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Ask HN: Are you more likely to apply for a job that discloses salary upfront?

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Ask HN: Are you more likely to apply for a job that discloses salary upfront?

#1
I started to work on a job board to improve my Node.js / MongoDB skills and I'm thinking of actually launching it. But how do I make my board different from all others? I'm thinking of having a mandatory salary field so that each job would contain a salary range.

Stack Overflow data shows that job ads with salary receive 75% more clicks. https://stackoverflow.blog/2016/07/salary-transparency/#75. Other job sites are reporting 20% - 30% increase in job applications for ads with salaries.

Re: Ask HN: Are you more likely to apply for a job that discloses salary upfront?

#2
For the most part, yes.

Given that job titles aren't able to help me discover whether an opportunity is right for my next career move, salary ranges help me to gauge whether I'd be moving up a ladder and save me time from having to schedule something only to find out that they were really looking for juniors.

Re: Ask HN: Are you more likely to apply for a job that discloses salary upfront?

#6
I doubt you'll get anyone who says that salary range disclosed in a job advertisement is not a good thing, from the perspective of the job seeker.

The question you may want to ask instead is: "Does the benefit to the job seeker of having a salary range specified outweigh the loss of potential advertisers who do not want to disclose a salary range?"

If you're just doing this as a side project, with no expectation of making a business out of it, then you may want to lean more toward what benefits the user.

If you're trying to run a business and pay the bills, you might need to think more about how it decreases your potential revenue, assuming the job advertisers are the ones who are paying for your service.

One other thing: Salary range is inherently a fuzzy concept. It's possible to set limits (e.g. the range must not span more than $20K, or the range must not constitute more than 20% of the lower-end number) but then you have to take into account that an advertised salary range is not necessarily the same as what they're ultimately willing to offer you. And then you have to factor in benefits, etc., which can make salary ranges misleading.

Edit: One possible way to make salary range disclosures more palatable to advertisers is to borrow a strategy from matchmaking systems: The advertiser discloses a salary range, and the job seeker discloses a minimum required salary, to the website, which does not make any of that information public. When the job seeker submits an application for a job, they receive a notice if the advertiser's specified salary range does not meet their minimum requirements. This keeps the actual salary range out of public view and at least slightly difficult to estimate, but it prevents the job applicant from wasting their time.

Re: Ask HN: Are you more likely to apply for a job that discloses salary upfront?

#8
Having a clear salary expectation up front just saves both parties time and effort. One of the big reasons salary ranges aren't always public, is because it benefits the company, by maintaining information asymmetry. By but doing that, you're at least in a small way, telling me that you don't want to play that game and are more likely to be transparent with me about other parts of the process.

Re: Ask HN: Are you more likely to apply for a job that discloses salary upfront?

#9
All things being equal, if I had to choose between applying to two jobs, and one of them explicitly offered the salary that I believe I'm worth, then yeah, I would apply to that one.

On another note, one thing I've been thinking of doing, (and I'd be delighted if you did it!) is a job board that only shows positions with take home interviews instead of in-person coding exercises. I think this is a growing trend as people realize that they're missing out on good developers who suck at coding under pressure with someone looking over their shoulder. I've come across several threads on HN with people saying the same thing.

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