A wide band of pay makes one midpoint a vague offer

One midpoint is a shrug in a wide market and almost a floor in a crushed one. If you publish it without saying which, you aren't negotiating. You're hoping the candidate guesses the job.

San Jose pays nurse practitioners a median of $231,560. The lower quarter is $178,880. The upper quarter is $279,950. That is a hundred thousand dollars of real jobs wearing one title. A range that runs the whole distance, or a single number dropped in the middle, tells a new graduate and a specialty lead the same thing. They will hear different jobs anyway, and one of them will walk.

Birmingham pays dental hygienists a median of $61,730. The lower quarter is $61,030. Those two figures are a few hundred dollars apart. The upper quarter is $70,500, and even that sits far under the national median of $98,100. Here a midpoint near the median isn't flexible. It's the ordinary local wage, and almost everyone in the lower half of the market is already there. Call it competitive and you've said nothing. Post it as if it were a stretch and you've misunderstood your own city.

What the midpoint is doing

In San Jose, the midpoint hides a choice you didn't want to make. Scope, panel, and call are why $178,880 and $279,950 can both be honest. Pick the job, then pick the quarter. A band published "so we have room" reads as indecision to someone who already earns near the top of it.

In Birmingham, the midpoint hides how little room there is. You are not choosing among a fan of wages. You are choosing whether to pay the cluster around the median or to reach toward $70,500 for a hygienist who can carry a heavier book. Those are different reqs. Averaging them into one posted number recruits neither on purpose.

The same habit, "just use the median," produces opposite failures. In the wide market you look vague. In the tight market you look like you think the median is a compromise, when it is simply where the mass of the jobs already sits.

How to write the offer

Name the work in one sentence before you name the money. Then point at a quarter, not at a vibe. If two scopes are open, post two ranges. A candidate can argue with a number. They can't argue with a range that might be a supervisor or a director, a new grad or a lead, depending on who is reading.

Do this in the intake, on paper, before the ad. If the approver can't say which quarter the scope earns, the req isn't ready. The negotiation you wanted will happen anyway, in the candidate's head, against a clearer offer down the road.

Illustrative story

Comp had one cell labeled midpoint and two reqs waiting. The San Jose nurse practitioner draft used it and called the result room to negotiate. A candidate running a full panel heard a training wage. The Birmingham hygienist draft used the same habit. The posted number sat on the local median, and the clinic talked about it as if it were a reach. Applicants who already earned that figure, because most of the lower half does, waited for someone to say whether $70,500 was real.

They split the decisions. San Jose got a range around the lower quarter for the role they could actually orient, with the upper quarter reserved for a job they had not defined. Birmingham got an honest median for a standard column, and a separate conversation if they needed the heavier book. Two midpoints had been one lazy move. They stopped being one move.

If you can't point to the quarter you're hiring, you don't have an offer yet.

https://reqradius.com/hiring/methodology/

Sources

• BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics
• ReqRadius hiring methodology