LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 810 million members worldwide. As a leading job and recruiting site, LinkedIn aims to connect talent with opportunity. One of the key things job seekers want to know when researching roles on LinkedIn is the associated salary information. However, unlike some other job sites, LinkedIn does not show salary ranges directly on job postings.
Why Doesn’t LinkedIn Show Salaries?
There are a few reasons why LinkedIn does not display salary information on job postings:
- LinkedIn wants to focus on competencies and fit rather than compensation. The company aims to foster professional connections and advancement through relationship building.
- Showing salaries can lead to inadvertent bias in the hiring process. Recruiters may dismiss candidates based on compensation expectations rather than qualifications.
- Salaries are often negotiable. Displaying a set figure could hinder flexibility in negotiations between employer and candidate.
- Salary expectations depend on location, experience level, and other factors. LinkedIn serves a global audience with diverse backgrounds, so a single salary number would not be universally applicable.
- LinkedIn users come from many different industries and roles. Salary norms and standards vary greatly, so LinkedIn cannot set appropriate ranges for every job type.
- Employers often keep compensation details confidential. Posting salaries publicly could violate companies’ policies around pay transparency.
Essentially, LinkedIn aims to provide an open platform for career development and hiring, not just a job board. Showing salaries could potentially shift the focus toward monetary benefits rather than advancing skills and connections.
How to Find Salary Information on LinkedIn
While individual postings don’t show pay, LinkedIn does offer some ways for members to research and compare salaries:
- Salary Insights – Members with LinkedIn Premium accounts can view aggregated salary data for specific job titles. This information is based on member-reported compensation details. There is a tab for Salary Insights on both job postings and member profiles.
- Salary pages – LinkedIn provides salary comparison pages for some popular job titles and locations. These display average, median, and range based on user-submitted data. For example, there are pages showing average salaries for software engineers in San Francisco or project managers in New York.
- Company pages – Employees can anonymously share salary details for specific companies on LinkedIn. The company pages display an overview of the compensation data.
- Profile salary entries – Members have the option to add current or past salary details on their own profile. This information remains private but helps LinkedIn build more accurate salary estimation tools.
- LinkedIn Salary – This standalone site by LinkedIn provides a salary calculator and comparison tool. It aggregates salary data from a variety of sources including members, trade groups, and public records.
In addition to the LinkedIn-specific options above, members can research salaries for roles on reputable national salary databases like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Glassdoor, Indeed, Payscale, and Salary.com. Just take care to verify the validity of user-submitted data on some sites.
How to Share Salary Expectations on LinkedIn
While LinkedIn does not show salaries upfront in job postings, members can still communicate their compensation requirements directly with employers and recruiters.
Some tips for sharing pay expectations on LinkedIn include:
- Research the typical salary range for your role, experience level, and location using sites like Glassdoor or Payscale.
- Take into account your precise skills, education, and unique value proposition. This may justify compensation above or below averages.
- Be prepared to share your salary history and expectations when an employer reaches out about an opportunity.
- When interested in a job, ask the recruiter about the anticipated salary band during your initial conversations.
- Turn on viewer insights for your LinkedIn profile so recruiters can see you are open to considering new roles.
- Update your LinkedIn Headline to say “Open to new opportunities” so hiring managers reach out to you.
- On your profile, specify the job titles, compensation, locations or industries you are interested in to attract relevant contacts.
With some proactive communication and profile optimization, you can still make your salary needs known on LinkedIn without the specific figures being posted publicly.
Pros and Cons of Showing Salaries on Job Sites
The choice of whether or not to show salary information is part of an ongoing debate around pay transparency. Here are some potential pros and cons:
Pros
- Allows candidates to assess if the role meets their compensation needs before applying.
- Reduces wasted time for both applicants and employers on positions with misaligned pay.
- Promotes equitable compensation by removing information imbalances between employer and candidate.
- Helps benchmark appropriate pay for roles based on aggregated data.
- Improves trust and fairness perceptions around hiring by being upfront.
Cons
- Risks focusing hiring conversations too heavily on salary rather than qualifications.
- Can lead to biased sorting of applicants based on past compensation.
- May increase competition on pay and inflate salary expectations.
- Disadvantages candidates with lower historical compensation due to unfair factors.
- Inflexible to negotiate if a set rate is posted rather than a range.
There are reasonable arguments on both sides of this issue. The ideal solution likely falls somewhere in the middle, with enough salary transparency for candidates to determine fit but some flexibility around exceptions, ranges, and negotiations.
The Future of Salary Transparency
Despite LinkedIn’s current policy, there are signs that broader salary transparency is a growing trend that is here to stay:
- Some major job sites like Glassdoor, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter now include salary ranges.
- Various U.S. states and cities have passed laws mandating salary disclosures for job postings.
- More companies are voluntarily choosing to share pay details publicly to improve diversity, equity, and transparency.
- Younger generations of workers overwhelmingly support pay transparency and expect compensation details upfront.
- Remote work and non-traditional employment models are making pay even more individualized and data-driven.
While unlikely to happen overnight, LinkedIn may eventually choose to add more pay transparency features if member and public demand increase. But for now, the platform aims to balance candidate needs with recruiter flexibility around salaries.
Other Features LinkedIn Could Add
In addition to compensation data, here are some other useful features LinkedIn could potentially add for members:
- Integration with resumes from Microsoft Word or other sources to reduce duplicative work for candidates.
- Enhanced skills assessments, endorsements, and certifications to quantify expertise.
- Anonymous interview reviews and ratings for companies to enable transparency.
- Additional filtering and search options for job postings like remote status.
- Invite-only or region-specific groups to facilitate more niche professional networking.
- Robust employee engagement surveys that companies could opt into.
- Calendar integration for scheduling meetings, interviews, events, and reminders.
Integrating some of the above features could help LinkedIn provide even more value to members looking to advance their careers and find meaningful work.
Conclusion
In summary, while LinkedIn currently does not display salary ranges directly, members have options to find and share pay information through other tools. Salary transparency on job sites has both benefits and drawbacks, so it is an issue under debate. But the broader trend seems to be moving toward more openness. Ultimately, LinkedIn aims to balance candidate needs with employer flexibility when it comes to pay details on the platform.