To think this salary is an insult?

[FlyingSolo16]

I’m a solicitor and recently interviewed for a position. Five rounds of interview, meetings with different people within the firm, etc etc.

Get to the offer stage and the “competitive salary” they’re offering was £27,500 a year. AIBU or is that an insult?

I had assumed solicitors were on about the same as accountants. £35k would have been the minimum I would have taken as a newly qualified accountant 7 years ago and I was really looking for 40, and ended up on £42 with a good pension contribution on top. I would expecting to be paying £45k now, at least, if I wanted someone decent, maybe £50k.

Editing: I guess maybe NQ is different for solicitors actually because you have to work for 3 years at the same time as doing your exams as an accountant, so maybe it's like being a couple of years in?

I was a newly qualified accountant and lived in a house share for 4 years until I moved overseas.

Everybody did this, it was 1980’s. Renting a flat all to yourself wasn’t considered an option.

These days I'd expect that more or less straight out of university.

My DIL earns over £120k and qualified as a solicitor last year! A bricklayer would earn more than £27.500 !

It is hard to say without knowing your age and qualifications and how much it costs the firm to run the company and how many employees they have to pay.

The sad thing is that they will eventually find a poor quality candidate who is willing to do it for that money.

They will provide a poor quality of work, their colleagues will have to take up the slack and the clients will suffer/ move elsewhere. All for saving £10k a year ...

If they are a limited company, you could look them up in Companies House and see how they are doing financially.

Solicitors here charge almost £400 an hour and few people can afford that, so resort to Ai advice and the Gov.uk to sort it out themselves.

Unless you are doing 1-2 days a week only, this is perhaps an indication of why there is a vacancy! Our trainees get paid more than that (and no not in a London firm!) maybe a lesson learned though to set salary expectations at first round so neither you nor they waste any time. Good luck with the job hunt

You are absolutely right that it is way too low for a qualified solicitor and I’m sorry they wasted your time. But it is a question of supply and demand. A friend started as a graduate trainee in a large corporate ten years ago. She started on £30k which was a good salary at the time, higher than comparable jobs. She’s now on over £100k plus bonus at the same firm as a senior VP. But new graduates at her firm are paid considerably less than £30k. In my own profession, salaries for experienced professionals have fallen markedly over the years as the industry has contracted and more people are prepared to work for less. Adzuna, the recruitment firm, recently did a survey which showed 32% of all entry level jobs - graduate jobs, apprenticeships and school leaver jobs- had disappeared since the advent of ChatGPT (November 2022 if I remember correctly). So the market has changed dramatically.
The idea that boomers all swanned into single ownership on graduation is also incorrect. Few people rented or bought alone. Most bought together on joint mortgages with interest rates rising to 15% in the 1990s. Most also didn’t have many of the other expensive necessities which are such an important part of modern life. Holidays were fewer and less exotic. Tech was non-existent. Cars were bangers. Food was more basic. Restaurants fewer in number. Interior design was cheap and simple and much less competitive. There was less competition for hard-earned incomes. Many were pushed to take out endowment mortgages which did not cover the loan by its end of life.
Yes, boomers benefitted over the years from rising house prices, a long period of economic growth, and generous pensions but many were forced to buy expensive annuities and for many wealth was something they built up slowly through decades of hard work.
You have all my sympathy but the intergenerational situation is more nuanced than is being presented here. Boomers are not a homogeneous group. Neither are newly qualified solicitors.

100% this.

Someone desperate will take them up on their offer, and this data point will feed into salary benchmarking analysis and bring down the average/range for a profession, giving other stingy employers the idea that they can pay less.

I think an increasing number of young people living at home is another factor as to why graduate salaries are stagnating. People are taking up jobs they wouldn’t have been able to take if they were fully supporting themselves with rent and bills to pay (although I appreciate it’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation).

I didn’t bother applying for any job that paid less than £25k almost 15 years ago, because I was moving to London and needed to survive.

I worked for a company where they were hiring for a manager and wanted to pay £80k when the market rate was £120k plus.

They eventually found someone, one of those who would be reporting to her was on the interview panel and flagged to the senior manager that she was entirely unqualified to do the job.

Anyway the senior manager overruled the concerns and she was hired and the first three months were such a car crash that those reporting to her refused to have her at any external meetings because it was embarrassingly obvious that she had no idea about the sector.

So she spent 18 months doing PowerPoint presentations whilst her direct reports did her actual job because it was better and more efficient and less embarrassing.

She then went on sick leave for a year and eventually six months after that she agreed to leave with a generous package of.

