’t read these articles. I intend to later. So, I don’t know how good they are. I just did the easy part for you and googled, “pay transparency laws”.
https://www.equalrights.org/viewpoints/developments-in-state-pay-transparency-laws/?gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIku2Rs43WhAMVGQ-tBh2-bAWyEAAYAyAAEgL1ufD_BwE
https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/all-things-work/pay-transparency-equity
https://www.adp.com/spark/articles/2023/03/pay-transparency-what-it-is-and-laws-by-state.aspx ↩︎ - Well I guess some employers are trying hard to make it work that way with court cases and all that jazz. But for now see:
https://blog.dol.gov/2024/01/10/employee-or-independent-contractor-a-guide-to-the-new-rule ↩︎
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