A job posting can’t be the first place an employer figures out what a role is worth.
Virginia’s new pay transparency and salary history law changes more than the wording of a job ad. Employers will need to disclose wage or salary information in public and internal postings, and they’ll need to stop asking candidates what they currently make or made in the past.
That means compensation decisions have to happen earlier. HR, hiring managers, finance teams, recruiters, and staffing partners need to know the compensation range, understand how it was built, and use consistent language when candidates ask where they may land inside it.
Other states have already shown what happens when employers treat pay transparency as a last-minute posting update. Ranges become too broad to be useful. Employees start asking why their pay sits where it does. Candidates assume the top of the range is the real target. Posting mistakes can create legal exposure. To keep thing running smoothly during this transition, you’re going to need to make a few changes to your hiring process before you get ready to take your next job posting live.
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What Virginia’s New Pay Transparency Law Requires
Virginia’s new pay transparency and salary history law adds Va. Code § 40.1-28.7:12, covering salary history inquiries, wage or salary range transparency, enforcement, and civil penalties. The law was approved on April 22, 2026 and, under Virginia’s general effective-date rule, takes effect July 1, 2026 unless another date is specified.
The law prohibits employers from seeking a prospective employee’s wage or salary history. It also prohibits employers from relying on that history when considering someone for employment or deciding what the person should be paid upon hire, except under a narrow voluntary-disclosure exception.
The posting requirement is just as important. Employers may not fail or refuse to disclose the wage, salary, or wage or salary range in each public and internal posting for a job, promotion, transfer, or other employment opportunity. The range must be set in good faith using inputs such as a pay scale, a previously determined range, the actual range for equivalent positions, or the budgeted amount available for the position.
The law also creates enforcement risk. The Attorney General may bring a civil action, and penalties can reach up to $1,000 for a first violation and up to $5,000 for later violations. Some posting violations can be corrected within 15 business days after written notice.
Employers should review the law with counsel, but the general requirements are already clear: salary-history questions need to come out of the process, and pay ranges need to be ready before jobs are posted.
Pay Decisions Need to Happen Before the Job Is Posted
The range in the posting is only the visible part of the process. The real work happens before the posting goes live.
A good-faith range forces employers to answer basic questions earlier than many hiring processes currently do. What is the role responsible for? Is this a junior, mid-level, or senior opening? What does the company currently pay people doing similar work? What is the real budget? How will the company explain why one candidate lands near the bottom of the range and another lands closer to the top?
When those questions aren’t answered early, the process starts to get messy. Recruiters may describe the range one way while hiring managers may imply something different in interviews. Candidates may hear the top of the range and assume that’s the likely offer. Internal employees may see the posting and ask why a new hire could earn more than they do.
Virginia employers should treat pay transparency as an intake-process issue. Before the job is posted, the company needs a defined role, a defensible range, approved compensation language, and a clear plan for how pay will be discussed.
What Other States Show About Pay Transparency in Practice
Virginia employers don’t have to guess how these laws affect hiring. Colorado, New York City, Washington, and California have already shown where the pressure tends to appear.
Colorado: Transparency Can Create Internal Pressure
In Colorado, TIME profiled Velocity Global after the state’s pay transparency law went into effect. The company’s CEO described the law as creating internal anxiety, limiting compensation flexibility, requiring more HR attention, and contributing to employee departures after pay adjustments were made.
That’s the difficult side of transparency. When employees can see more clearly how pay is structured, weak or inconsistent compensation logic becomes harder to hide.
Colorado: Stronger Employers Use the Law to Clean Up Compensation
The same TIME story also profiled StoneAge Tools, a Colorado employer that took a different approach.
The company benchmarked every position, found wage discrepancies among lower-paid workers, raised wages, and set a new minimum of $20 per hour. Pay conversations also moved into the first round of interviewing instead of later rounds.
