Salary on the job description

Better recruitment from transparent data

Of course, I’m joking.

Never confuse job descriptions with adverts.

They’re functionally different documentation, with different purposes and places in your candidate funnel.

But the debate over whether salary should be listed in advertising is a tortuous and heated one. Have a read through your LinkedIn feed and I’ve no doubt you’ll see many opinions.

While I’m happy to share my educated opinion, this newsletter is instead about facts, based on my research in the past year.

If you’ve already asked for my guide to “accessing a candidate short market”, these may even be familiar to you:

• Job boards can penalise you for not listing salary. As of July 2022, Totaljobs do not send adverts that don't advertise salary out as a job alert to their registered candidates

• Unlisted salaries attract fewer applications. Across the job boards I interviewed this was estimated to be between 20 to 45% fewer

• According to research by LinkedIn not only can you expect more applications, you can also expect better-qualified applications when listing salary

• This is supported by my work supporting senior job seekers, some of whom would not apply to adverts that had no salary or "competitive salary" because they felt this was a waste of their time

• There is less emphasis on salary negotiation from the candidate side, due to transparency in pay. This is a key part of equity, relating to gender, race and intersectional identity. Payscale's research shows that white men are most likely to negotiate the highest salary.

There you have it. Whatever your stance on advertising salary, these are the consequences of not doing so - clear proof that not advertising salary results in fewer, worse, less diverse applications.

Let me know if you need me to link you to any of the research mentioned.

The next newsletter is about using 5Y problem-solving to solve your recruitment problems.

Regards,

Greg

p.s. While you are here, if you like the idea of improving how you recruit, lack capacity or need better candidates, and are curious how I can help, these are my services:

- recruitment of commercial, operational and technical leadership vacancies (available for no more than two vacancies)

- manage part or all of your recruitment on an individually designed basis for one client

- recruitment coaching and mentoring (one place available at £200/hr + VAT)

- recruitment strategy setting

- outplacement support

Just hit reply to check if my approach is right for you.