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For some time now, Goldman Sachs has served as an important bellwether for the financial services sector, and, to a lesser extent, the economy as a whole. Goldman Sachs is synonymous with high-end financial clients—according to investor documentation on the firm’s website, you need about $10 million in assets just to open an account—and trouble at the top of the financial structure inevitably is felt throughout all strata of the economy, sooner rather than later. As goes Goldman Sachs and their clientele, so goes the nation, for better or worse—at least according to some. Business leaders in the financial world who subscribe to this notion that Goldman Sachs is a reliable indicator of the state of finance more generally are understandably nervous today, as the firm heads into 2023 rolling back on hiring.

Jobs at Goldman Sachs are incredibly competitive, with the company receiving about a quarter million applications each year. They are about to get even more competitive in 2023, as the company significantly scales back its plans for hiring.

Recent Job Growth and Hiring at Goldman Sachs

The current hiring slowdown can best be described by the numbers, but we’ll need to contextualize Goldman Sach’s recent history to do so:

• Over the past 5 years, Goldman Sachs has had a 39% increase in total employees.
• In 2021 and 2022, job growth at the company remained strong in spite of Covid-19-related challenges globally. Goldman Sachs added about 10,000 employees, with over 6,000 added last year alone.

So, what’s happening to this strong positive growth trend?

The Future of the Goldman Sachs Workforce

In a third-quarter wrap-up call to investors, the firm’s current CFO Denis Coleman was forthright about the trend ending—even reversing—in the immediate future, stating that the company was already in the process of reducing the “velocity” of new hiring.

These comments seemed to support and reiterate comments made previously in the second quarter investor call, wherein Coleman initially warned of the hiring slowdown. He revealed that the company would not be immediately replacing those who left the company through “attrition”, which presumably refers to employees who leave the firm voluntarily.

Per the Q3 call, the Goldman Sachs hiring policy will focus on being “nimble” and “strategic”. While these terms were not explored in detail on the call, they might refer to:

• Fast onboarding time (using technology to go from posting a position to hiring a candidate in a matter of days, rather than weeks)
• Smarter targeting and recruiting to proactively find ideal candidates for key roles
• Continuing to let roles disappear through “attrition” and fill only those empty roles which are crucial for core operations
• Expanded use of contractors and temporary employees to make the workforce more “nimble” in the sense that it can be scaled up and down in size as needed

Without further clarification from the Goldman Sachs brass, however, this is mostly speculation. It remains to be seen if the hiring slowdown will snowball into a hiring freeze, or even layoffs, in the future.

What Does It Mean for You?

There’s a good reason that some experts in the financial sector look at Goldman Sachs as a bellwether. Other high-end bankers already appear to be on a similar track, with Wells Fargo’s workforce shrinking nearly 6% over the last year, and high-end investor Blackrock posting few, if any, open jobs of late.

While it is useful to be aware of stories and larger trends in finance, the situation at Goldman Sachs does not need to scare you out of hiring the people you need to fill key roles. It definitely pays to be cautious and to think carefully about every dollar you spend in tumultuous economic times. However, a hiring rollback at someone else’s company shouldn’t be taken as a one-for-one reason to stop hiring at your own operation.

If you choose to take any lesson from Goldman Sachs’ hiring freeze, it shouldn’t be “stop hiring because Goldman Sachs stopped hiring.” Instead, it should inspire you to think carefully about your own hiring processes, and how you can also make them more “nimble and strategic”. For tips on how to do just that, you can start right here at our informative blog.

Generation Z’s debut in the American workforce (the oldest Gen Zs are creeping into their mid-20s already) has brought both unique opportunities and unique challenges for employers. Gen Z workers can be highly self-motivated, and many have tech and media skills that come as second nature. However, it can be difficult for old-school business types to understand the values and culture of Generation Z.

Some business operators misunderstand this cultural divide as laziness, lamenting that “kids don’t want to work anymore.” You make this reductive mistake at your own peril, though. While you are writing off an entire generation, your competitors are figuring out how to leverage their unique talents and attitudes.

