Graduate Development Program

Pay transparency laws are shifting from a compliance requirement that organizations minimize to a talent strategy factor they need to optimize: candidates in markets with pay range disclosure requirements use listed salary ranges as a filtering and self-selection mechanism before applying, meaning organizations with non-competitive ranges see significant application volume decline for equivalent roles. The most common compliance mistake is publishing ranges that are so broad they convey no meaningful information — a range of $60,000 to $140,000 for a mid-level marketing role meets the letter of the disclosure requirement while providing candidates with no useful signal about where within that range they are likely to land. Ranges no wider than 30 to 40 percent of the midpoint convey genuine pay intent and outperform broad ranges on both application quality and acceptance rates.