AIBU to expect job adverts to include salary ranges upfront?

[Netcurtainnelly]

Do you agree that the salary range should be posted on every job hiring ad so that applicants' time is not wasted?

Yes. And stagnate salaries of current employees, who would otherwise see they’re having to pay more for new employees.

I always include the salary range or hourly rate depending on job
However I don’t appreciate people who don’t read the job ad, or application information
Cut and paste from a previous unrelated application which makes it obvious they are not interested
Then the ones who have no qualifications or experience and expect to start on the top level of range

Yes I have been burnt by this. A telephone interview, face to face interview and then an assessment centre, they finally showed the salary at the assessment centre on a big screen in an auditorium and I stood up and walked out. £19,000 (it was a few years ago)! I used my day off to go to the Trafford centre instead.

So what do you put? £50k? Then those worth £80k won’t bother applying. £competitive? Well for a role that could pay £50k, I wouldn’t bother applying either.

In my industry, my role could feasibly get paid between £75k and £250k depending on employer and experience. But some employers would never pay more than £100k, because of their budgets and what the starting point for their next role would be. I need to know they’ll at least consider paying me the £150k I’m asking for before I apply, or I won’t be applying - even if I could be the perfect candidate for the role.

I would honestly legislate that job advertisements must include an indicative salary range if I was in Parliament. Although I would also lobby for greater pay transparency across the board.

Why is putting it in the advert an issue if you’re happy to disclose it pre interview?

Putting in an application takes time and effort, I’ve recently been job hunting and I wouldn’t apply without knowing at least a range, you’re wasting everyone’s time (yours included) to not disclose that information upfront.

If you were transparent up front you wouldn’t need HR to tell people on a call, everyone would know where they stood and you’d just schedule the interview, so you’d save HR time there & likely wouldn’t get candidates dropping out at that stage.

It reminds me of the old saying about the man attending a dinner party who, the more he banged on and on about his scrupulous honesty, the faster the host counted the spoons.

If you genuinely believed that the wages you're offering are competitive, why on earth wouldn't you proudly say what they are, instead of being unnecessarily cagey?

It's also like the companies whose websites give prices for quite routine and not highly bespoke goods or services as "£CALL". I don't know about other people, but personally, I don't bother to call for a moment; I just look for one of their competitors who are honest and respectful enough to give me an actual price that I can base my decision on.

"Competitive" = "We compete fiercely with you to get what you can offer us for the lowest price that we can possibly pay you".

I've no idea why it's portrayed as a positive thing to assert in your advert!

I think the companies who do this believe that it helps them to retain the upper hand; whereas in reality, the opposite is true, as quality candidates are deterred by the opacity. Yes, of course you're going to receive applicants from dreamers and chancers; but that's precisely why it's a long hiring process, and why people who might want the job can't just find your listing, click on 'add to basket' and turn up on Monday morning to begin.

It's interesting how companies protest that, if they give a range, every candidate will want the top of the range - and they as a company are also presumably not capable of negotiating on this and seeking proven assurance and justification that the candidate warrants the top of the range. Surely it also works the other way: whereby if you advertise a range of £50K-£80K, you wont get a load of people who would be otherwise clueless about the responsibility level of the job, but who will thus know that even £50K is way above their league and won't waste your and their time by applying.

I got caught out by this the other day. Role comes up that isn't to dissimilar to my role at my current company, actually got quite excited. I put what I thought I should be paid and they got back to me saying my salary expectations were too high.

What exactly am I supposed to benchmark the wage against without knowing what is on offer? More transparency makes things so much easier and can potentially reduce the wasted amount of applications.

I will not apply for any role where I'm not able to find out the pay level in advance. I don't mind if i have to ring the recruiter etc to confirm it but I'm not applying if it's a complete unknown. Job titles are very fluid and there are plenty of [shit] companies out there who will list a director level job spec only to offer a manager level pay.

Yes, I think that a lot of companies are horribly dismissive about the time and effort that it takes for somebody to apply for a job with them. They just get a pile of forms on their desks or in their inboxes and don't for a second consider the human cost and investment that's gone in to every one of them.

It's a nasty thing to do, to lead goodness knows how many people to waste half of a day in carefully crafting a comprehensive application for a job with you when, if only you'd bothered to mention a basic salient point, they could have focused their time and energies on a suitable role.