The truth is that people still want — and need — to work, but many Gen Z workers are skipping out on the time-tested tradition of entering the workforce through back-breaking, minimum wage roles. Instead, they’re going to work for themselves online. This can mean flipping used goods on auction sites, monetizing videos, hustling on rideshare and delivery apps, or promoting brands on social media. Often these jobs offer a better hourly return than traditional entry-level work. Why spend eight hours at a hot grill when you can make videos with your friends for the same paycheck?

With these additional options lessening the pressure to “get a real job,” Gen Z workers have different priorities. Younger people want a positive working environment, meaningful work, and a flexible workplace. They value a paycheck like anyone else, but they also value their own free time and mental health, and many of them are inflexible about protecting those things. Companies that aren’t putting enough on the table in terms of compensation and benefits will likely see their median staff age increase over the ensuing years as Gen Z candidates land elsewhere.

Rethinking the Interview Process for Generation Z

Because of Gen Z’s unique priorities and values, employers that bring in young candidates for interviews should be tailoring the process to speak to them. Create a dialogue instead of performing an interrogation. Young professionals won’t hesitate to ghost a callback if their interview didn’t leave them feeling like they would be valued and respected at your company.

Treat your Gen Z candidates like any other qualified, adult job hunters. There is no need to be cute or reach for artificial ways to make yourself relatable, such as asking if they think your company is “lit.” You also shouldn’t attempt to “hit the griddy” or any other TikTok dances as an icebreaker. This would be “cringe” in the parlance of our times, and cringe is not good for your brand. Simply treat young people like people, and you may be surprised by the results.

Here are some great questions to ask your Gen Z candidates when interviewing:

• Do you work well as part of a team? With the pandemic causing many young people to finish out their high school or college careers online, certain basic social skills can get rusty. Ask candidates to provide examples that show they can work well with others. Don’t laugh it off if they turn to an example that you consider frivolous, such as multiplayer online gaming. If you’d accept someone’s high school football experience as an indication of their team-building skills, there’s no reason virtual activities shouldn’t be given the same consideration.
• How do you stay focused and inspired when working on tasks or projects that you don’t personally find interesting or important? Self-motivation is key. Even in an industry you love and care about, part of most people’s workdays is going to be tedious and repetitive. That’s just the nature of work for many of us. Learning what tools a candidate has to help power through the drudgery can be key.
• What is motivating you to transition from your current situation? Unless the answer is obvious (someone just graduated college and is looking for their first job, for example) there is a lot to be learned about someone’s personality and ambitions by finding out why they’re leaving their current situation behind, be that an existing job, self-employment, homemaking, or a mental health break.
• What do you know about this organization? This isn’t specific to Gen Z candidates, as it’s always nice to know if someone has done their homework. Gen Z candidates, however, tend to be particularly fast at using Google and other ubiquitous technologies and are constantly plugged into online spaces. If they haven’t used that to their advantage before the interview, it can be a red flag.
• Who is the person you admire most, and what job do they have? Because Gen Z candidates may lack real-world job experience, it can be valuable to know what they aspire to.
• Have you ever waited tables or worked fast food? If the answer is yes, ask what they found most challenging about that work (also find out how long they stuck with it, and why). If the answer is no, ask why they’ve avoided it and what they think they would find challenging about it. There is no particular right answer you’re looking for, but whatever someone has to say about repetitive, low-wage tasks can give you great insight into their values and priorities as relates to the workplace.
• What does your ideal workspace look like? There is no right or wrong answer here. Rather, you’re trying to figure out if your office setup will work for the candidate. Gen Z workers tend to place a high value on “vibe.” This may seem like an intangible, but you can directly impact your company’s vibes through an open and welcoming layout, reducing the use of cubicles, and providing thoughtful perks and amenities. Cultivating a great vibe is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy when it comes to hiring because a good vibe attracts good candidates — yet nothing will help your vibe more than hiring great people who bring positive energy to the workplace.

Gen Z workers can bring many benefits to your workplace. You just need to know how to harness those positive qualities and skills, and asking the right interview questions is a great place to start.

