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Job application - salary expectations?

A

AnnO'Neemus

Is so vanilla
If a role is advertised as within pay band X, with a range of £23,000 to £53,000, what would you put for your salary expectation? I mean, that salary range is meaningless.

Glassdoor suggests an average salary in that organisation in that role of £29k, based on a small sample.

But I'm aware many organisations have a policy of starting new staff at the bottom of a pay band. However, I have some experience in a more senior role, so I wouldn't want to undersell myself.

There's the risk, though, that if I put that average, then my application might be binned before anyone even looks at it, does that happen?

So frustrating, because they must know what salary they're planning to pay, give or take £5k, surely? So why go through this nonsensical process?

How much attention do they pay anyway? Is it going to make a difference? Do they use this info when filtering applications/shortlisting for interview?
 
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It is always tricky when there are salary ranges. And that is a very wide range which perhaps suggests they are not certain what kind of animal they want to hire.
 
In the current climate, pandemic n all, and me being on the dole for months I started pitching myself at the lower end. Like, going back 15 years in my career - plenty of others were doing the same on LinkedIn. If they're saying 29k, say 30k and even if that's less than you'd normally get it's still more than universal credit, that's the way i began to look at it.
 
I would probably pitch at the middle of the range for the application but not treat what I put as binding. Don't want to look too desperate but also not too cocky.

View it a bit like putting in an offer on a house - there's always things you can find out about the prospect that can cause you to back away and demand a better deal.

Once interviewing is over and you have an offer you are generally in a position of some strength - other candidates will not stick around and the organisation will not typically want to start over.

I am glad I played hardball on salary negotiations in my current job - I got there only to find that they had a policy of not giving new hires any annual increase at all for 2 years for existing staff morale reasons. If I had gone with their offer I would have been back at pretty much my original pre-move salary by now.

Good luck.
 
if it’s in a pay band, then the bottom half will be the start of the band to the normal top of the band. Other increments get given on going above and beyond.

So pitch yourself in the bottom half as the top half is usually unobtainable in my experience, and are annual rates usually shared with the grade above (more obtainable) unless you’ve been head hunted or are some kind of machine that just lives to work and no play.

Is the pay scale not publicly viewable? Usually those sort of roles are for transparency. Give it a google.
 
ugh

i hate this sort of thing.

depends how much you want / need this job, i suppose...

does the advert give any hints whether they are looking for junior / senior / what? or even possibly for a few at different levels?

if you pitch it too low, are you likely to pretty much stay on that level with this organisation? and could that look bad on future applications? (although i guess at the moment, you'd not be the only person going in to a lower level job rather than not be working)
 
Can I just say that a range of £23,000 to £53,000 seems absolutely insane?

In my organisation (HE library), the bottom of that is entry level newly qualified professional, while the upper end is senior management.

Maybe this is just how private sector works though!
 
Also not wanting to sound like a tosser, but over £50k puts you in a higher tax bracket and with it getting frozen for god knows how long some pay rises could push you into that bracket of higher tax which would essentially be a huge pay drop unless they offer tons of salary sacrifice options or you want to put more into your pension instead.

ETA: above is incorrect due to me not paying attention to recent budget changes properly. Answered in post below. Kept for thread context.

But yes that’s a salary scale that covers 4 pay bands at our place!
 
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cybershot said:
Also not wanting to sound like a tosser, but over £50k puts you in a higher tax bracket and with it getting frozen for god knows how long some pay rises could push you into that bracket of higher tax which would essentially be a huge pay drop unless they offer tons of salary sacrifice options or you want to put more into your pension instead.

But yes that’s a salary scale that covers 4 pay bands at our place!
Click to expand...
Going into a higher tax band will never mean a drop in salary. Tax bands are marginal, so you only get charged higher tax on the amount above £50k, not your whole salary.
 
Companies sometimes have large pay ranges like this because they can take various routes to achieving plans. For instance they may hire someone at the junior end of that scale AND another person if that's what the candidate pool shows them. Otherwise they may get a great candidate at the top end of the scale and not need to make the second hire. Basically it gives them more options. As you can see from the thread though it puts a lot of people off from applying at all.

The other reason of course is that they're looking to make several hires for similar jobs at different levels.
 
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I’ve never refused a job offer for paying too much.

I’ve turned down plenty that paid to little

I tend to think what’s the minimum I’d work for with out feeling like I was being seen off, obviously that changes when the workload is factored in. I’m a lazy twat though and too much workload would get less to giving the job the Spanish archer
 
I agree, that's a weirdly wide pay scale.

Despite the budget that width suggests, many places would look on it as a win, the lower down that scale they finally appoint.

Personally, I would work out the minimum and optimum salary you need to get and then negotiate. Where i would aim for initially would depend on the increments and the employer's policy for awarding them. Watch out for pure merit schemes, or for initial pay freezes after appointment.
I've been verbally offered a decent salary, with perks and the increments to be annual inflation, plus merit points at the third interview ... what came in the offer letter was a basic offer, much lower than the verbal offer and without a hint of the perks and scale increments. I queried the situation and when told, in writing, that the letter was their best offer, I turned the job down. Nor did I get the promised interview expenses, and I had had to travel a decent distance and stay overnight as the third interview was almost a full day of meetings, a tour of the site etc. [That employer no longer exists.]
 
StoneRoad said:
I agree, that's a weirdly wide pay scale.

Despite the budget that width suggests, many places would look on it as a win, the lower down that scale they finally appoint.