This situation shows a very different result that Virginia employers can learn from: the law can become a reason to clean up compensation before candidates and employees force the conversation and begin to pick apart the faulty logic in your process.
New York City: Broad Ranges Can Damage Candidate Trust
New York City showed another risk: ranges that are technically present but not very useful.
When NYC’s salary transparency law went live, Wired reported that some employers posted extremely broad or questionable ranges, including a Citi posting with a $0 to $2 million range that the company later called an error. Wired also reported ranges such as $50,000 to $180,000 and $197,000 to $366,000.
Candidates notice when a range looks meaningless, and it erodes their trust in your employer brand quickly.
Washington: Posting Mistakes Can Become Legal Exposure
Washington shows the compliance risk more directly. Washington L&I guidance says covered employers must include a wage scale or salary range, benefits, and other compensation in job postings. If an employer does not already have a wage scale or salary range for a position, the state says one should be created before the posting is published.
In Brinkman v. Target Corporation, Target was accused of breaking the pay transparency act and has now reached a $22.2M class-action settlement. Applicants may be eligible for an estimated $1,711.93 payment related to allegations that Target’s Washington job postings did not disclose the required wage scale or salary range. Target disputes the claims, and the settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing.
California: Interview Scripts Need to Be Cleaned Up
California gives employers a useful model for the interview process. California Labor Commissioner guidance says employers may ask applicants about salary expectations for the position, but they may not ask about current or past pay. The guidance also says employers should review job applications and train hiring personnel to remove current or past salary questions.
That’s the practical shift Virginia employers should focus on now. It’s not enough to update the job posting if the application, recruiter screen, or interview still asks the old questions.
Job Postings Need Realistic Ranges, Not Placeholder Ranges
A salary range has to do more than exist. It needs to help the candidate understand whether the opportunity is worth pursuing.
For Virginia employers, that means the range should be built from real inputs: role scope, budget, internal equity, market benchmarks, equivalent current positions, required skills, location, schedule, and urgency. Virginia’s law specifically says any good-faith analysis may consider the breadth of the range. A range so wide that nearly any offer could fit inside it may create more questions than confidence.
The same point applies to internal postings. Promotions and transfers are included in the law, so employers shouldn’t treat internal opportunities as informal exceptions. Current employees may be the people most likely to notice when a posted range conflicts with what they know about pay inside the company.
For temporary roles, range-setting may also need to account for assignment length, technical requirements, schedule demands, site location, and whether the role requires someone who can contribute immediately.
Applications, ATS Forms, and Screening Scripts Need to Change
Salary-history questions often hide in places employers forget to check.
An online application may still ask for current salary. An ATS template may include prior compensation fields. A recruiter screen may ask what the candidate is currently making before explaining the role range. A hiring manager may use salary history as a casual conversation starter without realizing that the question creates risk.
Employers should audit every point where compensation comes up. That includes job applications, prescreen forms, recruiter intake templates, phone-screen scripts, interview guides, offer approval workflows, and third-party recruiter instructions.
The safest direction is to remove questions about current salary, past salary, prior hourly rate, bonus history, commission history, total compensation, W-2s, paystubs, or what a previous employer paid. The better question is what the candidate expects for the role being discussed.
Interview Questions Employers Should Stop Asking
Hiring managers don’t always ask salary-history questions because they’re trying to create a problem. Many ask because the question has been normal for years. Virginia’s law makes that habit harder to defend.