Many businesses (other than those in the retail space, of course) tend to slow down for the holidays, with some shuttering operations entirely for days at a time around Christmas and New Year’s Day. Even those offices that remain open throughout the jolliest of days tend to scale back on certain non-critical operations.

This can seem like a natural choice. With so many contractors and upper-level personnel taking time off, it is a challenging time to do business in general. People want to enjoy themselves or spend time with their families around the holidays. For this reason, recruitment and hiring are often one of the first areas non-retail companies will press pause on during the holiday hustle and bustle.

There is some logic to this lull. Nobody wants to spend Christmas Eve speed-reading resumes, and nobody wants to be bothered about a work-related opportunity while sleeping in on New Year’s morning, right? But as it turns out, hiring around the holidays can actually present organizations with a lot of unforeseen upsides.

Enjoy Less Competition

Some companies simply don’t hire at all in Q4 as a matter of policy. In holiday terms, this is analogous to your cousin who doesn’t like pumpkin pie—it means there’s more for you! Remember, just because many business owners in the United States and some other regions like to take time off for the winter holidays, that doesn’t mean the rest of the world stops turning. There are many qualified candidates out there who don’t celebrate winter holidays at all, for cultural, religious, or personal reasons, and if they need a new job, the time of year isn’t going to deter them. By posting open positions through the holidays, you increase the likelihood that they see yours.

Leverage Those New Year’s Goals

Don’t be so sure that nobody wants to be bothered with a work-related call around New Year’s. Many people work their career ambitions into those New Year’s resolutions, so a call from a prospective employer around the turn of the calendar can seem like a fateful sign rather than an annoyance. Candidates who are open to new opportunities around January 1 also tend to have great qualities for high-level staff. Taking the new year as an opportunity to focus on career goals can be a hint that the candidate is focused and goal-driven.

Catch People Mid-Transition

Many professionals who leave their jobs in a planned-out way will target the holidays as the right time to say farewell. This is a smart strategy because the employee may be able to combine their remaining PTO with vacation days to continue getting paid for a few weeks after leaving the office, and it also allows them to enjoy the holidays without any work-related pressure hanging over their head. This gives you a unique opportunity to reach them before they pick up their hunt for a new job in earnest (usually after New Year’s Day).

Find Fresh Graduates in the Hiring Pool

Students who graduate at the end of the winter semester without any job prospects in place are another great talent pool that also tends to wait until after the new year to really turn their focus to job hunting. By effectively marketing your open positions throughout the holiday season, you may be able to reach them first.

Regardless of the industry, Mondays can be a notoriously challenging time at work. The common trope of Mondays being extra hard at the office or job site has been hammered home for decades in popular TV, movies, and comedy. However, this stereotype exists because it’s based on truth.

Having “a case of the Mondays” isn’t merely a matter of feeling blue that another weekend has passed or being stressed out about being back under your boss’s thumb. While depression and stress are certainly important workplace issues in their own right, Mondays are also associated with some extremely serious problems like heart attacks and suicide.

As a manager or business operator who cares not only about your team’s efficiency but also their well-being, there are some things you can do to help battle those common Monday blues. You may not be able to mandate how much sleep your staff gets over the weekend or how heavily their problems at home weigh on them when they come in, but you can create an empathetic, focused, and supportive environment. Do this well enough, and your employees may begin to see coming in on Monday morning as an important part of their daily structure and personal support system rather than just another stressor on their plate.

What’s the Deal with Mondays?

It turns out that our cultural distaste for Mondays may be part of a dangerous and toxic feedback cycle, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that may create psychological barriers that make Mondays harder than they need to be. A study examining various day-of-the-week stereotypes (think “TGIF,” “hump day,” etc.) found that the actual effects of a particular day of the week were more pronounced when survey respondents were predicting their mood for the upcoming week versus remembering their actual mood from a previous day. This doesn’t mean that your case of “The Mondays” is all in your head, however. Specific Mondays, such as those following a holiday or daylight savings time change, have more pronounced negative effects.

