This is an easy one. Seriously.
Salary is the elephant in the room for every job applicant and hiring manager. The reality is that people work for money, and you pay money to get work done. Yes, it's true that people also want to work in good environments and feel fulfilled by their work, but at the end of the day, money will be a considerable component of any hiring conversation.
When you're hiring, money (and things like PTO, work flexibility, etc., that are sometimes used as "perks" in place of more money) is unavoidably the cornerstone of negotiation. Transparency in salary expectations from the beginning fosters a cooperative, secure sense in the applicant. Transparency frames your company as trustworthy. It shows candidates that your company has nothing to hide. Simply put, all kinds of good things happen when your salary range is public.
So yes, your salary range should be public.
Some of those good things are simply avoiding bad things. When candidates understand precisely what they're applying for, you can avoid:
- Applicants who won't take a job because the salary is unacceptable after hours of wasted time for both of you.
- All of the awkwardness that many cultures have about salaries (if you've ever hired workers from America, you will undoubtedly have encountered this).
- The pressure and distraction of insinuated negotiation throughout the interview process.
Good things happen when your salary range is public.
And some of those good things might mean the difference between finding a good fit and the perfect candidate:
- You'll demonstrate that you're a company that can be open and honest about salaries.
- You'll build trust from day 1. That trust will flow into the new hire's performance in their role.
- You'll attract people who wouldn't have otherwise applied because they assumed the role would pay less than it does.
- You'll attract people who value straightforwardness and cooperative environments.
Are there any reasons you shouldn't make your salary range public?
We all know that there are times when, even if you wanted to make your salary range public, you can't do so easily or quickly. Maybe you work for a company that doesn't make the salary range public (or makes it so significant that it's unrealistic). You may have read this article and come around to the idea, but you don't have salary transparency for your current employees, and you don't have time to turn the ship around as quickly as you'd like.
No matter the reason, if you genuinely can't have a public salary range on your job post, you should do everything in your power to communicate that salary range as early as possible. The earlier your applicants know, the better off everybody is.