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Comment by ig1 | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that a lot of these suggestions are very superficial and don't consider the underlying reason companies are doing what they currently do.

For example if you specify a salary you end up anchoring the negotiations, if a candidate is not quite up to the level you're looking for but you want to hire them anyway, the candidate is much less likely to accept a job offer where you offer a salary below what you stated in the ads, even if they would have accepted it otherwise.

Furthermore you need to consider the impact disclosing salary levels has on current employees, if the market is tough you may have to offer a salary above what current employees are earning, which can be very damaging to morale and can make your staff feel hostile towards the new hire from the start.

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I don't think the suggestions are superficial. A company does not need to follow every single one of these tips in order to increase their applicant signal/noise ratio. Many companies would achieve this goal if they simply refused to "look like a recruitment agency" and took the time to write job posting for humans, and not robots. I tend to be turned off by completely impersonal job postings, even when they list interesting technologies. Also, imo, a company has little to gain and much to lose by trying too hard to be cool: as stated in the article, you don't need ninjas, and you don't need to tell us that you only hire the top 1% (if you have to say it, it probably isn't true).

But you make a good point about the salary, and it is especially relevant for large companies.

Your point about the salary is valid - stating the salary does create some problems. However, not stating it creates much bigger problems.

It would be relatively rare that you advertise for a senior developer and end up hiring a junior one (when you had no intention of hiring a junior at first). It would be much more common that your job ad is ignored by the really good developers and instead you have your time wasted by those who are underqualified.

If your existing employees are paid below-market rates that is a latent problem in any case. Eventually they will figure out that they're underpaid. Even if you don't advertise salaries some of your competitors will.

the saying goes "in a negotiation, the first one to say a value, lose."

but having endured 2 LONG interview process just to learn that the openings were way bellow my interest, despite the absurd requirements, i must say that if one post mentions a value that is near what i'd like, I will probably apply just to that one. i would probably start to consider every single other post as a waste of time. ...now back to reality, too bad no one will ever do that and i will have to continue guessing.

IMHO that's messed up. A fun analogy would be people hiring being OK to receive a resume with only my desired pay. and AFTER days of phone negotiations and i've agreed to a figure, they would have some 2~15minutes to hear my qualifications and call me the next day if they are going to hire me or not.

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