Strategies for Upgrading Your Office’s Mondays

There are a few things you can try as a boss to help your team stay productive and comfortable through typical start-of-the-week struggles. If your operation has an issue with Mondays, try one or more of the following:

1. Re-think Casual Team Building Activities – Oftentimes, when we plan special “just for fun” appreciation events for our staff (think catered lunches, jeans day, etc.) or playful, low-stakes team-building activities (company picnics, etc.) we schedule them as an end-of-week reward, or a mid-week bonus to push our employees forward through hump day. Instead, try planning these perks for Mondays. Some bosses fear that special treats at the beginning of the week will leave their staff with nothing to work towards, but this mindset is infantilizing. The morale boost of a Monday pizza party or casual dress day can carry your team into their workweek to pay lasting dividends.
2. Structured Monday Morning “Me” Time – if the logistics of your operation allow it, have an hour of prep time/free time built into every employee’s Monday schedule. For best results, this should be early in the day. If that’s not possible, a free hour at the end of the day (or even the opportunity to leave early) can also function as a nice incentive to pull someone through their Monday slump. Always avoid first-thing-Monday-morning meetings, regardless of how hard inspiration struck you over the weekend and how excited you are to share your new ideas.
3. Support Good Sleep Habits – most experts track the “Monday blues” back to a simple origin: the fact that many of us disrupt our sleep cycles during the weekend—then pay for it on Monday morning. Distribute workplace literature about the importance of good sleep so that your employees are informed. With personal, wearable technology becoming ubiquitous, you could even develop an opt-in sleep-tracking program that rewards employees for showing up well-rested on Monday.

Every business is unique, and so is every employee. These will not be one-size-fits-all solutions. Whatever you’re able to invest in improving Mondays, remember that empathy and humanity cost nothing and will go a long way toward stabilizing morale and helping employees feel like they are valued and fully invested members of your team.

It’s not always obvious, but the transition from summer to fall is a difficult time for some people. Even folks who don’t struggle with a medical diagnosis like Seasonal Affective Disorder can notice a marked annual change in their energy levels and attitude when the days get shorter and colder.

Employees who are susceptible to these fall ho-hums can bring this sluggishness into the workplace with them, which may contribute to feedback from other employees who are feeling the same way. Sometimes, effective management means meeting people where they are and finding healthy, effective ways to guide your team through that dreaded end-of-summer slump.

Here are 5 ways you can help beat your staff’s autumn blues while keeping a professional and productive environment.

Remote Work Options

The option to work some hours from home is a huge sell for employees, especially after 2020. You may have some doubts about work-from-home being the most effective model for your business. But remote work flexibility has practical value among both employers and job-seekers in the wake of the Covid-19 shakeup.

Use Employee Data Intelligently

Most business operations handle a great deal of their work on the computer. As a result, software-based employee monitoring and tracking systems have been having a moment over the last decade. Instead of turning your office into an unwelcoming surveillance state, you can use these technologies to monitor your employee data, such as looking for changes after morale-building meetings or offering small perks. This can help you understand which incentives your staff responds best to. You can also use it to determine which parts of the day are best for which tasks. Use employee data effectively to understand your employees’ needs, and learn how they can best fit your operation.

Create or improve incentives

Find room in the budget for better perks: restaurant gift cards, event tickets, additional PTO, early release days, and more. This is a fundamental tenet of employee morale that is too easily forgotten during budget-crunching meetings. When incentives and recognitions have a practical value for your employees, their motivation to pursue those incentives will increase accordingly. The returns will be seen in your bottom line and will justify any up-front expense.

Honesty and Clarity

The job market has been volatile and stressful for many employees over the last several years. Your employees need to know exactly where they stand. Some transparency and corporate clarity can go a long way towards building trust and stabilizing morale in uncertain times.

Lunch!

When morale is shaky, go back to basics. Take a survey of your employees to find out what their favorite restaurants are, then find a popular one that can cater a planned appreciation lunch. A free meal is a timeless way to let the people you depend on know you appreciate them, and sharing food together can be a bonding experience for your staff. Traditional wisdom says to do the special lunch on a Friday so that employees have something to work towards, but a nice meal on Monday can be a way to start the week on a high note and to shake off those fall feelings and the weekly case of “The Mondays”.

