People applying for a job advertised at X to X salary and saying they want 3x more at interview

[diditbark]

This is causing me so many headaches at the moment.

We're advertising for some fairly junior admin positions. Salary band clearly stated in ad, including what the top of band is.

So many people are applying and requesting a min of far more. Say the top of band is £26k and people are applying with required salary £40k.

Bear in mind myself and those shortlisting and interviewing have zero authority to go over top of band.

We also have scenarios where people apply saying they want circa the top of band, but when offered the position after interview say they cannot possibly accept for X figure £10k higher than advertised.

Is anyone else coming across this a lot? Obviously times are hard, inflation is a bastard, many people are underpaid. But there's zero room for us to negotiate ten grand over the top of band.

And yet if tax, NI, colossal rent, commuting, food and fuel inflation spikes are taken into account then people are left with a deficit from week 1.

On £26k pa, take home is roughly £1.7k. In London and a few other SE towns I know, just a room in a rental house is £850-900 of that. Add fuel bills, phone, wifi, council tax, commuting costs and you're left with about £100pw for food, clothes, savings, going out, let alone pension.

How much is a basic 1 bedroom private rented flat within reasonable travelling distance to the office? How much would travel costs be? Are people being cheeky expecting more money or is the reality that no one can actually afford to work for the advertised wage in that area?

I reckon the cost of living crisis is having an impact. Rents have risen and are expected to rise further. Not everyone can be/wants to be financially dependent on parents/a spouse.

I guess the way to test is put 'salary not negotiable' and see how many replies you get

I deal with recruitment in my public sector role in London. It’s very difficult to get the right calibre of candidate for what is being offered.
I was part of a recent national campaign for 100+ entry level jobs. Civil Service so we want the earth in terms of ability! It was interesting how very few put London locations down as an option for them. The London weighting is around £2k and obviously not enough to tempt young graduates to move here.
We didn’t fill our posts. (£29k for London). One candidate asked what the ‘actual salary’ was!

Why aren’t you doing screening calls before wasting time on interview to clarify salary expectations?

If I advertised a job with a clear salary band I wouldn’t expect to need to check salary expectations. My own expectation is that people who apply for the job are happy with the salary as advertised. I wouldn’t apply for a job where the salary was below my expectations - that’s a complete waste of everyone’s time. I have negotiated being appointed at the top of the band, which I think is fair enough but usually if there’s a banding, to go over that would mean a different grade/job so it’s no go especially in the public sector.

It’s simple really, if the salary was right for the level of the job you would have recruited someone. You haven’t, which tells you it’s a problem with either the salary or your expectations.

I can't be the only one who thinks that is a fair salary for an entry level role?
For somebody starting out to gain office experience I see no issue
Op didn't say where in the uk she is but in the north that salary is fine

It sounds like just a basic admin job that need a few GCSEs and basic computer use so why would the salary be expected to be much more than people that work in shops and warehouses, they don't get a high salary just because the rent is high in the area

It doesn't sound like a graduate role so are you interviewing the right people. Sounds more for people fresh out of college at 18.

In the south it's fair too. If it's targeted towards school leavers who want to get into office work then it's an extremely good salary. It's not a job for someone with a family or for a sole earner, it's an essential, but very basic, admin job.

Well no one can live in London in a house share easily on £26k - it would be very tight. Possible only if someone would take this with clear career progression.

As a school/college leaver who doesn't want to do uni and lives at home with family - yes.

Given the number of people here bemoaning what to do with 'non-academic' DC, and the increasing costs + lowered quality of university degree I'm surprised nobody's jumping at the chance!

I suspect you're not reaching the targeted audience. You're getting career changers, former SAHM's, people who couldn't find anything else but have some work experience.

Can you not post on local FB groups, work with local schools to recruit? I'm sure at least one of their pupils will think this a great opportunity!

Given that 30K is the median household income and that's about the salary of a graduate role this seems like a great opportunity.

40K is laughable for an admin position that only requires GCSE's and no experience.

Also maybe a quick ring and remind them of the salary before asking if they want to proceed to interview?

If applicants are on Job Seekers Allowance, they might be doing the interviews just so that they don't get sanctioned. They're allowed to reject lower salaries than they've had previously for a certain amount of time, but still have to show that they're going to interviews.

(Fortunately didn't happen to me when I was on JSA, but I did see advisor telling people to go to interviews for jobs they couldn't take 'for practice' ").

I agree it might be your recruitment process, so best to check if the people screening the CV's are picking up over qualified candidates. As PP said, how are the adverts worded would also help so the pay is clear. I have seen in some adverts the wording 'we may pay over this rate for more qualified candidates' or similar so make sure that is not said anywhere.

