A published salary range in a job ad changes 3 things immediately.
On this page
Fewer people apply. The ones who do are better matched.
Someone already on your team does the arithmetic.
The arithmetic on your own team is why most companies do not publish.
Audit what you pay before you publish anything. The salary range exposes gaps that already existed.
What does not publishing actually cost?
Pay ends up correlated with negotiation confidence rather than contribution.
2 engineers join the same team in the same quarter, at the same level.
One negotiated, one did not. The gap is 12,000 euro.
The 12,000 euro gap compounds through every raise after that.
Nobody decided it. It is the default outcome of a private price.
The bill arrives later. Salary information leaks, because people talk. When it does, what you have to explain is an accident.
What does a published salary range actually change?
Application volume drops, which reads as bad and is usually good.
Negotiation gets shorter. The question stops being “what can I extract”.
The question becomes “where in the salary range do I land, and why”.
Your existing team compares the published salary range to their own pay.
The comparison finds a pay problem which already existed.
Application volume drops. The people who filter themselves out were going to reject your offer anyway. After your engineers spent hours on them.
Negotiation gets shorter. A conversation about evidence is a better conversation than a conversation about extraction.
Your existing team checks. If the answer is uncomfortable, you have found a problem that was already there.
What do you do before you publish anything?
Audit what you currently pay.
Are 2 people at the same level 15% apart for no defensible reason?
Fix that before the salary range goes public. Publishing first turns a quiet problem into a loud one.
Fixing the internal gap is the actual work. Writing the number into the job ad takes 5 minutes.
How do you write the salary range?
Make the salary range real and attach the level. A range of 60,000 to 120,000 euro answers nothing.
Publish the salary range for the level you are hiring at.
Say what moves someone within it. Scope, autonomy, the specific skills the team is short of.
Senior Engineer, 85,000 to 100,000 euro, base.
A title with a band tells a candidate more than either half alone.
How wide should the salary range be?
A salary range wider than 25% of its own floor reads as a refusal.
Sixty to 120 thousand is a decline to answer.
Say the currency, and say whether the number is base or total.
Put the salary range in the job ad itself.
A number that surfaces only after a screen has cost both sides an hour.
Teams that publish report shorter first calls, because the money question is closed.
The conversation starts at fit.
What do you say when someone asks for the top of the salary range?
Answer with the criteria rather than with a yes or no.
“The top of the salary range is for someone already operating at the next level.”
“Here is what that looks like on this team. From what I have seen, you are here.”
A placement explained that way is defensible, and it survives being repeated to a colleague.
The objection that is actually valid
Publishing bands makes you easier to poach from.
A competitor now knows what to beat. That is real and it is the cost.
People who leave for money alone are usually leaving for other reasons too.
You would rather find that out early.
Where this is going anyway
Three markets are moving at different speeds, and remote hiring means you meet all three.
The EU. The Pay Transparency Directive must be in national law by 7 June 2026.
Employers must give pay-range information before the interview. Salary history questions go.
The United States. No federal rule exists. Several states have written their own.
California, Colorado, New York, Washington and Illinois require a range in the posting.
Hire one remote engineer in Denver, and Colorado’s rule applies to your ad.
The United Kingdom. No band requirement yet. Gender pay gap reporting starts at 250 employees.
UK candidates still expect a number. You will be publishing bands either way.
Common questions
Does publishing a salary range reduce the number of applications?
Yes, and the drop is mostly people who would have rejected your offer anyway. After your engineers spent hours on them. Volume is the wrong metric. Track offers accepted per engineering hour spent instead. The published band usually looks better on that number.
What if your current pay is not defensible?
Fix it before you publish. Budget for the correction rather than the announcement. A band published over unaddressed gaps hands your team the evidence and no explanation. Most companies find 1 or 2 real anomalies. Plus a handful with defensible reasons nobody had written down.
Is publishing a salary range mandatory?
The answer depends on where the candidate sits. The EU Pay Transparency Directive becomes national law by June 2026. In the United States the rule is state by state. California, Colorado, New York, Washington and Illinois require a range in the posting. The United Kingdom has no such rule yet.
What is a salary range?
A salary range is the band a company will pay for one level. The range runs from the bottom of that band to the top. A published range names the level next to it. Ranges span 20 to 30% at most European companies. A range with no level tells a candidate nothing.
Should you publish bands for existing roles too?
Do open roles first. That gives you one cycle to fix internal gaps quietly. Publishing everything at once turns a private problem into a public one. Over pay you never audited, that lands in a single afternoon. Most companies start with open roles and extend it within a year.
The short version
Fix your internal pay gaps, then publish a real salary range with the level attached.
Fewer applications, better matched, shorter negotiations.
Your team will do the arithmetic either way. Better that the answer is defensible.
Rather not run the band audit alone? I do that as a fixed engagement.
The process audit is 500 euro and covers your levels and your bands.
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