Ask HN: Should you include salary range on an international job post?

3 points by BaronVonSteuben 2 years ago | 4 comments

When posting a job opening, we normally include salary range. However, we are expanding this role to include international applicants, and the salary range can be different depending on regional market rates. This means that we either:

1. Post a range that is way too high or too low for some regions, which badly messes with expectations and can be very misleading to candidates, defeating the whole point of posting salary ranges in the first place.

2. Post a range that is so broad as to be meaningless (which is what some companies appear to be doing now). However this can also mislead candidates.

3. Omit the salary range entirely. This is obviously not ideal, but personally less information seems better than wrong information.

What do you do when posting international jobs? How has that worked?

JohnFen 2 years ago |

I've never had this problem, so I have no personal experience or research to draw from. But my first thought is that if you're going to adjust the salary you pay according to the location of the employee, then perhaps you should specify the salary range in the listing as a percentage of median income?

So instead of saying "100-150k/yr", you could say something like "2-3 times the median income for the area where you live".

BaronVonSteuben 2 years ago | |

Thanks, that's an interesting idea. We have developers in the US, Europe, and South America. I have no idea what the median incomes are (or how the salary bands were calculated) but I'll check and see if there are enough consistencies to give a meaninful number.

JohnFen 2 years ago | | |

If you're pegging salaries to the economics of the area the employee is working in, then I assume there is some sort of metric you use in order to determine how to adjust the pay range.

In giving this more thought, my basic point is that reporting a pay range is about transparency, so the thing to do is to mention what the pay range is pegged to.

So I've changed my mind about using the median income of the area as the peg, and think that perhaps cost of living for the area may be better. In the US, for instance, an income that will let you live like a king in some parts won't be enough to live in better than poverty conditions in others. The cost of living differences between areas can be enormous.

kirkarg 2 years ago | |

If the listing is for all countries this approach might not be the best, you need to consider that in some countries this data might not translate to the reality of it when it comes from a government source. I don't have a clear solution either