I'm also looking right now and a lot of that resonates with me. The posted salary ranges are often a complete joke as you noted. "The pay band for this role is $80,000-250,000 commensurate with experience and interview performance". Yeah OK buddy are you seriously trying to tell me you have multiple people with the exact same job title making salaries over $100k apart? Feels like they're just giving the finger to lawmakers through malicious compliance.
I've also run into the industry specialization roadblock a few times. Got turned down by a fintech company after multiple interview rounds because I did not have banking industry experience, for example. I guess I get it as a tie breaker but I've operated in a PCI compliant environment for years, seems like that should count as relevant experience? Also if you're going to dumpster candidates without banking experience why on earth did you waste several hours of your staff's time giving me tech screens?
Job hunting has always sucked. But it feels particularly busted at the moment. The process is miserable. If you've coasted to an easy hiring in the last year, you're either amazing (and hats off to you!) or got very lucky.
The salary ranges are complete jokes on either end: they're either malicious compliance like you pointed out, or completely out of touch with reality.
My example of that was when I applied for an Architect role (as I'm at that point in my upward career trajectory), and they asked me instead to apply for a Senior Admin role as they "didn't know what the Architect role would look like yet". I did, I included my comp target, and got the hard sell on why I was being unreasonable and should take {2016_PAY}/{$100k below SV_FIRM} instead. I mentioned my absolute floor was {$75k lower than SV_FIRM}/{$25k lower than my target}, ran him through my math (median rent for the area, on-site expectations, commute costs, food costs, insurance costs, 50/30/20 budgeting, etc), and pointed out that floor would only cover needs (50) and savings (20) with no fun money (30) whatsoever. Ultimately I withdrew my name entirely because the guy just wouldn't listen to me, and all but demanded I be grateful for his number in the current economy.
I suspect something similar is going on with another company that's seemingly ghosted me, after I stated I was targeting their upper boundary of their listed comp range - still $85k below {SV_FIRM}, but with growth potential towards Architect and Director-type IT roles. Even when I'm fine eating huge pay cuts for work (and falling off the homebuying ladder, as not even {SV_FIRM} paid house-purchasing money), the employers out there really do want perfect diamonds for the cost of Halloween Trinkets.
> Also if you're going to dumpster candidates without banking experience why on earth did you waste several hours of your staff's time giving me tech screens?
This is also something that's grinding my gears. Had an investment firm put me through six technical interviews with glowing recommendations every step of the way only for the seventh round (CIO) to put the kibosh on it without a reason and after showing up unprepared and disinterested. Also had companies say I lack financial discipline experience when I've literally built models, showback systems, budget forecasts, and cemented six-figures of monthly savings in prior roles; same with companies saying I "lack compliance experience" despite calling out running infra in highly regulated environments, performing compliance audits for clients, and uplifting infra to satisfy compliance regimes.
If I didn't know better, I'd say the entire HR process is just feeding shit into chatbots and letting them make hiring decisions. Nobody seems to actually care about the humans involved or the wider systems at play.
It's immensely frustrating, but I can only keep on keeping on until something changes. I don't need to win every application, I just need to win one.