. Surely it also works the other way: whereby if you advertise a range of £50K-£80K, you wont get a load of people who would be otherwise clueless about the responsibility level of the job, but who will thus know that even £50K is way above their league and won't waste your and their time by applying.

You'd be amazed. I advertised for a senior post paying £100k, requiring 10+ years of quite specific experience.

I got a number of applicants who only graduated uni the previous couple of years, with none of the experience the job spec asked for. Obviously they didn't get interviews

My rule is that if the salary is not clearly stated in the job ad then I won't waste my time applying.

I think it is lazy recruitment and a sign that the company does not want existing employees to be aware of how much colleagues could be paid and is also an attempt to get away with the lowest possible salary for the new recruit. Transparency is important.

This is standard in DH’s industry and it drives me mad. He had an interview last week - so a day off, a hotel the night before as the interview was at the HO (that’s another thing that annoys me - interviews absolutely miles away from where the job is) and then mid way through the interview one of the panel let slip, thankfully before he wasted time on second and third interviews, they their idea of ‘competitive’ is around 65k less than he’s on atm.

They seemed genuinely shocked by his current salary - which is standard in his current company and at two others in the industry (he knows from friends who work there). How can you call yourself competitive if you don’t know what others are paying?!

so you aren't putting a range on it so you can lowball someone?

in some US states (and other places) a range (and not one with a yawning chasm between them, as i saw yesterday $35-120k) is mandatory. It saves EVERYONE a lot of time.

that's illegal where i am - and i have been asked and my answer is always the same: what are you offering me?. Then i leave.

This drives me mad too! Jobs on LinkedIn with masses of detail but no indication whatsoever of salary. If they’re prepared to waste people’s time and piss them around before they’ve even applied what sort of employer must they be?

what do they do with that data though? that always interests me.

Always makes me think the company must be dodgy as anything. If they cant be upfront about wages what else wont they be upfront about.

By not indicating the salary, you select out the people in employment with lots of other options and select for the people that will fill out any advert.
I lived for a while in a country where it became a legal requirement to list the salary. It's suddenly quite straightforward to do. You would see adverts such as Salary with x years' experience in capital city: 80K; x years in small city: 70K, y years in capital city: 60K; y years in small city, 50K.
If the company couldn't list something like these criteria, they are just hoping to lowball applicants and don't care about retention. Especially as a woman, this isn't a great place to work when you have other options.

Yep, and it also wastes the recruiting manager and HR team’s time because they end up with candidates who won’t take the role once they find out the salary, and the recruiting team spend time and effort going through the applications, shortlisting, interviewing etc when some people will drop out, it’s such a waste of everyone’s time.

When I was job hunting I quickly realised that a huge amount of jobs advertised purely on LinkedIn or other job sites were either already closed or you’d get no response from them.

I started only applying if I could do that direct on the company website or email the recruiting manager direct, I think loads of stuff on LinkedIn is just nonsense.

Not including a published indicative salary helps maintain the gender pay gap surely.

I wonder how may women are ‘proving they’re worth it’ compared to how many men are bullshitting that they’re worth it to the PP who doesn’t disclose the range.

But how do they or you know it’s competitive if firms are not transparent? They can only compare to what they’re on currently, or an offer from elsewhere. A firm’s reputation with its clients can be very different to its reputation with employees. I’ve been a hiring manager at a company with great clients/reputation and they appeared to think people should be happy to take less pay for the experience of working there - some people might but just be upfront. The EU are mandating pay transparency - I think it’s clear a lack of transparency only benefits employers. It likely disproportionately negatively affects women (how do you know what’s competitive if you’ve been out of the workplace raising children).

But how do they or you know it’s competitive if firms are not transparent? They can only compare to what they’re on currently, or an offer from elsewhere. A firm’s reputation with its clients can be very different to its reputation with employees. I’ve been a hiring manager at a company with great clients/reputation and they appeared to think people should be happy to take less pay for the experience of working there - some people might but just be upfront. The EU are mandating pay transparency - I think it’s clear a lack of transparency only benefits employers. It likely disproportionately negatively affects women (how do you know what’s competitive if you’ve been out of the workplace raising children).

Are former employers allowed to tell potential new employers though? Because surely being caught out in a lie would not be a good look.