For wanting to know the approx salary before going to a job interview?

[helenjen]

I have recently been made redundant and before that the last time I went for a job interview was over 8 years ago - so I may well be very out of date here.

I applied for a job earlier on this week which I saw on an online job site which sounded right up my street, however there was no salary info on the post. Not even negotiable between £x and £y, it was just blank. I thought I might as well apply and if they got in touch I assumed I would be told the salary.

Yesterday I got a call inviting me for an interview which I have arranged for Monday however when I asked about the salary, she said she didn't have the information which I found a bit strange. She said they would tell me at the interview on Monday.

I get that it is probably negotiable and they will offer a salary based on however well the successful candidate does in their interview - however AIBU to be a bit put off by it? I feel like a professional company would just be upfront and honest about it?

Question: does this kind of behaviour (not listing salaries and being all fake coy about it) happen more frequently in jobs where a higher percentage of women traditionally apply/work?

At a minimum, I would bet my bottom dollar that there is a significant gender divide in the pay outcomes of jobs were the salary isn't disclosed.

Agree with pp that in general only decent salaries are advertised.

That said, in my limited experience public sector jobs (civil service, nursing, teaching etc) seem to be advertised fairly transparently - they'll say "band 4, £28,344-£31,042" or something similarly specific. I suppose enormous organisations have to have strict salary harmonisation so there's little room for negotiation.

To me this vagueness does no one any good - the applicants or the companies. In my previous job I did a lot of recruitment and it drove me mad that we wouldn't even provide a salary range. We made an offer to one candidate and she turned around and asked for £60k - I was on far less and her role was at the level below me! The general feeling in the office seemed to be that her expectations were ridiculous, but personally I felt we weren't exactly blame free. We could have saved everyone a lot of time.

I was pretty shocked when I once asked about the salary during an interview, and I was told they only disclosed that to the successful candidate. I should have asked if that was before, or after they accepted the job ! What a load of balls.

ThomasHardy - how ridiculous. When the successful candidate turned it down because it was a joke, then whose time has been wasted? Any reticence about the salary on offer just screams that they want to underpay you.

I was looking around about 6 months ago; my role, which is quite specialised and requires at least 10 years of experience, was being advertised by different firms so there was plenty of choice. Some firms clearly had no idea of market forces as the gap in salary was £30K in some cases!

My DP recently went to an interview (the job was advertised at 25k) and during they mentioned there had been a change to the salary and would he still be interested. They didn't say how much the change was but he presumed only a couple of grand but because the job was 7k over his current wage he said yes anyway thinking it was just a tactic to see if he really wanted the job or if it was just about the money. It was just about the money as the job was essentially the same as what he does now so obviously wouldnt change jobs if it didn't benefit finacially as we're having a baby. They rang and offered him the job within an hour of his interview and said they would send the contract in the post. When it came through the salary was £8k below what was advertised.

So sometimes companies advertise the job at a certain salary, they can always change it anyway. Deffo agree that they probably want to see what candidates expectation is first to see what they can get away with offering and it may be the deciding factor in who gets the job if they can offer someone else a lower salary.

I once went to an interview like this, they offered me the job, I said that I would need it to better my current salary. They couldn't - so I had to turn it down. What a waste of everyone's time.

Yanbu. If you are currently unemployed and can treat it as interview practice that's great, but most people will have to take a day off (or work from home / phone in sick) . Why would you do that if it might be paying a lot less than you currently earn. I feel similarly about jobs where no location is given, it matters to most people. If you only want people to apply who don't care you are limiting your pool of applicants. But no salary or £negotiable definitely disadvantages those who aren't comfortable negotiating, I.e. most women.

farfrom that happened to me too when I was just starting out in the industry I'm in now. Interview went ok, had a bit of a bad vibe about the place. They called me on the train home and offered me the job. 5k below what it was advertised at.
I politely declined, saying that the salary had been X, not X-5k, thanked them for their time and hoped they found someone suitable.
They then got really huffy and shouted abuse at me down the phone!

Which kind of cemented the idea they were a shit place to work....

yanbu

i always ask the salary or least want a ballpark, happy to have £x - £x gross depending on experience in job ad

no point me going and wasting both our times if they cant/wont pay me what im looking for

The salaries bandied about on MN always make me feel such a failure. I know most of these are notional but where I live the public sector is far and away the best paying and most other jobs advertised are below £20k.

