Salaries in job posts

[Bliksis]

Sure, but if you put narrow ranges on them, you’re going to lose out on the best juniors and best seniors.

If you want a junior to grow into a senior, put him in a senior post when you deem him ready. If you want a good senior, advertise for one.

Salary range will give prospective applicants an idea of what level the post is on, and save everyone's time. Wow.

 

[cguy]

If you want a junior to grow into a senior, put him in a senior post when you deem him ready. If you want a good senior, advertise for one.

Salary range will give prospective applicants an idea of what level the post is on, and save everyone's time. Wow.

Try work through this with me: How do you hire a junior that wants R80k, when your job advert says R20-30k?

 

[Iamn0tageek]

Tell us the salaries when offering jobs

Don't be a naai

 

[FiestaST]

At the absolute very least a salary band. Don't waste peoples time & vice versa.

And not an absurd band like 30k CTC - 60k CTC. A proper band.

 

[JerryMungo]

Anyone who's been through this many times will know it's not as easy as "advertising a salary band" unless you're working for government or a faceless big corporation.

 

[B-1]

Anyone who's been through this many times will know it's not as easy as "advertising a salary band" unless you're working for government or a faceless big corporation.

Then you dont really know what you are looking for.
There are many tools that will give you a market related value for a specific role/seniority.

 

[JerryMungo]

Then you dont really know what you are looking for.
There are many tools that will give you a market related value for a specific role/seniority.

Market related is based on way more factors than you realise. Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, PE, East London, Work from home, Hybrid, etc. etc. It also depends on your clients. Some people operate on the low profit scale, big corporates on the other end. Sure you can do homework for a generic role, but when is a role ever generic unless you run a cookie cutter operation? Small businesses especially don't fit into that mould.

Sometimes your operation could be in a small town and you don't have the plethora of applicants a big city has, so you have to adjust your scale AND role to suit what's available. Instead of getting a choice of 10 good candidates, you struggle to find 1. If you've done this before, you know.

 

[B-1]

Market related is based on way more factors than you realise. Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, PE, East London, Work from home, Hybrid, etc. etc. It also depends on your clients. Some people operate on the low profit scale, big corporates on the other end. Sure you can do homework for a generic role, but when is a role ever generic unless you run a cookie cutter operation? Small businesses especially don't fit into that mould.

Sometimes your operation could be in a small town and you don't have the plethora of applicants a big city has, so you have to adjust your scale AND role to suit what's available. Instead of getting a choice of 10 good candidates, you struggle to find 1. If you've done this before, you know.

Yes that is how benchmarking a salary works. You get the market related salary and then adjust based on the factors you mentioned.
You will also quickly see if you did it well by the CV's you receive instead of wasting your team and the candidates time by endless interviews for a salary expectation the business can't afford.
Also for your little "if you've done this before" self justification you keep tagging on. Ive been in leadership a long time and do proper job descriptions and we benchmark the roles for every candidate its not that hard.

 

[cguy]

Yes that is how benchmarking a salary works. You get the market related salary and then adjust based on the factors you mentioned.
You will also quickly see if you did it well by the CV's you receive instead of wasting your team and the candidates time by endless interviews for a salary expectation the business can't afford.
Also for your little "if you've done this before" self justification you keep tagging on. Ive been in leadership a long time and do proper job descriptions and we benchmark the roles for every candidate its not that hard.

You have been hiring for fixed roles (fixed description, candidate skill level, experience level). These can be benchmarked and banded. For other companies many of the roles aren’t fixed - what they will work on, what level of responsibility they need, what skills they need are unclear, and is very much dependent on what the candidate brings to the table, because the candidate will define most of the role.

Most of my interaction with HR is them asking me “Is this candidate of interest?” And if so, we figure out what the market price is for their skillset and situation afterwards, beat it by a good margin, and then negotiate this against candidate expectations.

