[feedjoelpie]

From the hirer side, maybe this is unreasonable given "No matter what, don't give them a number," but my past experiences on the other side of the table lead me to try and press a different dynamic. I try to get us and applicants talking salary during the first interview, before we even know if we fit each other at all.

The rationale is:

A) If how much money you want from us isn't even an option, we don't waste your time. We can be very up-front about that before a lengthy interview process proceeds.

B) We can judge your follow-up interview (generally a full-day paid tryout) against how much you expect to be paid. Which on the negative side lets us weed out expensive mediocrity, or on the positive side, give opportunities to people who aren't quite there yet but wouldn't cost much to take a chance on and try to train up.

A few people definitely look at it with suspicion, but in general I think it's worked out better for everyone.

Also, as an aside, I would take issue with what you said about researching what a company pays. For so many companies (mostly small ones), all you can do is ask around and find a current or former employee who is willing to tell you. And that is so often, for most applicants, not an opportunity you get. I think you're making that research sound much easier than it actually is.

[jrjarrett]

So as a recruiter, why not just state the salary range for the position, if that's fixed?

Then if the amount of money I want from you as a potential employee isn't an option, I won't waste both of our times in applying.

[feedjoelpie]

Because it's not fixed. We don't usually hire for a particular, specific level of talent/experience except in rare cases when we need to fill out a specific growth area. We just bring in people who seem interesting and then see if we can fit them somewhere.

Also, we're honestly pretty new at this. Our company's a little over two years old, and only in the past year have we gone from poaching people we already know and trust to interviewing people we've never met.

[logfromblammo]

A) If how much money you want from us isn't even an option, we don't waste your time.

Because it's not fixed. We don't usually hire for a particular, specific level of talent/experience except in rare cases...

You may not realize it, but those two statements are contradictory.

Asking price and value are correlated values. If you have a hard limit on what you can pay, you have a soft limit on the quality of your candidates. And by putting a low-pass filter on the interview process, you are clipping off higher levels of talent/experience.

[rmc]

If you want applications to talk salary from the start, do you also hold yourself to that theory and mention salary range on the job application/first phone call?

Or do you only want the employee to give up information?