LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform, with over 810 million members worldwide as of 2022. When creating a LinkedIn profile, users have the option to showcase details like work experience, education, skills, and endorsements from colleagues. However, unlike some other job sites, LinkedIn does not give users the option to display their salary or pay on their profile. There are a few key reasons why LinkedIn has chosen not to include salary information as part of user profiles:
Protecting user privacy
LinkedIn likely avoids including salaries in order to protect their users’ privacy. Salary data is considered sensitive personal information that many professionals may not want to share publicly or disclose to their entire network. By excluding pay details, LinkedIn allows users to maintain privacy over this type of information.
Avoiding uncomfortable social comparisons
Viewing salaries of peers and colleagues can lead to jealously, resentment, and other uncomfortable dynamics among professionals within the same industry. Displaying salaries on LinkedIn could promote unproductive social comparison. The platform strives to create a collaborative environment focused on mutual support and growth, which could be disrupted by an excessive focus on pay.
Preventing recruiting disadvantages
Candidates often try to avoid disclosing their current or desired salary prematurely during the recruiting process, since it can put them at a negotiating disadvantage. Enabling pay transparency on LinkedIn would make it difficult for members to withhold salary details when connecting with recruiters and hiring managers. This could limit their negotiating leverage during the hiring process.
Difficulty verifying accuracy
Unlike job information, which users generally provide accurately, salary data is much harder to confirm. Users may intentionally inflate or underestimate their compensation on a public profile. Displaying unverified, inaccurate salary information would diminish the credibility of the platform.
Emphasis on skills and accomplishments
Rather than focusing on compensation, LinkedIn aims to be a platform that showcases users’ skills, expertise, accomplishments, and growth potential. Salary is just one variable that does not provide the full picture of a professional’s capabilities and career trajectory.
The pros of displaying salaries on LinkedIn
Despite the reasons why LinkedIn has avoided pay transparency, there are some potential benefits to allowing salary information on profiles:
Salary research and benchmarking
If salaries were visible, members could utilize LinkedIn for compensation research and benchmarking. They could assess pay standards across industries, locations, experience levels, skills, job titles, and companies to better gauge their earning potential. This could provide useful salary insights to guide career decisions.
Negotiating empowerment
By understanding salary ranges, members would feel more empowered negotiating job offers and pay increases. Recruiters may also be less likely to lowball candidates if pay is right there in the open. Salary transparency enables professionals to advocate for fair compensation.
Promoting pay equity
Enabling salary visibility could help reduce discriminatory pay gaps across gender, race, age, and other demographics. Shedding light on compensation at various companies may motivate organizations to evaluate their own pay equity practices.
Authenticity and honesty
Displaying accurate salary information contributes to a culture of authenticity, honesty, and trust on the platform. Rather than hiding or inflating pay, members can be upfront and real about earnings.
Criteria for job and company fit
Salary serves as a key data point when evaluating potential job opportunities and company fit. Just like with skills or values alignment, compensation information helps professionals assess which roles and organizations suit them best.
The risks of revealing salaries on LinkedIn
Despite some potential upsides, openly displaying salary details on LinkedIn profiles also comes with a few risks:
Alienating lower earners
Seeing certain connections earn significantly higher salaries could dishearten some members, make them doubt their abilities, and disengage them from the platform. Displaying pay gaps could have negative psychological impacts.
Inflaming compensation envy
Salary transparency triggers unproductive comparisons, jealousy, and fixation over earnings. Even professionals earning fair market rates may grow resentful upon seeing certain peers out-earn them. This detracts from valuable connections.
Violating company policies
Many organizations have policies prohibiting employees from openly discussing or disclosing compensation details. Enabling salary visibility would force some members to break company rules and could put their jobs at risk.
Increasing recruiting spam
Public salaries may lead to more unsolicited outreach from recruiters trying to poach ‘passive’ candidates. Professionals could be bombarded with more spam and irrelevant job offers.
Facilitating recruiting discrimination
Unfortunately, visible compensation details allow some recruiters to filter candidates based on current or desired salary, rather than skills and merit. This could exacerbate discriminatory hiring against certain demographics.
Current options for showcasing compensation
While complete salary transparency is not an option on LinkedIn, there are a few existing features that allow members to provide some high-level compensation details if desired:
Salary insights for job posts
When posting new jobs, employers can choose to display aggregated salary ranges or insights to prospective applicants. This provides helpful pay transparency for open roles.
Compensation fields in job entries
Within their experience section, members have the option to provide some compensation details for each role they list. They can include bonuses, stock options, and commission in addition to base pay.
Featured skills pricing
Professionals can showcase their pricing or hourly rates for specific skills and services offered. Freelancers often highlight their pricing models under the Featured Skills section.
Media posts and articles
Users can author posts, articles, or LinkedIn Publisher stories that discuss compensation topics transparently. These can be shared or restricted only to connections.
Alternate sites for salary transparency
While LinkedIn opts not to display salaries directly, there are some other sites professionals can use to enable pay transparency in their field:
Glassdoor
Glassdoor offers anonymous employee reviews, salary reports, and compensation comparisons for various companies and roles. The level of transparency is much higher versus LinkedIn.
Salary.com
Salary.com provides a database of average salaries based on role, industry, location, experience level, and more. Members can research and compare market pay rates.
PayScale
PayScale provides crowdsourced salary data contributed by professionals across industries. Users can view granular reports by company, job title, skills, geography, and more filters.
Levels.fyi
Levels.fyi offers self-reported compensation details for tech/IT roles across top companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and more. The focus is on pay at major tech firms.
Blind
The Blind app enables verified employees to share salary details anonymously. Professionals discuss pay at major tech companies and investment banks.
Table: Average salary by industry
Industry | Average Salary |
---|---|
Technology | $100,000 |
Finance | $80,000 |
Healthcare | $75,000 |
Engineering | $70,000 |
Education | $55,000 |
Conclusion
In summary, while LinkedIn has reasonable rationale for excluding direct salary disclosures, pay transparency does offer some benefits for professionals. Members have a few options to showcase compensation indirectly, and can utilize other sites to access aggregated salary data to empower their careers. Overall, both viewpoints have merit in the ongoing debate over whether salary visibility would be a net positive or negative for the LinkedIn community. The platform aims to balance the need for career insights with protecting user privacy and promoting constructive connections.