Dive Brief:
- A lack of a salary band in a job post is a top deal breaker for prospective employees, according to a Monster report released Monday. Approximately 6 in 10 workers said they wouldn’t apply to a job that doesn’t feature a salary range in its posting.
- Job listings that indicate unpaid assignments or “excessive take-home work” would deter 59% of applicants, while negative reviews or poor reputation would deter 56%. Unclear job descriptions would block 51% from applying, and 45% said long, complicated applications would also stop them.
- “Together, these findings suggest that candidates are paying attention not just to compensation, but also to signals about fairness, clarity, and respect for their time,” Monster said in its report.
Dive Insight:
Pay transparency in job postings has become something of a new normal, various reports have shown, but employers can stumble and still drive applicants away if they are not careful with how they use salary ranges.
For example, wide pay ranges in a job posting could deter women from applying outright, a recently released study from Cornell University found, partly due to women’s belief they may not be able to negotiate a higher salary in that band.
Overall, workers want a short, accessible application process, an Employ, Inc., report from last year found. But hiring has become more opaque due to artificial intelligence tools emerging to run both applications and application processing, prompting an ongoing AI arms race between employers and potential employees.
In response, applicants opt to apply to as many jobs as possible — putting stress on hiring teams to sort through increasing numbers of potential hires that may not even have the skills requested, Monster said in a recent, separate report.
The majority of job seekers surveyed by Monster for that report said, however, that they would be more selective in their applications if organizations gave more feedback during the hiring process, speaking to an ongoing desire for clarity.