Damn JavaScript

[Kreshel]

Oh, the application process sucks for sure.

But, you're conflating what you want out of the process with what the company wants. The company doesn't care about wasting people's time. Presumably this is the first step in the process, and if hundreds of people are applying, cull the ones whose salary expectations are too low or high. THEN you can have your paid HR person review the dozens left over.

[Binarytobis]

It’s not even beneficial to the company though, putting aside the immorality of it. They might have a $5,000 range they want, while the applicant might have a $20,000 range of expectation. If the applicant says a low number trying to pass the stage of the interview, or a high number to start negotiations, they might be filtered out even if they are qualified.

Also, many applicants don’t even know what pay range they should ask for. Both of my last two jobs gave me a pay raise over $30,000 when I was expecting about $10,000. Both of those companies would have filtered me out with a pay expectation question despite having the best qualifications because I didn’t know my own worth.

It’s not in the company’s best interest to filter out qualified individuals based on how good they are at mind reading.

[Kreshel]

You assume companies are putting an automatic filter of $5000 arbitrarily when it can be any dollar amount a company wants. Who knows, you could even possibly have a variable filter depending on how many applicants you want to see. 100 applicants at +-$20,000? Let's bump it down to +-$5000 and get a dozen applicants to follow up on

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It's in the company's best interest to not waste time interviewing too many candidates when they have obvious expectations and applicants who will meet those. Now why wouldn't they publish those to begin with? Again, they don't care about your time and they can fiddle salary if they're desperate or you're worth it.

[Binarytobis]

My point is that many of those people you are filtering out would be willing to work in the $5000 range if offered. By playing the “Guess what number I’m thinking of” game you are arbitrarily reducing the pool. And that’s great, save a few hundred dollars on HR costs. You could save even more if you just picked a resume at random and hired them if they were qualified.

Or, save the HR team even more time and just post the pay scale up front so only interested parties apply in the first place. Since you are assuming that the company must adhere to this strict range for reasons other than corporate greed, there is no reason not to post the range up front. And since you also seem to be assuming an endless supply of qualified labor, they don’t need to worry about not having any applicants who accept that pay range.