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

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

#11

Post by swalsh »

Having enough salary is important, but it shouldn't drive your decision (as the employee). Not having enough money definitely matters, but at some point there are diminishing returns on how important salary is to your motivation, and future success in a role.

You know what I wish I had in a job search? Let me post a profile, not a resume, but give me a survey. Let employers search for me based on what I'm good at... where my strengths are. Focus the hunt not on "who has the best skills" but rather "who's going to round out my team". The idea that specific technical skills can be acquired easier than personality traits.

So here's the traits I'd look for. Every engineer has a mix of motivations, some care more about tech problems, others care more about business problems. Then honestly some are just more concerned about growing their career. All 3 personalities have equally important traits that are essential to a team. A good team should have a tech guy to make sure what it builds is maintainable, it should also have a guy who is always making sure what the team is building is valuable, and then frankly if you have both of these guys they're going to constantly disagree with each other... so you need another guy who will take both viewpoints into account and determine what's better for the company.

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

#16

Post by st3v3r »

swalsh wrote: post #11

Having enough salary is important, but it shouldn't drive your decision (as the employee). Not having enough money definitely matters, but at some point there are diminishing returns on how important salary is to your motivation, and future success in a role. You know what I wish I had in a job search? Let me post a profile, not a resume, but give me a survey. Let employers search for me based on what I'm good at...…

While the salary thing isn't everything, it still is a very important thing. And unless there's significant upside, most people I know aren't going to be interested in a job where they have to take a 30% cut. Especially if they already have a family.

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

#17

Post by themckman »

As a current job seeker, its certainly helpful to see the range I can expect when the process gets that far. I might suggest that you offer two modes for input: exact and range. In the case of range, maybe, warn them if their range is crazy big. I've seen jobs recently in the market I'm searching in on StackOverflow advertising a range with the low end being 50% of the high end. That doesn't actually help me when deciding on whether to contact.

If you really wanted to go crazy, make a publicly advertised email field mandatory, also. If I find a job posting and can't send an email to apply for it. I, most of the time, skip applying for that job. I might fill out a form that asks for just, like, my name, email and has a file field for my resume, but, it still rubs me the wrong way to fill that out. Give me an email address and let me write a small personalized note with a link to my resume. When you present me with a form to apply it makes me feel like I'm just a new datapoint in your recruitment database rather than, like, a human being just trying to start a conversation about how we can help each other.

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

#18

Post by slavoingilizov »

Even though the wording of the question is great, I think most people will take it as "Do you think disclosing a salary is a good thing?" Everyone would definitely be more likely to apply if the salary is good, but less likely if it's bad. The answer depends on the amount disclosed, not on the fact it's disclosed. It automatically makes you imagine the "happy case" and say that YES, it's awesome if I see a big salary and I would definitely apply more. But reality is different.

I think it's an interesting point, but any results or replies are destined to lead to wrong conclusions. It's like doing UX research by asking people what they want instead of observing their behavior (i.e. prone to bias). So I wouldn't take any of the answers here as relevant.

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

#19

Post by finspin »

jawns wrote: post #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 m…

I'm thinking that launching just another job board won't get me anywhere. I'll have to either a) spend heavily on advertising (which I can't afford) or b) differentiate myself from all other job boards out there.

I live in Finland (5 million habitants) and based on my research only about 5% of job ads include salary. It's not part of the culture to discuss salaries publicly so it's very well possible that companies won't be willing to go public.

On the other hand, I think it's quite promising that there are even a few companies that are already publishing their salary offers, despite most of the competition not doing it.

I see it as my job to convince them it's good for their business and start a little revolution. Maybe others will join the bandwagon?

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