Woman explains why companies should reveal their salary range in public job postings

Seeking a job might be easier, but landing your dream job with your desired salary is tougher. While browsing countless job listings on various sites and portals, a job seeker usually looks at the pay scale the company is willing to provide. However, in most cases, the companies chose not to display the pay scale under the job listings, making things difficult for job seekers. Jess Goodwin—who goes by @thejessgoodwin on Instagram Threads—wrote a series detailing the troubles she faced while applying for a full-time remote job opportunity.

Goodwin, who mentioned herself as a "perpetual job seeker" in her bio, said that she would usually not bother to apply for a job position if they were not providing reasonable pay. However, one job opportunity caught her attention. "The job sounded genuinely fun and interesting and the application itself was short and simple, so I figured why not. It ended up being a great reminder as to why there's no point applying to companies that don't implement salary transparency," she wrote. "Yesterday, I got an email from their head of HR asking me to complete a Google form with a bunch of questions about my experience, my approach to certain scenarios, etc. — a mix of what's typically asked during recruiter and hiring manager interviews."

One of those questioned asked if Goodwin was comfortable working with the budgeted salary, which was almost $30,000 less than what she expected. Goodwin had even mentioned her desired salary in her application. "I genuinely don't understand the thinking here. Why bother to ask for an applicant's desired salary if you're going to disregard it? Why not include the salary in the job description, to begin with, if you're going to mention it in the next step in the process? Do you want to sift through more applications than you need to? Do you think someone's just going to be like, 'Actually, $30K isn't that big of a deal?'" she further wrote on her Threads post.

She ended up sending an email, replying to the HR person, clarifying that she wouldn't be filling out the form, citing her reasons as well. A few minutes later, she got a response from HR revealing that they had decided to move forward with another candidate. Goodwin found this behavior baffling and so did others on the internet who came across her post. @yarrrnmatey shared, "I applied to one where you had to put a desired salary, so I picked the high end of their range. Then I got a rejection that stated the salary I requested was outside of their range."

@mguerrero75 quipped, "It's shocking to me that in 2024, we are still playing these games. I work in higher education, have a master's and have over 20 years of experience in education and business in high-level positions. I have been treated the same way and it's mind-blowing! Like, do people think we're idiots?" @callmekrystle added, "I asked the HR lady in my department once. I work for a university. Some positions share the range and some are specific. She said it depends on the recruiter who posted the vacancy. My department had an open position and in the first round of interviews, they had a range. Our top candidate took another opportunity. 2nd round of interviews, they listed the pay because they wanted people to know it was a mediocre hourly wage. Salary transparency is vital. People ghost me sometimes after I ask."