My #1 Piece of Advice to Machine Shops About Job Postings

Updated September 4, 2026

You have to include a pay range!!

I talk to machinists every single day about CNC job opportunities. Including pay information is non-negotiable if you want your job posting to do well.

In some states, it’s the law to provide a pay range. In others, it’s not. But either way, if you want decent applications coming in, you have to do it.

There’s a general feeling that skilled machinists are underpaid for their work. So, when they see a role with no pay range, they assume the worst...

1. The company underpays. If you pay well, why not include your pay scale? Your job post asks for all the qualifications under the sun. You want the perfect machinist. But then you don’t include a pay range? No thanks!
2. You can’t keep your good machinists. If you pay well, your good machinists would stay. Plus, you’d easily attract good machinists from other companies that underpay. But since your job post is open and you’re spending money on recruiting, it looks like you’re having a hard time.

Now, 1 & 2 might not be true at all. But those are the initial assumptions. And if I’m a skilled machinist, I have endless opportunities and a busy schedule. The last thing I want to do is apply through your ATS system and go through a 4-week interview process just to find out if the pay even interests me.

Since writing this we went and counted. 306 of the 405 live jobs on our board name a number, and I pulled all of them into one place: what shops are actually posting for machinists, by role and by state. If you are not sure what range to put on your posting, start there.

It’s not just what a machinist thinks when they read your posting — it’s what Google shows them before they even click. Postings with a dollar figure in the title pull 2 to 4 times the traffic of ones without. And pay is the single most valuable piece of information Google’s job search can show on your listing. Leave it out and you’re not just making a bad first impression — you’re harder to find in the first place.

P.S.
I have shared job postings with no pay ranges in industry forums in the past and have been called a lot of things, including "a predator". All because there was no pay range on the job posting!

Still happening. I watched it play out again this week in one of the MACHINIST Facebook groups — different shop, same mistake. The post said "pay is based on experience," nothing more. Within a day the comments were exactly what you’d expect: people saying they don’t waste time on companies too embarrassed to post a range, that no range means the pay’s bad, that they scroll straight past. One commenter walked through the whole logic out loud — no range means either the pay’s bad or they’re hoping to lowball whoever shows up, so why bother. That’s not a fringe reaction anymore. It’s the default assumption, and it shows up in the comments every time.