Pay transparency is a significant topic as more companies and job advertisers are working to comply with new state-specific laws and regulations.

Two years ago, College Recruiter actually made a bold shift well in advance of these changes and began requiring that compensation be displayed on all of its job posts. What drove our decision to add salary ranges to all postings in the U.S. (we only supported that geographic area at that time) was the desire to help millions of students and recent graduates find great careers. 

At that time, few employers were publishing salary information even when we shared data that showed how it would benefit their organization. Using our data, we saw that companies receive more applications and those applicants are typically higher quality in nature in comparison to companies that don’t include pay information. And, it typically reduces recruitment marketing costs since candidates are two to four times as likely to apply, which reduces the spend required to meet application volume goals. (On average, the employer’s cost would be 25-50 percent of what they were paying.) 

Even after reviewing this information, many employers still resisted. 

They pushed back for different reasons, but in general, it usually boiled down to their desire to have more leverage when negotiating pay. This sounds benign but it’s anything but. What it really means is that they wanted to pay employees differently for the same work. That’s wage theft. To make that worse, the candidates who were the least likely to negotiate well were women and people of color, which exasperated unconscious and sometimes conscious discriminatory hiring practices. 

Today, many more employers provide salary ranges to us. If the employer does not provide the actual salary range, we use factors such as job title, occupational field, size of employer, geographic location, required years of experience and more to estimate the salary range. 

Of the tens of thousands of employers who have worked with us, only a few have complained and one fired us. That’s fine. If they want to commit wage theft, we don’t want to be a part of that. And, it will be detrimental for their business in the long run. They may temporarily win the battle of not displaying salary ranges but they’ll lose the war as their candidate pipeline dries up. 

Providing salary range information in job postings is actually a win-win for everyone. It provides a more positive experience for candidates and it also helps employers attract more qualified candidates and lower marketing costs. 

Personally, I’m proud of our organization knowing that we are making business decisions that have the potential to create a positive impact on pay equity for all.