alt Hacker NewsMy issue with mandated ranges is how to require the range to be narrow enough, without preventing the candidate from negotiating?
If you don't have any narrowness requirements, you can have a job where the range is $50k-500k, which is useless. If you narrow it to — let's say — 10% of the midpoint, you can say $180k-220k, but then you're not allowed to hire the perfect candidate who won't accept less than $250k, even though you would actually want to pay this much given that person's skills. If the candidate is allowed to negotiate upwards, ranges may gradually, over the course of years, drift downwards, with an implicit understanding that they are unrepresentative of the actual salary you are likely to earn.
With an infinite number of employers and an infinite number of candidates, you would always be able to find the perfect candidate for your mix of requirements and pay them the exact salary that matches those requirements. The real world isn't like that, though, and if you, as an employer, have an offer available, you will get candidates who are under and over qualified for the specific offer you had in mind, and you might nevertheless be able to find a spot for them at some salary that both of you are willing to accept.
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> My issue with mandated ranges is how to require the range to be narrow enough, without preventing the candidate from negotiating?
So few candidates so rarely have the power to negotiate above what the hidden range already is, that this is a non-issue.
We really shouldn't be deciding policy based on the outliers, besides which those people (the outliers) that can dictate a number higher than the range already set aren't hired from advertisements anyway, making the whole "but we can't do this because it would affect those who don't apply respond to job ads"...
> but then you're not allowed to hire the perfect candidate who won't accept less than $250k
You are allowed to hire whoever you want. How could you come to your conclusion? You are allowed to hire people without making job ads at all, for that matter. You are allowed to hire 10 people for a position even if you only advertised 1. And of course you are allowed to pay more than initially advertised.
> but then you're not allowed to hire the perfect candidate who won't accept less than $250k
Says who? No one is saying you aren't allowed to go over the advertised range.
No one is saying you cannot negotiate. It's forcing them to simply make the first offer as opposed to making an offer at all.