1. Developing Salary Ranges (pdf)
2. Administrative Staff Salary Bands
   • Hiring Ranges for Administrative Staff, Sponsored Research Staff, and Medical Staff Job/Position Postings
3. Support Staff Salary Ranges
   • Using Salary Ranges for Support Staff (pdf)
   • Evaluating Pay for Support Staff (pdf)

Hiring Ranges for Administrative
Staff, Sponsored Research Staff, and Medical Staff Job/Position Postings

Administrative Staff
In February 2000, broad Administrative staff salary ranges were introduced at MIT. Ever since then, managers have expressed concern about the salary expectations that these broad salary ranges create for applicants. Specifically, these ranges frequently do not represent the actual hiring range; however, because they appear in every job/position posting, many applicants assume that departments are prepared to use the entire range when making salary offers. This has caused much difficulty; e.g.; a manager will interview a highly qualified applicant whose salary requirement is higher than the actual hiring range, but neither realize that the budgeted dollars are lower than the candidate's expectation until a salary offer is made.

In an attempt to address this issue, the Compensation office suggests that, where appropriate, job/position postings may contain a hiring range. This should be based on what has been budgeted for the job/position, what others in similar job/positions within the department and across the Institute are being paid, and what the market is paying for similar job/positions.

When a hiring range is included in the posting, it is recommended that the hiring manager work with their Human Resources Officer and, when necessary, someone from the Compensation office to establish the hiring range.

In order to ensure that a hiring range is included in the job/position posting, the manager will need to add a sentence at the end of the job/position description which states: "The hiring range for this job/position will be $XX.XX to $XX.XX."

Sponsored Research and Medical Staff
Difficulties also occur when posting Sponsored Research and Medical staff positions, since neither job/position group have salary ranges. So, instead of posting a salary range that is broad and does not represent the actual hiring range (as is the case in the Administrative structure), there is no salary range posted at all. The result is that applicants have no idea what the hiring salary range will be.

In order to assist future Sponsored Research and Medical applicants in setting realistic salary expectations, it is recommended that, whenever possible, the hiring manager include a hiring range in Sponsored Research and Medical postings (similar to the approach that has been suggested for Administrative staff).

Hiring Below or Above the Hiring Range
If persons are hired below or above the hiring range, as stated in the job/position posting, Human Resources must have documentation to support this deviation from the posted hiring range.

Questions regarding this approach should be discussed with the appropriate Human Resources Officer or a member of the Compensation office.

effective August 7, 2002