Pay belongs in the first screen, next to location and schedule. We put the band in the opening fifteen-minute call, ask the candidate for their number, and confirm it again before the offer goes out. The offer then holds.
The week-six blowup has a familiar shape. You have two finalists, you choose the one you want, and they tell you their number is now 15 percent higher than what you heard in week one. Nothing changed in week six. Either the band was never written down, or the search ran long enough for them to collect a competing offer.
Put the Band in Writing Before You Source
Two people in your business can quote two different numbers for the same job and never know it. The candidate hears both. You find out which one landed when you try to close.
Write the pay band into the role scorecard before sourcing starts. Give it the same status as location and schedule, a quick pass or fail you confirm out loud. One number, approved by whoever signs the offer. A band kept in someone’s head as roughly around X lets your service manager describe a senior job while you budgeted a mid-level one, and the candidate believes the service manager.
Candidates leave over this, and not only at the end. In the 2022 Candidate Experience Report from Criteria, a survey of 1,967 job seekers, 54 percent said they had abandoned a hiring process because the salary didn’t meet their expectations. Another 32 percent walked because the process took too long.
Both of those are settled long before anyone drafts an offer. A quality hire typically takes 4 to 12 weeks to fill, and a candidate who spends that long without a number from you will get one somewhere else, which is one more reason to watch time to hire. Pay is one gate among several, and it runs in the same fixed order as the rest of how we screen candidates.
| Stage | What You Confirm About Pay | What It Prevents |
|---|---|---|
| Role scorecard | One written band, approved by whoever signs the offer. | Two internal numbers and an offer nobody can fund. |
| Application triage | The band against their stated expectation. Reject on a mismatch. | Screens spent on candidates who can’t accept your range. |
| First screen, 15 to 20 minutes | Their number, as total compensation and not base alone. | Week-six surprises hiding in on-call pay and overtime. |
| Before final interviews | One sentence re-confirming the number. | Their number moving while they interview elsewhere during a 4 to 12 week fill. |
| Before the offer | Start date and total package together. | Last-minute renegotiation after they’ve mentally accepted. |
Handle a Late Change Without Bidding Against Yourself
A candidate emails on the Friday before final interviews. They’re excited, and they need more than you discussed. The instinct is to work out whether you can stretch. That question costs you either way when money was never the real problem.
Get the reason before you move the band. A late jump usually means you missed a variable, or the job stopped matching the number. An L3 who suddenly needs 15 percent more may be looking at a 45-minute commute, an on-call weekend rotation nobody described, or a counteroffer they’d rather not take. More money fixes none of those.
Ask what changed since the first call. Then re-check the variable pay. On-call stipends, overtime rules, certification reimbursement and the cost of the health plan are where MSP offers usually come up short, and none of them appear on a base-salary line.
If the number moved because the job is harder than advertised, fix the job. When the market is above your band, that’s a budget decision for the person who signs. Raising the number to win a Friday is how you end up with an L2 and an L3 comparing notes six months later.
Ask Who Gets Paid More When the Number Goes Up
One question sorts out whose advice on pay to trust. Ask who in your process earns more when the salary rises.
A contingency recruiter is paid 20 to 30 percent of first-year salary. On a $120,000 role at 20 percent, that’s $24,000. Move the same role to $140,000 and the fee is $28,000. Nobody has to be dishonest for that to shape the advice you get about your own band, and it’s the sharpest difference between contingency and a flat monthly fee.
Our fee is $1,500 a month on a six-month commitment, or $2,500 month to month, whatever the salary turns out to be. That’s why we can give a candidate the band on the first call and hold it. Fractional recruiting covers sourcing, screening, structured assessments, interview coordination and reference checks for every open role, so the fifth hire gets the same pay conversation as the first.