Personally, I would work out the minimum and optimum salary you need to get and then negotiate. Where i would aim for initially would depend on the increments and the employer's policy for awarding them. Watch out for pure merit schemes, or for initial pay freezes after appointment.
I've been verbally offered a decent salary, with perks and the increments to be annual inflation, plus merit points at the third interview ... what came in the offer letter was a basic offer, much lower than the verbal offer and without a hint of the perks and scale increments. I queried the situation and when told, in writing, that the letter was their best offer, I turned the job down. Nor did I get the promised interview expenses, and I had had to travel a decent distance and stay overnight as the third interview was almost a full day of meetings, a tour of the site etc. [That employer no longer exists.]
Click to expand...

That was a straightforward rip-off though.

AnnO'Neemus is this job being advertised directly by the employer or through an external recruiter?
 
Wait...Is the salary actually stated by your employer (or their recruitment agent), or a 'glassdoor estimate'.

The latter is meaningless (and fairly dangerous for expectations etc). Disregard it COMPLETELY! It'll be based on an algorithm that hasnt even nearly enough reliable data points. It's pure garbage.

If the former, and as mentioned before, they have budgeted for the max, and they want YOU. Always always always go for the maximum! Just be prepared to have some nice response (just in case) about the value you will bring to the role etc (which should be evident through your successful application anyways).

Back yourself. You are wicked :) Even they think so - they have select you as their future employee!
 
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How this works in my world is we are in bands - A through F and then senior leadership. Perhaps unusually, we know the pay ranges for bands and for roles.

There are multiple roles in a given band. For example a role like Senior Idiot is in Band D, but so is the next role up, Principal Idiot (and Idiot Lead, for that matter).

The notional pay range for Band D is let's say £35k - £65k. Senior has a pay range like £40k to £65k, whilst Principal is £45k to £75k. Both of these role ranges are a bell curve and very few people will actually be getting paid the amount at either end of that range.

You'll note that the job range of £75k is more than the band maximum of £65k and I don't know why this exists - history or exception cases due to scarcity, I imagine.

Anyway... one of our job adverts will say what band(s) it is and what role(s) it is. We might be willing to accept varying levels of seniority for a given vacancy, or potentially multiple people at once.

For you trying to gauge salary this is not very informative. if you were applying for either Senior or Principal, you would never ask for £35k despite potentially that being the range you would discover when researching what the ad means. You need to know what people of comparable experience are earning already. If you go way high you may get knocked back outright on the basis that either you don't have the experience to command that and/or that even if it could accept you in, it would be insulting to lowball you with a much lower realistic offer, so they just won't. If you go a bit high then there is more likely to be a conversation centred around how it wouldn't be fair on other people already in post - the middle of the bell curve - and they can instead offer you blah.

Crucially, entry into a public sector organisation defines your pay thereafter - I will basically only ever get % rises, usually union agreed for absolutely everyone. So you want to get this right first time.

I don't know if that's helpful but it's how our place works. Other organisations may well behave very differently to mine, we have some flexibility when hiring, I think orgs like the NHS are much tighter controlled.
 
mauvais said:
Crucially, entry into a public sector organisation defines your pay thereafter
Click to expand...

that doesn't quite match my experience, although i may be out of date (and i'm thinking local authority)

it always used to work that jobs were evaluated within a specific pay scale (that band having 3 or 4 incremental rates) - as a new starter you would normally start at the bottom of that pay band (and generally, this wasn't negotiable. although exceptions might be made for particularly highly qualified / experienced candidates) but then you usually went up an 'increment' within that pay band each year until you reached the top rung. some jobs were 'career grade' in that they would be across 2 or 3 pay bands, sometimes with getting on to the highest pay band being dependent on getting a particular qualification or something.

going from cat herder to senior cat herder was usually a case of waiting for / applying for a vacancy
 
My workplace is similar to Mavis's. They regularly recruit to the pool of Idiots and experience determines grade/salary.

In that scenario I don't think you need to worry about ruling yourself out by asking for too much. I think you need to give yourself a pay rise and make a rock solid case for your experience and seniority. If they don't agree they can offer you less.
 
Puddy_Tat said:
that doesn't quite match my experience, although i may be out of date (and i'm thinking local authority)

it always used to work that jobs were evaluated within a specific pay scale (that band having 3 or 4 incremental rates) - as a new starter you would normally start at the bottom of that pay band (and generally, this wasn't negotiable. although exceptions might be made for particularly highly qualified / experienced candidates) but then you usually went up an 'increment' within that pay band each year until you reached the top rung. some jobs were 'career grade' in that they would be across 2 or 3 pay bands, sometimes with getting on to the highest pay band being dependent on getting a particular qualification or something.

going from cat herder to senior cat herder was usually a case of waiting for / applying for a vacancy
Click to expand...
NHS (not me, obviously) is a lot like you describe, I think. For me I get what I described and a max of 5% for promotion in band. If everything gets really out of whack (like you get promoted up through the ranks and earn a lot less than new entrants) then there is a realignment process. But that's it. To really earn more you need to leave and come back, although the private sector isn't all that different. And yearly percentage pay rises are a bit like compound interest. So get in on as much as you can.
 
mauvais said:
(like you get promoted up through the ranks and earn a lot less than new entrants) then there is a realignment process. But that's it. To really earn more you need to leave and come back,
Click to expand...

that seems kinda bizarre...

or is it that people can end up doing a higher level job without it formally being a new post?
 
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