Hiring mangers, recruiters, HR, please answer

[Julynian]

A question specifically for people who manage the recruitment and hiring processes at work.
What’s the reasoning behind not giving a salary in a job advert?

I don’t apply for a job if it doesn’t give the salary up front. Job applications take time and effort, and I don’t want to give either if it might prove not worth it. Most of my peers take the same approach. No matter how great the job description sounds, I make a quick assumption that no stated salary means you will pay as little as you can get away with, rather than what the job is worth.

I see so many jobs, still, where it’s described as “competitive”, but if it’s that competitive wouldn’t you want to show that off and attract the best candidates?

If you advertise roles and recruit, are you able to explain the thought process to me?

There a few reasons (not openly admitted by many though...)

Calibre and Current Pay - A company will want to assess the calibre of the candidate; in the hope the candidate may accept a lesser salary than they expect to pay - or to pay only slightly more than what their existing salary is. It does happen!

Existing Employees - in some companies, it causes resentment to whoever the new employee may be; especially if the role is a new role that has been combined with additional tasks.

Same role, different company - Linking back to the first point, some companies believe "knowledge is power" so don't want to advertise a salary as they think they can tempt someone away from a competitor (therefore it's less time to get someone settled and working at full capacity).

Each role has a grade and there are grade boundaries, sometime very large. The higher the grade the wider the boundary, it can be 50k+ in some cases.

So as PP says, they assess caliber of candidate. For someone exceptional they might be prepared to even go higher than upper limit

I'm an interviewer for my team, I don't work in HR. I think most companies have a band they want to pay within but they want to pay as little as possible, so if they want to offer you the position after interviewing they will take your current salary and add a bit in the hope that will do, then you negotiate.
I get that it's time wasting if you think you're applying for roles that are below your desired salary, so you just call or message the recruiter on LinkedIn and ask what the expectation is. Be chatty, put your best foot forward in that convo, don't lead with the salary question. If you decide you want to apply you are more likely to get an interview if you've already spoken to the recruiter and built a little rapport so it's five mins well spent imo.

It's a pain OP because I am not going to waste time on an application for a role that might be significantly below what I need.

@Lambsydaisy several roles I have seen recently were direct application to the company. No recruiter, no contact name, only the application portal of a massive multinational. You either take all the time to do the full application or not, you can't even have a chat about the role. For senior positions this just doesn't work but I suspect they know that and they may have Internet candidates in mind so they don't really care. Certainly stopped me taking any action on roles that looked interesting.

In our case we didn't want the competition to know what we paid our team - made it easier to poach them.

Nobody knows each others salary where I work. We often had to replace at a higher wage cost as salaries had been eroded. So someone with 0 day’s experience started on a higher rate than the person training them.

The new graduate salary was made public and all hell broke loose last year. The grads then shared their pay rises and bonuses which made it worse.

Pay bands were 20-30k wide so people in the same jobs could be miles apart.

Companies want to pay people the least amount possible for the most amount of work or experience.

It’s a horrendous way to treat people.

I live in the US and in my state job adverts must include pay (can be a range) by law.

I agree it’s a waste of everyone’s time if pay is not published.

It’s so bloody annoying isn’t it? I will still apply but state my salary expectations in my covering letter, 9 times out of 10 I don’t hear back 😂
Those I do hear back from are usually really good opportunities though, so swings and roundabouts! I even picked up a couple of days paid consulting from one conversation, essentially helping them revise the role to meet the budget.