You could even plan a “fall harvest week” where you do a free lunch on both Monday and Friday, and have fall-themed casual dress days with comfy sweatshirts, football jerseys, or lazy Halloween costumes. You can make it as simple as you wish. It’s hard to go wrong with any straightforward gesture that improves an employee’s workday in a memorable way.

Technology has permeated every aspect of our lives, from personal to professional. In many cases, new technology is developed to make life easier for users, and that has proven true for businesses in recent years. Social media and other digital platforms, opportunities for remote work, and expanded flexibility in the workplace are all evidence of the impact of technology in the business world.

The hiring process has also been bolstered by new and growing technology in recent years. Hiring qualified, enthusiastic candidates that fit your organization’s needs is an essential part of success, but it can be difficult to identify and reach those candidates. The development and inclusion of technology in the hiring process have vastly improved results. Here are three ways that technology can benefit your hiring process.

Technology Provides an Expanded Reach

In the past, finding candidates to fill an open position was dependent on a business’s location and community connections, so the options were much more limited. Technology has opened up new lines of communication and now provides businesses with a global pool of candidates to pull from.

With a growing number of candidates seeking remote positions, technology provides a means of connection that was inaccessible in the past. Professional networking sites also provide a central place for businesses to post their open positions and contact potential candidates.

Technology Reduces Unnecessary Efforts

The process of finding, interviewing, and hiring candidates can be long and arduous, but technology has helped to ease some of that burden. Many organizations now utilize automated programs and resources at the beginning of the hiring process. This removes the burden of finding candidates and gathering information, which allows hiring professionals to focus on the more important aspects of the search.

Technology Provides Stronger Brand Awareness

In the digital age, a great deal of recruiting is done online through social media and other networking platforms. This provides an opportunity for organizations to identify who their ideal candidates may be and where those candidates can be found online. Then, with that information, hiring professionals can create digital content that will appeal to those candidates while also engaging with a larger pool of potential candidates. Using social media and other technology tools correctly allows businesses to build an online presence that is easily recognizable and showcases their dependability.

Beneficial Resources From Stang Decision Systems

Stang Decision Systems is one of the leading providers of custom processes for hiring and developing employees. We use a powerful combination of psychology and technology to create systems that make identifying, hiring, and training employees a breeze. Our HireScore resources allow you to identify, rank, and assess potential employees during the hiring process.

The HireScore Talent Portal is a fantastic tool that allows companies to attract more candidates and rank them based on their qualifications and aptitude. The HireScore Assessment Platform gives you the ability to create assessments that are specific to your needs and help you identify the ideal candidate. These resources are all user-friendly and easily customizable to ensure that all of your hiring and team development needs are met.

Utilizing technology as part of your hiring process can ensure that the process is streamlined and that you find the best possible candidates to fit the needs of your organization. Contact Stang Decision Systems today to discover great resources and find out how you can get started.

Organizations can fall into the trap of seeing their various business processes as separate from one another. This can be a natural artifact of the way businesses become departmentalized as they grow. In many ways, this is deliberate — you don’t want your sales staff trying to do the job of your IT department, for example. In reality, we know that much of this compartmentalization is artificial: every aspect of a business is interconnected and interdependent.

When it comes to hiring, this means that you need to look deeper than pay, location, schedule, and benefits to determine why you’re failing to land and retain the right candidates. While good compensation will always be the foremost factor in recruiting the best of the best among job seekers, you need to look beyond the offer sheet when competing with many other companies trying to recruit similarly skilled staff at the same price point. It’s not always about what you’re offering a candidate in terms of direct compensation. Other aspects of your operation can make or break a crucial hire, such as company culture, reputation in the wider community, industry standing, and — last, but not least — your brand.

