Should salaries be stated in job ads?

No legal requirement

As the law currently stands, employers are not required to provide any salary details when they advertise a job role. This is a matter for them and research shows that only 12.6% of companies actually indicate the specific rate of pay on offer.

Silent majority

By and large, most employers will either stay silent or state something like “salary negotiable” , “competitive salary” or “salary based on experience” in their job ads.

There are many reasons why employers decide to stay silent on the salary they are offering. These include:

• to avoid tying themselves to a particular level of salary or rate of pay
• not wishing to cause resentment amongst existing staff
• wanting to keep the information private and out of the hands of competitors and recruitment agencies
• ensuring that they have the ability to negotiate on the salary once they’ve found their ideal candidate.

Best practice

However, not stating the salary in a job ad can be counter-productive. That’s because it’s the top factor that job seekers look for in a job ad .

The primary reasons for this is that a job seeker will want to know if a job is financially viable for them and whether they will be improving on their current salary.

Salary requirements

Many job seekers won’t apply for a job role if there’s no salary information provided in the job ad as they don’t want to go through (a possibly lengthy) application process only to find that the salary won’t work for them.

If the salary would have been suitable, you could easily miss out on your ideal candidate, or fail to attract desired skills, experience and expertise into your business.

Waste of time

On the flip side, not disclosing the salary that’s on offer for a job role could mean that you get applications which are a complete waste of your time, for example, from an applicant who is currently on a much higher salary which they are looking to retain.

By being upfront about the salary in a job ad you can reduce this risk and save time.

More transparency

Finally, employers that openly disclose salaries in their job ads tend to be perceived as better employers by job seekers who report that the transparency helps to build trust and a good relationship from an early stage.

Tip. If you don’t want to disclose the exact salary in a job ad, you could provide a salary range instead, e.g. “salary£20,000 - £25,000 p.a. depending on experience” . You and all applicants will both be on the same page during the recruitment process, you’ll limit pointless applications, plus still have leverage when any negotiations start.