A 30% pay gap, closed without upping the salary range.
A YC-backed logistics startup blamed the candidates. The real issue was the offer.
The challenge
A YC-backed logistics startup was getting little traction on an Operations Manager search. The early read blamed the candidates: not senior enough, not interested, not the right market.
What we found
We ran a compensation benchmark before touching the pipeline. The package sat about 30% below what the market was paying for the scope the role described.
So the candidates were not the problem and neither was the sourcing. People were reading an offer that did not match the job, and declining accordingly. The title compounded it, describing something smaller than the role actually was.
What we did
Raising the range was the obvious answer, and it was not available. So we repositioned the role around what the budget could not buy: growth trajectory, real ownership of a function rather than a slice of one, and visibility with the founders.
We adjusted the title to match the actual scope of the job, which cost nothing and changed who the role reached. Then we made that case explicitly in the outreach instead of hoping candidates would infer it.
The result
The role was filled without increasing the compensation range. The same budget, positioned honestly around the upside, was enough to land the right person.