While branding isn’t something that comes up in a lot of HR meetings, it can be a key factor in attracting and keeping high-performing employees. Think about it: the relationship between brand and customer is meticulously nurtured, invested in, and relied upon to build trust. Many high-end companies strive for branding that makes their clients feel like appreciated partners rather than customers in a transaction. But isn’t the relationship between your brand and your employees just as important as the one between your brand and your customers? When your employees genuinely relate to your brand, they feel a sense of pride and ownership, which is a key driver of employee satisfaction, quality work, and long-term staff retention.

Company Brand vs. Employer Brand

To begin leveraging your brand to recruit and retain a more effective, more dedicated team, you’ll first want to delineate the concepts of “brand” and “employer brand” in your head. So, what’s the difference?

While there is a world of nuance and subtlety at play, we can state the basic concepts simply. Your brand — your traditional, company brand — is all about how customers see you. Your employer brand is — you guessed it — all about how employees and potential hires see you. Both are designed to attract the people who will help your operation thrive and grow, either as clients or team members. As with all aspects of your business, there will be overlap and interdependency between the two concepts.

You’ll want to have some sort of consistency between company branding and employer branding so that when someone applies for a job because they love your company, those same qualities shine through. Branding isn’t all about your company’s “personality” however. Sometimes it comes down to simply having a great product at a good price, or — in the case of employer branding — a great work environment with fair compensation.

Your “employer brand” is essentially your reputation among job seekers at large. Just like your company brand, each individual you engage with will have their own personal interpretation of that brand and their relationship with it. This relationship will grow as job seekers enter the interview process and move on to become employees, just as the customer-brand relationship changes with each new purchase or other interaction.

Some of the core elements that will make up your employer brand include:

• Office culture
• Promotions
• Recognition
• Compensation
• Flexibility
• Team building
• Perks
• Management style

It’s time to start wielding the concept of “brand” as the powerful, dual-edged sword it is. You already know how to use branding to attract and retain quality clients. If you’re not putting those same concepts to work in your hiring process, you may be undermining your own operation. Contact Stang Decision Systems for more info.

We are amid what many have dubbed the Great Resignation, where employers across the country are experiencing unprecedented turnover and historic shifts in labor. Many employers have made changes to improve work environments and offer sign-on bonuses, while others have looked for new ways to let employees know that they are appreciated.

As workers across the nation air grievances about low wages, lack of opportunity for advancement, and hostile work environments, it’s quite clear that there’s much to learn from the Great Resignation.

Here are three important takeaways that the Great Resignation has taught us so far.

1. Employers Should Use Technology and Statistics to Monitor the Hiring Landscape

This mass quitting has inspired many companies to change the way that they do things in order to be more connected to the average human and their needs. Many hiring managers have shifted to lean heavily into surveys and statistics to find out what employees really want in an employer.

A recent survey of Zoomers or Gen Zers—those born roughly between the years of 1996 and 2012—indicated that they want to work with a company that:

• Cares about more than making a profit (61%)
• Offers a good benefits package (67%)
• Has similar values to their own (62%)
• Offers ample career progression opportunities and development (59%)
• Has a strong brand reputation (49%)

If they haven’t already, HR managers should look for ways to glean new insights about their hiring pool and then put that data to use to hone an effective recruitment strategy.

2. We Must Continue to Show Employees That They Are Appreciated

About one-third of the average person’s life is spent in their place of work, and it’s no secret that employers should actively let their employees know that they are appreciated. It helps them feel that the employer empathizes with them and wants them to feel satisfied with their career choice.

Here are some helpful ways that you can let your employees know that they are appreciated:

• Hosting frequent work events
• Celebrate employee birthdays
• Give employees the opportunity to show appreciation to their coworkers
• Volunteer opportunities
• Regular work retreats
• Awards such as gift cards, paid time off, or other rewards or recognition for fine work
• Personal thank-you notes and rewards (the more tailored to the individual, the better)
• Regular expressions of gratitude, in person and in public
• Paid luncheons, dinners, and other events
• Consistently open lines of communication with your workers
• Friendly environments where employees are offered choices

3. We Should Extend This Conversation Further as Employers

The COVID-19 pandemic changed much of what we once knew about hiring, and as the Great Resignation rolls along, workers are facing another, less-talked-about phenomenon. Surveys across the country are indicating that many employees are leaving one place, only to find the same issues at the next place, or at least that the new job isn’t what they were led to believe it would be. This leaves them feeling some regret—a situation dubbed the Great Regret or “shift shock.”

