Employers should include salary on job postings

By DANIEL ROZZEL

Staff Writer

While happiness, enjoyment, and general motivation are strong factors as to why many people choose a specific career path, the salary a particular job pays is also a strong determinant. As a senior who will be graduating this semester, finding a job that is in the salary range I need to support my lifestyle has been more difficult than it should be. A survey conducted in 2019 by job seeker website Glassdoor stated that the number one piece of information a job seeker looks for when viewing a job ad is the salary. Despite the clear desire for a more transparent work environment, Glassdoor reported that less than 10 percent of online postings include salary information.

“A salary is important to me when applying for a job because I have to make sure the job will pay me enough so I can support myself financially,” said Hannah Olkowski, a senior political science major.

“If I had to rate [the importance of salary] on a scale, I would give it a 6/10,” said James Warndorf, a senior in the College of Business. “I want to make sure my salary allows me to live wherever I need and still allow some discretionary income for other things. But I won’t go travel the job market to find the best job salary-wise. I’m sure that job offering will also be difficult to land.”

The main concern for salary is to find a job that is able to support that applicant’s lifestyle. 

“You’re going to major in something you love,” said Lynne Richardson, dean of the College of Business. “But I think from a practical standpoint, at least as a freshman, sophomores, you’re looking at majors, you got to at least consider, ‘can I live on the lifestyle? I want to be able to live on the salary from this major.’”

However, this valuable piece of information is often excluded from the job advertisements of today. The inclusion of this information should be an industry standard for companies as it can be extremely beneficial for both applicants and the employer. 

The inclusion of salary on a job posting can greatly save both parties the time and trouble of the application process which has grown increasingly longer.

“If the ad had the salary, you wouldn’t apply, get way down the path and then get really excited about it and then find out that you were going to have to turn them down because it was a low salary,” said Richardson. “I would love to see it.”

Olkowski agreed.

“I think including the salary of a job on the listing will save time for both the employer and the employee during the application process,” said Olkowski.  “I think including a salary on a job posting is beneficial because applicants would be able to determine whether or not the salary can properly meet their needs. Employers could also benefit because they won’t take their time with people who expect higher pay than they can afford.”

The main argument for employers to not include this information is a loss of negotiation power with the job applicant. However, if employers exclude the salary range from an application this increases the possibility an applicant will skip over the posting which can lead to talent loss for a company, something that is often much more valuable.  

Richardson also provided some insight on how to negotiate with an employer on the topic of salary. 

“Number one, you should negotiate. That’s the number one rule. Don’t apologize for asking for more,” said Richardson. “We’ve got to get over this hurdle of ‘they’re going to pull [the job offer].’No, they’re not going to pull it, because they’ve already invested way too much time, effort, money… ‘we’re not gonna pull up an offer because you asked for more money or more anything.’”

The benefits both parties would gain from the inclusion of salary strongly outweigh the negatives. Therefore, companies should look to adopt this practice to help increase their candidate pool and increase efficiency for both sides.