Why You Should Always Disclose Salary In Your Job Ads

Salaries have been a hot topic in the world of recruitment for a while and for good reason. Official inflation may be running hot at around 10% but the coffee round at Tiiny Host feels like it’s climbed at least 40% in the last year.

With that being said, here’s why being candid when it comes to salary is the way to go.

More Applicants

Applicants are key to recruiters, the simple truth is that you’re not making any money without them. You need great opportunities and great candidates, but you also need those candidates to put the time in to craft a meaningful application.

The popular job site Reed discovered that job postings listing a salary received 27% more applicants. That’s a pretty nice problem to have if you’re a recruiter, especially given the heat your client will be giving you to fill that position already.

It’s literally the right thing to do

The cost of living in a major city is almost criminally high these days. A pint of beer in Greater London is now fetching more than ￡7.00! Heck, the cost of living anywhere these days is criminally high.

Remember how we said that you want the right mix of high grade applicants responding to you with well crafted and considered applications? Well that takes time and effort, and “Competitive salary” doesn’t actually mean anything! They can’t pay their landlord or feed their family with a “competitive salary”, so they’re going to move on to another job ad on their LinkedIn page.

Protect your company brand

In our last article we discussed the importance of trust and communication in candidate ghosting. Nearly half of the respondents to a recent survey said that a job listing with no salary negatively affects how they view the company.

This is even more important when you extrapolate out. Your brand and reputation are everything as an individual recruiter. Thanks to platforms like LinkedIn it’s never been easier to magnify both great and bad reviews.

If you disagree then just think of the importance you as a recruiter place on the LinkedIn recommendations of your candidates.

Sell the benefits

It’s the simple truth that some jobs are more difficult to recruit for than others. List a job minding surfboards on the Costa Rican coast for ￡90k a year and see the applications roll in. List the exact same job but in the Falkland Islands and for ￡20k a year and it’ll be like a ghost town.

However, 40% of respondents to a recent survey said that they’d actually apply for a job below their salary expectations if the benefits were particularly good.

The rub?

That’s impossible to do if they don’t know what the salary even is!

1. Being honest about the salary allows you to sell the benefits. Does the company allow remote working? Great! That might be a game changer to someone with caring responsibilities! Is there an equity option? Fantastic, who doesn’t want skin in the game in an environment of steadily increasing taxes?

Candidates aren’t stupid

The internet is a vast place and you’re kidding yourself if you don’t think that your candidates are going to google the company name, job title, country and salary to see what comes up.

The likelihood is that they’ll be met with a third party website (hello GlassDoor) which is infamous for skewing reviews in either the positive or negative (but usually the latter).

By operating under a veil of secrecy you lose control of the narrative and surrender it to outside suppliers of information. That’s awful for the candidate and awful for your sales funnel as a recruiter.

Be up front, It’s only fair

So there you have it. If you’re a recruiter looking to maximise your reach to the best possible applicants then it’s incumbent on you to include the salary.

It really is a no brainer in this day and age.

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