If the Great Resignation and the Great Regret have taught us anything, it’s that we should work together toward honest, open conversations about the workplace. Employers should be candid about their company values and products during the hiring process, even if they aren’t particularly exciting. And perhaps employees should be more realistic when it comes to their expectations.

Furthermore, employers should be upfront about the typical kind of stresses that come with the jobs they offer—and listen to candidates actively during the hiring process.

For some employers, longstanding conventional wisdom has been to avoid talking about salary specifics — or to keep pay off the table as a topic entirely — throughout the preliminary stages of hiring. Some businesses even establish policies that outright forbid a compensation package being proposed until the interview process has reached a certain point, or a job offer is being formally made. This seems commonplace in today’s job market. Online postings for open jobs are increasingly found without any salary or compensation information whatsoever. Many others include only frustratingly vague ranges, empty buzzwords like “competitive,” or wordplay like “up to” and “starting at.”

This was not always the case. If you’re old enough to work today, help wanted ads without a clear rate of pay listed were probably considered suspicious when your mom or dad went out looking for their first job. Now experts and jobseekers alike are wondering if this paradigm shift towards salary silence has really been in anyone’s best interests.

Why We Stopped Talking Pay

There are a few reasons employers have trended away from talking about wages upfront in recent decades. These may include:

• Streamlining processes. Some larger employers prefer to rely on a structured system where all new employees start with the same pay rate, or where compensation is based on a formula factoring in years of experience, type of position, and other factors that can be measured objectively. This eliminates the need for compensation negotiations with candidates. These systems can save time and ensure everyone at your organization feels fairly compensated, but if you’re using one, there’s no good reason not to be upfront about how pay works during your initial interactions with candidates. A lack of transparency in structured pay rates could signal that you’re insecure about what you’re offering employees.
• A desire to discuss pay as little as possible in general. It is illegal to tell your employees not to discuss their pay with one another, yet some employers still go to great lengths to avoid any discussion of wages and salaries. The rationale is usually that this limits workplace conflicts (and demands for raises from employees who feel slighted by a co-worker’s higher pay). This may include limiting discussions of pay with new hires and candidates for open positions so that such discussions can’t be overheard by current employees. In general, it is not advisable to make “wage silence” any sort of priority at your company due to the aforementioned fact that enforcing such silence could constitute a serious violation of labor laws.
• Control. Old-school bosses have all sorts of “interview tricks” they use to conduct unofficial tests on candidates. In reality, most of these come down to ineffectual power trips that provide a little superficial insight into someone’s personality at best and alienate good candidates at worst. Waiting to see when someone will ask you about pay is one such trick best left in some smoke-filled 1970s back office.

Why It’s Better to Be Upfront About Wages and Benefits

As you can see, many of the most cited reasons to avoid speaking openly about pay to potential hires are based on bad assumptions. The reasons to do the opposite, however, are largely rooted in common sense, logic, and the desire to run an ethical, healthy workplace:

• Avoid wasting time. It’s true that you can hook a great candidate by making a job posting sound more lucrative than it actually is. You might even get them deep into the hiring process before you have to start having concrete conversations about pay and benefits. If, at that point, they walk out of the room because you’re not offering anything close to what they’re looking for, you have accomplished nothing besides wasting your own valuable time, as well as your HR staff’s and the candidate’s.
• Jobseekers appreciate it. A recent survey indicates that 78% of people are less likely to apply for a job posting that doesn’t clearly list salary. Trying to hide salary information doesn’t trick good candidates into applying — it actively keeps them away.
• Build trust. When you’re upfront and respectful with candidates before they even become employees, you give yourself a head start building the sort of trust and organizational buy-in that lets companies thrive.

Transparency with salaries and wages can benefit your potential candidates, as well as your company in many ways. Contrary to the old-fashioned opinions, it’s simply better to be more open with salary discussions.