If you want to put candidates in control, build a CRM tool. When a recruiter pings me on LinkedIn or emails me, I have a URL I can send them to with an intake form. No more calls wasting my time, I can see the company/role/salary/etc. up front.
The trick here is you need to figure out a business model where you don't take money from employers, because once you do its just the long slide to becoming a shittier LinkedIn.
Colorado now requires job postings to include something more or less like a "reasonable salary range". It hasn't been perfect, for example there are some companies who now just restrict their online job postings to say "except Colorado" instead of adding a salary.
But as someone living in Colorado it's been nice to know the salary range up-front more often and to have confidence that I can ask them for a salary range without getting the question turned back on me: "Well, what are you looking for?"
I think as they start enforcing things more employers will avoid colorado until kinks worked out.
If you have a janitor in CO, every job is an improvement and potential promotion. Having to first go to that janitor for every position is going to wear out FAST. Posting for the CTO position? Go to janitor first. Posting for CEO position - same thing - that's what is going to drive folks away.
In my experience this is worse than nothing, because the posted pay is so much lower than the companies are actually willing to offer. Positions posted for FAANG that I know are offering $250k+ total comp are posted with statements like “pay starting at $110,000 but varies based on your unique qualifications and experience”.
I'm unsure of exact enforcement and such but you could report them if you wanted. I also don't mind FAANG so much since there's so much info available for those positions on like levels.fyi.
The biggest strength for me is that I can ask them and they have to tell me. When I was job searching before I'd ask the recruiter and then they'd always ask me what my target is. Not showing your cards is like negotiation 101. Plus it's made fielding messages and emails easier. If they provide a range, I can just easily say "This position sounds interesting but unfortunately the salary range isn't what I'm looking for currently."
You're right that a lot of positions aren't great about this, I've literally seen "Pay starting at $0.01" or ranges literally $30k to +$200k. But I've seen it as a benefit in the negotiation process and it's just been easier to field recruiters.
> total comp
This law only covers salary as far as I know, so equity and such aren't included. Total comp is different.
I guess not, but this is also a law that applies to _all_ job postings for CO. I feel like a lot of people are criticizing this law when I see it as an absolute step in the right direction.
It's not perfect, but I feel like it's wildly helpful for a ton of people. It helps transparency for a lot of positions and I feel like it rewards honest companies. If equity and bonuses are a big part I think it reduces the overhead for talking about salary to clear the way to talk more about equity and bonuses.
It's also in the early stages and CO is the only state with a law that requires disclosure up-front to my knowledge (someone mentioned CA has a law, but they only have to answer if asked). It feels like a fantastic first-step to me.
Unfortunately it looks like companies can just state wide ranges (which don't help applicants understand the market any better) and they can also omit other compensation elements beyond the base salary component (stocks, cash bonuses). That makes the disclosed information not very useful.
We've talked about things in this area, but this particular framing is pretty interesting. We're talking about it now.
I personally like this proposal and am probably going to at least draft a hypothetical spec of it and see how it fleshes out. Thanks for the suggestion!
It's unbelievable that nobody has done this well - I and most people I know are tracking their own job searches on a spreadsheet.
Pretty obvious value-add for job searchers. Not to mention that having access to this data would enable tons of other product features. Shows that most services/sites don't care that much about the applicant experience.
If you're interested in comparing notes, I'd love to hop on a call with you. (We've got some bookable slots linked at the bottom of the blog post, but I can make time elsewhere if you'd like.)
The trick here is you need to figure out a business model where you don't take money from employers, because once you do its just the long slide to becoming a shittier LinkedIn.