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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[whatwhat]

So

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.

What are you on about? Most of the jobs posted here are your average developer, BA or other jobs. These are inside specific budget ranges.

 

[My_King]

 

[cguy]

Wow - this guy spent a long time discussing a LinkedIn post that was clearly parody.

 

[Johnatan56]

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.

The first sentence there, that's like 99% of roles, especially on online platforms like this.

The rest of your statement is one where your recruiter is looking at candidates in the field, and is tailoring, but they will still have an idea of minimum salary band, and you're not posting this position in public. The candidate would also have an understanding that the salary band is probably very good going to a specialist company, the recruiter will probably mention a floor.

Wow - this guy spent a long time discussing a LinkedIn post that was clearly parody.

It's always interesting when you go into a thread with a bunch of replies to stuff you've set to ignore.

 

[vigras rojara]

I agree that where possible a salary range should be disclosed, but it's just not always practical and could in fact be misleading.

Consider a typical large consulting firm. A hiring manager could be looking for a specific skill set which might be available across two bandings, depending on who they eventually want to go with. Let's call those roles Manager and Senior Manager.

The hiring manager will always get approval to hire at Senior Manager level, as they can automatically hire at Manager level against a Senior Manager requisition, but not vice versa.

So now they would have to advertise a possible range from entry level Manager, to near the top of Senior Manager bandings. That's a wide range.

Also bear in mind that the top end of a salary band may not be achievable, even if the candidate is worth it. In the absence of likely promotion into the next band up within 12 - 18 months, a hire at the top of a band will often not be approved, as the candidate would be deemed a flight risk.

There are so many nuances in the process.

 

[whatwhat]

I agree that where possible a salary range should be disclosed, but it's just not always practical and could in fact be misleading.

Consider a typical large consulting firm. A hiring manager could be looking for a specific skill set which might be available across two bandings, depending on who they eventually want to go with. Let's call those roles Manager and Senior Manager.

The hiring manager will always get approval to hire at Senior Manager level, as they can automatically hire at Manager level against a Senior Manager requisition, but not vice versa.

So now they would have to advertise a possible range from entry level Manager, to near the top of Senior Manager bandings. That's a wide range.

Also bear in mind that the top end of a salary band may not be achievable, even if the candidate is worth it. In the absence of likely promotion into the next band up within 12 - 18 months, a hire at the top of a band will often not be approved, as the candidate would be deemed a flight risk.

There are so many nuances in the process.

Does not sound like a place you should work at.

 

[vigras rojara]

Does not sound like a place you should work at.

The "Big 4" consultancies all work like that. It's not the environment for everyone though, that's for sure. I spent some time working for one of them, and it wasn't for me, although it wasn't because of what I mentioned.