Latest / Hiring & Firing with Fexingo: Recruitment, Performance, and Workforce Decisions / Why Public Salary Ranges Attract Better Applicants
Transcript
- Lucas: So there is one line you can add to a job description that will increase the quality of your applicant pool by something like forty percent, and it doesn't cost you a thing. Luna: Let me guess — it's the salary range. Lucas: Yeah, it's exactly that. And I know a lot of hiring managers and recruiters are still terrified of posting numbers. The argument I always hear is: 'If we publish a range, we lose negotiating leverage, and we'll end up paying everyone at the top.' Luna: Right, the fear that you're painting yourself into a corner. But what does the data actually say? Lucas: There is a really clean case study that came out of a mid-size tech company — about eight hundred employees, based in Austin. They did an experiment in late 2024. For three months, every single job posting they put out included a salary range. Nothing else changed — same job titles, same responsibilities, same sourcing channels. Luna: And what happened? Lucas: They tracked a forty percent increase in what they called 'qualified applicants' — candidates who met at least seven out of ten required criteria. And the time to fill dropped by about eighteen days. The ranges they posted were fairly typical for the roles — they weren't being unusually generous. For a senior software engineer, it was $150,000 to $180,000. For a marketing manager, $95,000 to $115,000. Luna: So the transparency itself was the signal. It's not that the salary was higher than market — it's that candidates knew what they'd be getting before they invested time in the process. Lucas: Exactly. The theory is that when you hide the salary, you attract two groups: people who assume it's much higher than it actually is — those folks get disappointed and drop out late in the process — and people who assume it's lower than it is, so they apply but they're not really a fit for the level. A published range self-selects the right pool. Luna: There's also an equity angle here. Multiple studies show that women and people of color are less likely to negotiate, or they negotiate less aggressively. So when the range is hidden, those groups tend to get offers closer to the bottom, while white men get offers closer to the top. Publishing the range doesn't eliminate that gap, but it narrows it. Lucas: Yeah, that's a critical point. The data from the Austin company actually showed that the offer variance — the spread between the highest and lowest offer for the same role — shrank by about thirty percent after they started posting ranges. So the negotiation was less of a lottery. Luna: But I want to push back a little. What about existing employees who see those postings and realize they're making less than the posted range for new hires? That can create a real morale problem. Lucas: It's a real risk, and it happened at this company. About six weeks into the experiment, a senior product manager saw that the posted range for a new product manager role was higher than her current salary. She went to her manager and asked for an adjustment. And the company had to decide: do we adjust her comp, or do we hide the range again? Luna: What did they do? Lucas: They adjusted her comp. But more importantly, they did a comp review across all product roles and ended up spending about two hundred thousand dollars to bring existing employees in line with the new ranges. That's a real cost of transparency. But the argument is — that money was going to come out eventually, either in turnover costs or in salary corrections. Better to do it proactively. Luna: So the trade-off is: you get better applicants and faster hiring, but you have to be willing to pay for internal equity. Lucas: Right. And there's another concern: wage compression. If you publish a range that goes from $110,000 to $135,000, and you have a top performer making $112,000, they're going to feel like they're at the bottom, even if they were happy before. Luna: That's a perceptual problem more than a financial one. But it's real. Lucas: It is real. And some companies try to mitigate it by posting wide ranges — like $100,000 to $200,000 — which defeats the purpose. The best practice seems to be a narrow range, maybe a twenty to twenty-five percent spread, and then being honest about where a candidate falls based on experience. Luna: Is there a downside to starting salary transparency for smaller companies? I mean, if you're a startup with ten people, you might not have a formal comp structure. Lucas: That's a good question. The Austin company was eight hundred people, so they had some infrastructure. But I've seen a fifteen-person startup in Denver try it. They posted a range for a customer success role — $50,000 to $65,000 — and they got applicants who were overqualified because they assumed larger companies would pay more. But they also got candidates who were really aligned with the mission. The key is that the range has to be realistic. If you post a range you can't actually afford, you're just creating distrust. Luna: And what about states where it's already the law? A handful of states now require salary ranges on job postings. Does that change the signal? Lucas: It changes the signal in the sense that it's no longer a differentiator — it's just compliance. But I think the interesting thing is that companies in those states that post genuinely narrow, well-researched ranges are still seeing better applicant quality than companies that post the bare minimum range required by law. The signal is not just 'we comply' — it's 'we've done our homework.' Luna: So you're saying the quality of the range itself matters. Lucas: Exactly. A range that's obviously copied from Glassdoor or based on a single data point — that doesn't help. But a range that reflects real market data and internal calibration — that builds trust. And trust is what drives that forty percent applicant quality bump. Luna: It's interesting — we talk a lot about employer brand as this vague concept, but salary transparency might be one of the most concrete ways to signal that you're a fair employer. Lucas: Yeah, it's a direct signal. It says: we're not going to play games with you. And in a labor market where candidates are increasingly skeptical of corporate opacity, that's valuable. Lucas: And speaking of signals — if these conversations have moved your work forward in some small way, a couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going. Buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, if you've gotten something out of them. Luna: Yeah, it's a low-key way to support ad-free content that actually digs into the data. We appreciate it. Lucas: Alright — back to the numbers. One thing I want to stress: the forty percent bump isn't universal. It works best for roles where the market salary is fairly well-defined, like software engineering or accounting. For more amorphous roles, like 'innovation lead' or 'strategic advisor,' the range is harder to pin down, and the benefit is smaller. Luna: So you have to know your market before you can be transparent about it. Lucas: Right. And the companies that succeed with transparency are the ones that invest in good comp data. Whether that's using a service like Radford or Payscale, or just doing your own analysis. Luna: I also think there's a generational shift here. Younger workers — millennials and Gen Z — they expect transparency. If you hide the salary, they assume the worst. Lucas: Yeah, there's survey data that backs that up. A 2025 survey from Adobe found that sixty-eight percent of Gen Z job seekers said they would not apply to a job that didn't list a salary range. That's up from forty-seven percent just two years earlier. Luna: So it's not just a nice to have. It's becoming a requirement for attracting younger talent. Lucas: Exactly. And the companies that get ahead of it now are going to have an advantage. The ones that wait until it's mandated by law are going to be playing catch-up. Luna: Alright, so let's say I'm a hiring manager and I want to try this. What's the first step? Lucas: First, do your internal equity check. You don't want to post a range for a new hire that's higher than what your current top performers make. So before you publish anything, run a comp analysis and make sure your existing team is fairly paid relative to the market. If they're not, you need to budget for adjustments. Luna: That's the hard part — getting leadership to sign off on that budget. Lucas: It is hard. But the alternative is posting a range, having your best employee find out they're underpaid, and then losing them. That's a lot more expensive. Luna: Fair point. Lucas: So I'd say: start with one or two roles where you're confident in the market data. Post a narrow range — maybe a twenty percent spread — and track your applicant quality, your time to fill, and most importantly, your offer acceptance rate. Compare it to the same metrics from before. You'll probably see improvement. Luna: And if you don't? Lucas: Then the problem isn't the range — it's the range itself. Maybe it's not competitive. Or maybe the role isn't well-defined. But my bet is that the data will surprise you. Luna: Alright, I'm convinced. I think more employers should try it. Lucas: Yeah. It's one of those rare hiring changes that costs nothing to implement and can dramatically improve your outcomes. The only cost is the courage to be transparent.