In a tight candidate market, you need every advantage you can get over the competition. With open job orders, you could just throw boat loads of money at them. You could post on all the job boards, use syndication platforms to hit all the aggregators or spend a bundle on job promotion.
Or, you could just fix a few things with your job listing and not spend another dime.
In this post, we’re going to focus on including position salary in your job postings.
Put simply, you need to list one. And, I don’t mean TBD or “based on experience.” You need a specific salary, pay range or hourly rate for each job posting on your site. In many cases (especially with higher skill, higher paying positions), applicants won’t apply to a position without a salary listed. Here’s why:
They don’t want to waste their time.
Candidates want to know up front what type of salary they can expect.
Salary ranges provide insight on required experience.
Some jobs have amazing job descriptions that upsell the requirements and make it seem like a high-level position; only to find out it’s entry-level. And vice-versa. Without a salary, candidates may either feel too high- or low-level for the position and won’t submit an application.
It conveys a lack of transparency.
Some candidates may read “Salary: TBD” as this company isn’t forthcoming and lacks transparency. It doesn’t get the relationship off on the right foot and can prevent people from applying.
Still unsure? Let’s look at an example:
To prove that candidates are more likely to apply to a position with a salary, let’s turn to the data. We reviewed several similar job positions to help identify which posts drove more response than others. Here is just one example:
Job posting 1: Direct of Marketing Analytics position in LA
Salary: Commensurate with Experience
Job posting 2: Advanced Analytics Consultant position in San Francisco
Salary: Up to $110k Base Salary
Applications: 9
Including a salary could improve views/application by 600%!
This was just one example, but in several that we pulled we saw the job posting view to application ratio was much better for positions that included salary than those without. In most cases, jobs with salaries had double the amount of applications per 100 views and in some cases it was as much as 600% more applications per 100 views.
Want more candidates to apply? List a salary!
Want more actionable data on your job postings? Get Haley Marketing Group’s job board made for the staffing and recruiting industry!