Dive Brief:

• Some companies aren’t afraid to show what exactly they’re willing to pay for top talent, Glassdoor recently revealed. A new list of 18 companies that are proud of their salary transparency was posted by the recruiting giant.
• The listing includes a general outline of the types of positions each company is hoping to fill, along with a link to its job listing which give details of the salary range for each opening. The listings run the gamut from admin assistants to clinical technicians in fields like sales, healthcare, tech and more.
• Following the links, candidates may be surprised to find some openings with a salary range that spans up to $30,000 or more, depending on experience and credentials. That level of transparency could be good news for more seasoned candidates who are not looking to compete with entry level job seekers.

Dive Insight:

As bans on requesting salary history continue to spread across the country (our running list is 17 states and localities to date), businesses are looking at salary transparency in a new light. Progressive Insurance recently announced it will stop asking for salary history; Amazon also stopped asking the question at the beginning of this year. 

The largest job boards are also on trend. Google for Jobs added salary range information into its platform to help seekers find the right fit. LinkedIn's Salary Insights promises to show expected or actual wages for each posting on the site. For recruiters, salary ban initiatives have both pros and cons. While the intent of the law is to provide pay equity for new hires, some are concerned that posting salaries may result in more qualified candidates (whom the company would be willing to pay a higher wage to snatch up) skipping over the posting.

But even as more locations ban asking for salary data early on in the hiring process, most employers still use history to set starting pay for new hires. With or without the salary history, a survey showed more than half of employers low-ball new hires on their first offer of employment and half of the candidates surveyed didn’t counter the offer.

Will the salary transparency trend continue? That may be a decision for the courts to make, as a judge in Philadelphia recently temporarily enjoined the city’s new salary history ban ordinance, saying that it may violate the First Amendment.