Virtually everything has the price listed with whatever the product or service is, so why wouldn’t a job?
You aren’t going into a restaurant, ordering a meal and waiting for the bill to come to know what the price is. You know (and expect) the restaurant knows the price of what they are selling, so you expect them to provide that information. They know their business, their product costs, their labor costs, their overhead, and their budget. The consumer doesn’t. They don’t base their prices on what they think they can get from each individual customer as they walk in the door. I can guarantee if you were in a restaurant and paid $20 for the exact same meal that the people next you paid $10 for because they had “better negotiating” skills or the last meal they ate at a different restaurant was $8, you wouldn’t care for that, and it is inequitable. The prices are listed so everybody knows what they are getting into. Imagine walking into a restaurant and being asked what you paid for the last meal you ate and that is how they determine how to charge you for your current meal? Ludacris.
Again, I ask, why can’t a job posting be the same way?
In the job search scenario, why are companies expecting candidates to know their budget and pricing for the job? They don’t and it’s not the candidate’s responsibility. Also, what the candidate was making in a previous role at a different company is irrelevant to what they make going into a new role at a new company, particularly if changing industries, company size, budget, etc.
We all know that the first thing on both the candidate and hiring managers minds is money. How much does this position pay and how much is this candidate wanting. The thing is, the company is the one with the job opening, the company is the one that knows what they are willing to pay for the role and therefore, it’s the responsibility of the company to present that information. It is not up to the candidate, so why not just put it out there and bypass all of the wasted time, energy and resources that people go through to get to that point.
The California Pay Transparency Law will be effective January 1, 2023 which requires (among other things) that companies with 15 or more employees must disclose a pay range in the posting. There are some states and jurisdictions that already have similar regulations as outlined in this GoodHire article “Does Your State Require Pay Transparency?”
Even if where your business is located doesn’t require pay to be posted in the job, it’s best practice to do it anyway. We have already been seeing companies that post the salary information have a higher response rate and better candidate selection than those companies that don’t post the salary information. We also know that there are candidates that will not apply for jobs if the salary information isn’t posted.
Plus, more than likely, this regulation is going to eventually be enacted in more states over time so it’s better to be ahead of the curve.
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