But who is to blame here - the candidate that took a chance, submitted an optimistic cv and blagged her way into an £80 k job for three years doing very little or the Senior Manager who overruled the concerns raised by the interviewing team all because he didn't want to pay the market rate and eventually ended up costing the company more money for less productivity.

Flip me that’s diabolical!

I think people would assume that a solicitor would be paid £72k not £27k! Surely it was a typo 😅

Very insulting after all the training, etc to get there. You would earn more working in McDonald’s, sadly.

I wonder if it is something to do with two people full time in one household?

Perhaps that is the way things are turning. Decades ago it was the men who went out to work full time to bring home the bacon while the wife stayed at home, perhaps to do some part time work for pocket money. Look at the social history. That was the status quo until almost the end of the `1970s. It is a most interesting subject to study. A deeper understanding of the past helps in the future. If it doesn't the same scenario presents itself to future generations.

Women left school and went to work full time. When they married they gave up full time jobs. Employers were not keen to employ married women. Those women now are appealing to the Government for better pension rights.

When that system ended, married women enjoyed equal rights, though as in communism, some were more equal than others. Equal pay meant men and women were supposed to earn equal money for equal jobs. Sounds OK, and it seemed to be working right up until this barmy army was elected.

They have pushed up the employer NI contributions, introduced minimum wage, which was not always beneficial. It put some in the income tax bracket, so Ms Reeves clawed it back. The cost of living is so high now that everyone wants a raise. They pay more taxes and get less.

Has it come full circle? Has it become such that even professional firms like solicitors are paying less to those who have two wage earners? Deviousness like that was commonplace 50 years ago. It could be returning.

To be honest I think salaries are just weird right now. Someone I went to school with is an assistant manager at Aldi on £45k a year, I thought that was a high salary. In comparison I’m a senior leader in data on the same salary.

I’d probably say her pay has increased whereas my pay has stalled.

For your £27k role, they’re probably aiming for recent graduates or people who need to urgently start a job. That was my entry salary into the civil service, I would expect a solicitor in the civil service at least to earn more (and that’s saying a lot, as the civil service is notoriously not well paid).

You should have asked before round 5, so in that respect yes you are being unreasonable.

Benchmark your salary - tell them what industry average is and that you feel they've wasted your time, don't work for a company that does not value you.

Not at all. I'm a solicitor in London and worked at a top 15 firm. NQ salary £100k. Much higher for top 5 firms and US firms. I'm now in house.

I thought the starting salary for the newly qualified is about that amount, though probably £10k more in London?

I don’t understand these companies who make people jump through hoops at interview and keep the salary hidden.

I’m an In-House Recruiter for a well known retailer (and earn way more than £27k! And we don’t get any commission or bonuses like agency recruiters do!).
All of our vacancies have the salary banding advertised. (Because why waste each others time?). The only roles that will say ‘£competitive’ are the senior roles and the salary is disclosed to the applicant verbally on the very first call.

And our recruitment process is simple and straightforward. I do an initial screening call to discuss the role and get more info off the candidate about what they’re looking for etc, if both happy a 1st stage with me and then a 2nd stage with the hiring manager. Job done.

If you’re having to go through 5 rounds of interviews without even being told the salary, that’s major red flags for me!! That means they know the salary is too low, which is why they don’t want to advertise it and want to try and ‘hook’ you in with the time you’ve spent on the process, into accepting a shit salary.

It’s a complete piss take! Some posters are trying to justify it but it’s an amount that’s below insulting!

Mind you, I’ve seen £25k referred to on here as a high wage before 🤦‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Either your father is quite elderly, or was in a very, incredibly cheap area, or both (or thirdly, BS). I was assuming your age as mid-twenties to early thirties (similar to my children) given that you are NQ, but perhaps instead you are in your forties or fifties?

For context, DH bought his first house in 1990-ish for £70k. DFIL bought his house in 1965 for £3k.

"Competitive Salary" generally means bare minimum. I personally refuse to go through a long process without knowing what the expected salary is. Wastes everyones time

Five rounds of interviews, and they come back with a 27k offer, how they managed to keep a straight face is beyond me. Even being NQ

My daughter is earning not much less than that in her apprenticeship. Accounting.

I'd expect the starting salary to be 40k

Never attend an interview where they don't advertise the salary band

@FlyingSolo16 yes teachers in our council start on 33.5K. I earn more than 27k as an admin
Our scale is 26k to 29k. That seems very low for a solicitor after all the years of study.

Please name and shame the firm. Where is the role based? My pa is on 50k.