The better alternatives all do the same thing. They keep the conversation tied to the role in front of the candidate, not the candidate’s past compensation.
| Risky Question | Better Alternative |
| “What are you making now?” | “The range for this role is $X–$Y. Does that align with what you’re targeting?” |
| “What did you make in your last job?” | “What compensation range are you looking for based on this role’s responsibilities?” |
| “Can you send over your W-2 or paystub?” | “We’ll base the offer on the role range, your experience, and the requirements of the position.” |
| “What was your bonus or total comp package?” | “Which parts of the total compensation package matter most to you as you evaluate this role?” |
| “Would you take less than you currently make?” | “Where do you feel your experience fits within the posted range, and why?” |
| “What salary would make you leave your current job?” | “What range would make this opportunity worth considering based on the scope of the role?” |
| “We can match your current pay.” | “Our offer will be based on the posted range, internal equity, market data, and your relevant experience.” |
| “Before we continue, I need to know your current salary.” | “Before we continue, I want to confirm that the posted range and role expectations are aligned with your goals.” |
How Compensation Conversations Should Work Going Forward
A stronger compensation conversation starts with the posted range.
Instead of asking what the candidate currently earns, recruiters and hiring managers should confirm the range and ask whether it aligns with the candidate’s expectations. If the candidate wants to understand where they might fall within the range, the conversation should move to the factors that matter for the role: relevant experience, required skills, certifications, schedule, location, assignment length, internal equity, and market conditions.
This is especially important when the posted range covers multiple experience levels. A candidate may see the top number and assume the company is prepared to offer it. Employers need language that explains how placement works without sounding evasive.
A useful structure looks like this:
- Confirm the posted range.
- Ask whether the range aligns with the candidate’s expectations.
- Clarify the role scope and required skills.
- Explain what affects placement within the range.
- Document why the final offer fits the role and candidate.
That process helps candidates understand the offer before frustration builds. It also helps hiring teams avoid inconsistent explanations from one conversation to the next.
What Employers Should Review Before July 1, 2026
Virginia employers shouldn’t wait until the first posting is challenged to find out where their process is outdated.
Start with the materials candidates see first: job posting templates, internal opportunity notices, career pages, job board language, and third-party postings. Then move into the systems and scripts that shape the conversation after a candidate applies.
The checklist below is a good starting point for your process review:
- Job posting templates
- Internal promotion and transfer postings
- ATS application fields
- Recruiter phone-screen scripts
- Hiring manager interview guides
- Compensation approval workflows
- Offer letter templates
- Third-party recruiter and staffing partner instructions
- Job board posting workflows
- Documentation for how ranges are built
- Legal review process
The goal is consistency. If the posting says one thing, the recruiter says another, and the hiring manager explains the range differently in the interview, the employer has not really solved the problem.
How PeopleSolutions Can Help Employers Set Better Expectations
PeopleSolutions can support employers by helping create a more consistent, market-informed, compliance-aware staffing process. That support becomes especially useful when hiring teams are balancing new posting requirements, urgent role needs, and candidate conversations that need to be handled carefully.
For contract staffing services, temporary staffing, contract-to-hire staffing, staff augmentation, employer of record support, and project-based staffing, compensation expectations need to be clear early. Candidates want to know whether the rate or salary range fits the assignment, schedule, skill level, and length of the opportunity. Employers need to know whether the range is realistic enough to attract qualified people.
PeopleSolutions can help with market calibration, benchmark-informed compensation range conversations, candidate screening, expectation-setting, interview coordination, and communication around role scope and compensation range. We don’t replace legal counsel or internal compensation governance, but we do help employers avoid one of the most common hiring breakdowns: entering the market with an unclear role, an unrealistic range, or screening questions that no longer fit the rules.
A Stronger Hiring Process Starts Before the First Conversation
Virginia’s pay transparency law should not be treated as a job-posting update alone. The posting is where the requirement becomes visible, but the real work starts earlier.
Employers need to define the role, set a good-faith range, remove salary-history questions, train interviewers, align staffing partners, and prepare a cleaner way to talk about compensation. Other states have already shown what happens when employers scramble: broad ranges, internal anxiety, candidate distrust, and legal exposure.
The companies that handle this well will not be the ones that simply add a broad range to job ads. They’ll be the ones that build a hiring process strong enough to explain those numbers clearly.
If you’d like to further discuss how PeopleSolutions can help your company during this time, please reach out to our team of temporary staffing experts.