 

[JerryMungo]

Yes that is how benchmarking a salary works. You get the market related salary and then adjust based on the factors you mentioned.
You will also quickly see if you did it well by the CV's you receive instead of wasting your team and the candidates time by endless interviews for a salary expectation the business can't afford.

Well that works both ways, candidates should put their salary expectations on their CVs. I'm quite happy to consider all scales for a role as long as there's value both ways.

Also for your little "if you've done this before" self justification you keep tagging on. Ive been in leadership a long time and do proper job descriptions and we benchmark the roles for every candidate its not that hard.

Same. What kind of firms do you work for?
I've worked for multinationals with startup regional offices with as few as 1 staff to 40 per country in far flung places that most people wouldn't consider going to for a holiday. I don't / haven't worked on HR at HQ level.

I don't expect you or your firm to follow the same model as mine - but understand that it's a free market and one can be successful without the cookie cutter, in fact the most success I've has not followed it.

In a nutshell, (for example), why should I limit myself to those looking for R60k pm when the best candidates are asking for R100k but fall outside the "ideal" SOW? I'd like to consider those outside the band if they afford me the opportunity to restructure.

 

[warrenpridgeon]

free market

This is the key to the entire conversation.

It cuts both ways.

It means companies can set what many would call a ridiculous salary expectation (like R20k per month for a senior .net dev with 10 years experience) and likely someone will accept it out of desperation.

But companies also know that.
And they have shareholders and pen pushers in suits running numbers constantly.
Less running costs means more profit means happier shareholders.
Nobody gets into business to NOT make a profit (heck I want to make more myself).

I've been in hiring discussions where the free market has led to things like "dude just got divorced and wants to move away from the area so he will accept a lower offer" or "guy got retrenched so is desperate... offer him X". I don't like these things.

I also don't like that someone choosing to stay in a cheaper area means "we can pay them less because their cost of living is less" - this is a thing.

Currently a lot of consulting companies are making bank on devs because they hire them at market-ish related rates as contractors and farm their work out to UK places with the value prop being "you can pay a lot less for good resources if you get them from ZA". But they push the limits because they want to maximise their win. So a senior dev gets paid the same as a ZA senior dev, but as a contractor and now they have to account for their own leave, sick leave and and and etc.

Free market is great... but it can easily become exploitation.

I vote for at least a salary range based on the job spec, that way if someone is looking they can decide whether they are willing to accept something in the range. It's kak to get to the END of a 5 or 7 step interview process and get an offer that's not market related or what it should be.

Another thing I'd like to see changed is the "gief last payslip"... currently the Fair Pay Bill is in discussion which would make it that companies aren't allowed to do this. I've seen many people who get stuck being underpaid if somewhere in their journey they ended up underpaid... because when they move the company gives them a 10% increase even if they are actually 30% under market value.

There is one MD I'm still grateful for to this day. I went to an interview, and one of the last steps was a stop in his office. He talked to me and asked me what my current salary was... wrote it on the white board, turned to the person who had brought me there (I think he was head of Dev dept) and said "give this guy a proper offer... this is way too low". They gave me like a 40% increase or something.

 

[JerryMungo]

Free market is great... but it can easily become exploitation.

Free market, as you say, cuts both ways. If you're not happy, move. Your move will force a delinquent company to either re-think their stance or fail.

 

[warrenpridgeon]

Your move will force a delinquent company to either re-think their stance or fail.

Unlikely... most of the companies that operate in more "abusive" manners see everyone as "replaceable" and realistically, in most instances... everyone is.

 

[JerryMungo]

Unlikely... most of the companies that operate in more "abusive" manners see everyone as "replaceable" and realistically, in most instances... everyone is.

And fail. Remember, failure doesn't mean go bankrupt overnight, but we've seen the mighty fall for this specific reason. I can name a few. Directors and finance gets greedy and the trough is emptied.

They only continue on if they're funded by taxpayers.