Yes. In my industry this a huge problem right now. Those that set the budgets on salary are refusing to acknowledge that the industry is facing a catastrophic shortage of workers and that salary expectations have changed. We have gone through many rounds of interviews with refusals and then people accepting the job then being counter offered. Its utter madness.

What will happen to other posts if you raise the salary of entry level recruitment to, say, 30k or more? What will the staff who have worked hard to get into senior posts at that salary band - possibly with a degree and postgraduate qualifications and all the costs incurred from that - do? Are you proposing everyone's wages are increased? Who will pay for that? Especially in the public and academic sectors.

I'd say check the advert is super clear that there's no flex on the banding, and have it mentioned in any invite to interview invitation too. If its an online form rather than CV based application even see if you can have it in as a tick box that needs to be checked to continue with the app.

I'd say either the job is unrealistic for the pay which it doesn't sound like it is ie you want very basic quals and no real experience; or it's a desirable role people who are overqualified are interested in either for a foot in to a different sector or because you do something worthwhile to society. Either way if the money isn't there it isn't there, there will be people I'm sure happy to work an entry level role for that salary and then progress when the time comes.

To add we get this, people who have done a 6 week online bootcamp and then apply for a role suitable for this early point of their career in this industry but expect a huge salary. We also get people who are graduates but in a completely different thing and have no experience in what we do who want to walk into a very high paid job. It would be nice if we could pay everyone £££s but it's not feasible. When we do find people they find they recieve the support, training and experience to progress to those well paid jobs quickly but plenty of people now seem to want to cut out that part and just earn loads when they don't know loads.

Never had this, or not to anywhere near that extent. Which surprises me as we seem to get everything else at the moment. We're lucky if they even show up half the time.

Whoever is conducting your pre-screening calls should be weaning those out Op - leave the ad as it is but the screening call should emphasise the lack of ability to negotiate salary. You should then only get those who will accept the salary if offered carrying on with the process.

Hello, fellow techie!
An aside, and not really related to OP's problem but I find that in tech people are constantly being fed 'do this bootcamp and earn loads'. Even on MN there are loads of 'getting into tech threads' and while it's great to see people aiming for something better there are lot of people adding to the misconception.

Tech is not something to enter if you want a 'stable' job, yes when you have skills you're in demand and it's well-paid and flexible but there are boom/bust cycles plus your job's always at risk of being automated away/offshored/ etc etc. You need to put in the hours, but many people re-train in it post kids thinking it will have 'family friendly' hours ... get the shock of their lives when they find out that actually, just doing the 'bootcamp homework' isn't enough you'll spend hours after work doing your own learning to keep up.

I got some great training and progressed quickly as a grad from an unrelated field but that would never have happened if I just put in my 8 hours a day and went home.

Absolutely agree with everything you've written! The bootcamps are good to give an oversight but we have found lots of people who do them are then quite arrogant and say they have an in depth knowledge of x I'm like no you have an introduction and awareness of which is great, but one of our entry level supported roles is more suited than one that needs a qualified and experienced person. I do agree there's a notion that everyone in tech can walk into a role and be making masses of money, it was the case for a while wasn't it but things are now changing rapidly.

We pay £34k for an entry level role which comes with funded training and time to do the bulk of this in work time, along with the support for your own workload, which I don't think is bad for someone who might only have a bootcamp or who doesn't have any knowledge but is willing to learn. When they ask for £50k have to laugh and wish them luck.

Hi, thank you for commenting. I posted precisely to given an example to the OP as to why a well-qualified candidate may genuinely not be prepared to accept the advertised bands.

In my post I had missed out the letters FTE - so I was prepared to accept £38-40k FTE but to ask for 4 days. So my Pro-rata salary would be £30-32K - within the salary band of £28-33k but my experience and knowledge would compensate for the 4 days rather than 5. Please note the company still haven't hired.

But I will say I no longer provide details of my current salary. I used to work in the City - similar skill set - on £100k pa. I moved sectors - lower by a long way. I didn't realise that new employers would try to pay me what I currently earned not what my skill set is worth. It is a form of indirect sexual discrimination - an MP was looking into this last year. Professional women who take career breaks are penalised. I have options and a comfortable retirement is one of them. I would have preferred to keep working into my 60's but I am not prepared to be underpaid for my skills, anymore.

How low actually is the band? 40 hours a week at minimum wage is £22k, so I’m not surprised people are negotiating hard if the £26k in your OP really is the top of the band.
Are you finding that absolutely no one from your shortlist/who meets your needs will take the offered range? Or only offering to the top one or two? If you’re shortlisting and having this problem several times it’s definitely your expectations of market rate not them.

Yeah, you would think so. But they do. All the time

People apply for multiple jobs. They use a scatter gun approach and don't always care about details