Jennifer

I earn significantly more than the national average wage. 5 years ago I was on less than £20K p.a. I changed fields, studied in my spare time and now earn a better wage. However my job is incredibly stressful, the commute is long and I have to put up with a lot of shit in return for the wage. I get bugger all by way of pension contributions apart from what I put in myself, no inflationary payrise, no overtime and no company sick pay. I haven't had a day's holiday in over 7 months and I am knackered.

It really is swings and roundabouts. Please don't feel like a failure. It's my choice to put up with what I do - and I know there are lots of jobs out there which are very hard and stressful for poor pay. But I sometimes think that people talk about being high earners without always explaining some of the sacrifices that come with it. My boss could ring me today (and frequently does out of hours and weekends) and he would expect me to respond - the fact that it's Sunday is irrelevant to him. The unpaid overtime is the killer; I am paid for 7 hours a day but routinely work 12 or 13, plus weekends.

I can honestly say I was far happier work-wise, 5 years ago. Sometimes the work was hard, or boring or frustrating. But the important thing is that you are satisfied with what you are doing. I need the money that my current job offers - as part of a longer term life plan. However I won't be working like this for more than 4-5 years - at the moment it's a case of head down and put up with it.

Not declaring a salary range seems a way of paying some people less for the same job (women, younger people, perhaps some ethnic minorities etc). So it should be outlawed on those grounds.

I will call the recruiting manager if it's a job I am interested in and the salary is not given. If they don't get enough suitable applicants they can up the salary and if they have your details, will contact you to let you know they are recruiting at the higher salary if you are still interested.

yanbu
Sometimes they find out what money you were on before, and try to offer just a bit more. This is wrong, a job should have a fixed salary band. Of course you need to know the salary prior to interview. You wouldn't do your supermarket shop without knowing what everything cost before you got to the till, would you?

YANBU. I'm currently employed but looking for a new role - it's not worth my time and annual leave to go to an interview and find out the top end salary is not higher than what I'm on now. It's really annoying.

I applied for a job and got an interview. When I rang to confirm the interview time I asked about salary. I was told in no uncertain terms that they were not looking for people who thought only of money. Trying to explain that I couldn't afford to take a pay cut as I had rent to pay and didn't want to waste peoples time if the salary was below what I was earning fell on deaf ears.

Oliversmum - so fucking stupid isn't it? I expect everyone would love to be able to take a job for the pure love of it but sadly salary is pretty important.

DH works in IT and I agree sometimes the only indicator of role and responsibility is in the pay. You can be a database administrator on £20k meaning you use a database to extract and manipulate data, or on £40k meaning you will write and maintain complex databases and hold responsibility for managing data processes. It was frustrating when he was made redundant because so many jobs looked promising at first glance but when the details came through they were junior positions. We have a mortgage and bills - we need to know what's worth applying for!

On the other hand I once went to a full day interview in London - costs £3k pa to commute - and all day they squirmed when asked about salary. They only interviewed me, wanted me and it was a great 1 year job. In the end, after I got home, as a poor penniless graduate, broke after paying my train fare, they let me know the salary - nothing. It was a 'placement' - more commonly called an internship...yeah, no thanks!

I was told in no uncertain terms that they were not looking for people who thought only of money.

FFS, that is just so ridiculous! I have no words (that aren't swear words).

I wouldn't go to an interview unless I had an indication of salary and was assured it could beat my current one. I wouldn't take a cut. My employer is one of the better payers in my area so I would really need this info as many jobs I just wouldn't waste my time with.

Ive never understood the point of being secretive about it.

Interviews take time and cost money, if you want 80k applicants you need to indicate that or you end up with loads of extra work sorting through all the 12k applicants

YANBU. I can't stand it. I don't even like going through the hassle of sending my CV if I don't know the salary.

Oliversmum - patronising twats! I'd have responded: I completely understand. I don't want to work for a company that thinks so little of its employees, that it isn't prepared to be transparent about money because people have bills to pay and families to support.

Small companies don't have salary bands and tend to outsource their HR eg recruiting agency. However they should have online presence you'd have already researched and (too late in the day, I see i/v is tomorrow) you should be able to contact the HR or MD or someone in the line to ask about salary.

You say you'll treat it as interview experience. MNetters seem to be agreed you'll have to. Some of us can't afford the fare to interview so if that's not paid it's a no go.

Cary - clearly large firms, councils, NHS etc have banded salaries. Start ups don't because they're too young/small. Pisstakers don't because they're taking the piss/relying on desperation for a job.