A reader writes:
I work for a private college, and my department is in the process of hiring a new staff person. I have been involved in vetting and interviewing applicants both for this current position and for several past positions, so this isn’t the first time I’ve faced this issue. But I don’t know how to handle it and I’m getting very frustrated.
I can go online and in minutes find out what everyone is making at the nearest public university, but because we’re private, it’s very hard to find salary range information about any of the jobs here. In addition, our HR is very reluctant to provide any firm information whatsoever, even to the people actually hiring for the jobs (they’ll give us the “pay band code” for the position, but won’t actually tell us what that code means). And this furtiveness around salaries seems to have gotten worse over the years: in the past they’ve at least told the hiring managers what the pay band codes mean.
I’m fairly certain of the reason for all of this mystery about our salaries, as it is an open secret that pretty much everyone who works here is underpaid (except of course the upper administration and maybe the athletics director!). So I can see why they don’t want us announcing this to applicants.
So we get applicants asking us the salary, and we aren’t allowed to actually tell them (if we even know) until we make an offer. On the other hand, the application system asks them for their salary history and their desired salary (our state unfortunately does not ban asking for salary histories). So I can see in the applications that Jane Smith is currently making more than she would in this position — and wants way more than what this position pays — but when Jane asks us the salary, we can’t tell her until we make her an offer. When Jane inevitably turns down the job due to the low pay, everyone has gone to an awful lot of trouble for no result, and we have to start the process over.
Our administration acts like this is all fine and normal, but the fact they won’t let us tell anyone lets me know that they know there’s a problem with the pay. But those of us in the hiring process, not to mention all of these applicants, end up wasting a lot of time when there’s an obvious salary mismatch that we can’t actually talk about.
I know I can’t do anything about our institution’s bizarre attitude toward disclosing salary ranges. But what can I do when applicants ask, “What is the pay?” We usually say something about checking with HR and not disclosing until the offer, but I feel really badly that we’re being so evasive and, essentially, deceptive. So what can I say to them? I’d love some wording that could say “don’t get your hopes up about the pay” without actually saying it.
If you do have suggestions for how to talk about this issue with our HR partners, that would also be great. This whole situation is extremely frustrating and disheartening, and I’m sure it’s even worse for people who are looking for jobs with us.
By the way, I’m trying to get out of here as well, as I also make at least $6,000 less than the person in an equivalent position at that nearby public university.
Why, oh why, do some employers insist on doing this? It’s rude to applicants, it sets people up for frustration and disappointment, and it wastes an enormous amount of everyone’s time, including the employer’s. It makes no sense for you to spend time interviewing and assessing candidates who won’t take what you’re offering. If you instead could talk salary early on, people who won’t accept that salary could drop out and you’d free up slots for candidates who are actually willing to accept your offers.
If your employer is hiding what they pay because they know it’s not competitive … people are going to find out once you get to the offer stage! It’s not like you can hide it forever. So they must be banking on people having invested so much time by that point that they’ll be more likely to accept than if they heard the salary right off the bat.
But unless you reveal truly compelling info about the job as people interview, it would be unusual for a job to become so enticing over the course of a hiring process that people would compromise by large amounts on how much money they’re willing to accept. (A really good benefits package can sometimes do that — but you can talk about that early in the process too.) And indeed, you noted that you’re losing candidates once you get to the offer stage and then have to start all over with someone else. So your HR department’s commitment to this process is strange.
One option is to simply ignore HR and give applicants whatever information you do have. If you know absolutely nothing about the salary and can’t find out, you could still say, “I don’t have the budgeted salary for this role; our HR policy is not to share it, including with me, until we’re at the offer stage. But I can tell you that in general our salaries aren’t as competitive as public universities in the area. We do offer (insert something here about benefits or other good things about the job), but our salaries often come in lower than people are expecting so I want to be up-front with you about that.”
If you know from the info the candidate provided that they’re making more than they’d make in the job they’re applying for, you can say, “I can tell you it’s likely to be less than what you’re making currently, and I understand if it doesn’t make sense to proceed.”
But ideally you’d also push back with HR — hard, and ideally with a group of others involved in hiring. Bureaucracies at large institutions can be very difficult to move, and especially bureaucracies that make such ridiculous decisions as this one, but if enough people involved in hiring take a stand and say, “This isn’t working for us, we’re losing good candidates, and we’re wasting a huge amount of time,” it’s possible you can get them to budge. If you can quantify the number of candidates you’ve lost over this policy and the amount of time you’ve wasted — and if others involved in hiring can do the same — it might have an impact. And really, sometimes HR imposes bizarre hiring polices but it’s not unusual for them to give in when hiring managers stand up and say, “No, this won’t work for us and we need to change it.” So it’s worth a try.
my employer won’t let us tell candidates what we pay until we make them an offer was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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