Executive Summary

• Founder of Ovation Search, Amel Steel, talks about the latest hot recruitment topic: disclosing salaries on job descriptions and how the debate just isn’t as simple as we think.
• We operate in an incredibly talent-short market. Certain skills are in huge demand and, particularly for experienced technical and leadership hires, there simply aren’t enough people to satisfy that demand, and there are several scenarios that lead to the original salary band going out the window. And while that solves today’s hiring problem, it creates a new problem for tomorrow.
• I’d rather see a business have an open, credible conversation about what a role is worth and why than publish a salary range simply because the law tells them to.

Salary transparency sounds sensible. Making it law could be anything but. I’m a recruiter. You might therefore expect me to be completely in favour of requiring every job advert to disclose a salary. I’m not. The UK Government is currently consulting on proposals that would require employers to publish pay information in job adverts, or provide it in writing before interview where there is no advert. I understand the thinking behind it. Transparency is important. Candidates should have a reasonable understanding of what a role is worth before investing significant time in a process. Clearer salary information can provide useful market benchmarks, help address unfair pay practices and prevent people wasting their time applying for roles that could never meet their expectations. All of that makes sense. But encouraging transparency and ‘legally mandating it are two very different things.’ And in such a highly specialised, talent short market, I worry that a blanket requirement could create unintended consequences.

Salaries aren’t always that simple

We operate in an incredibly talent short market. Certain skills are in huge demand and, particularly for experienced technical and leadership hires, there simply aren’t enough people to satisfy that demand. I have seen situations where a business begins a search with a perfectly sensible salary band and then meets an exceptional individual who brings something different. Perhaps they have delivered exactly the type of complex project the business is about to undertake. Perhaps they possess particularly scarce technical expertise. Perhaps they understand a specific geography, customer or technology.

Suddenly, the original salary band goes out of the window. I’ve also seen businesses pay significantly above market rate because they desperately need particular expertise. That might solve today’s hiring problem.
But it can create tomorrow’s. Push salaries too far beyond the wider market and you risk disrupting internal parity, inflating expectations across an already competitive talent pool and potentially leaving individuals trapped by their own salary. I’ve spoken to candidates earning packages they simply cannot replicate elsewhere. When they eventually want to move, the market hasn’t necessarily followed them.

More money isn’t always the same thing as greater market value. What happens to the people already inside the business? This is another part of the transparency conversation that I don’t think we should ignore. Imagine advertising externally for somebody at £120,000 when an experienced and valued employee
performing comparable work is earning £100,000. There may be a perfectly legitimate reason for that difference.

Perhaps the incoming role requires an additional skill. Perhaps the market has moved rapidly. Perhaps you’re trying to secure expertise you urgently need. But the moment that figure becomes public, you have an internal conversation to manage. Now reverse it. What if your advertised salary is materially below the wider market? You’ve just given your existing workforce a very visible reason to look elsewhere. In a market already competing fiercely for experienced talent, I’m not convinced creating greater salary-led movement necessarily creates a healthier labour market. Healthy competition is good. Instability isn’t.

A salary range can also become meaningless

There is another obvious problem. If employers are legally required to publish salary ranges, we need to consider how those ranges will be used. A genuine range is useful. A huge range designed simply to satisfy a requirement isn’t. Nor is advertising an attractive upper figure when there is little realistic intention of paying it. That doesn’t create transparency. It creates the appearance of transparency. And forcing an employer to publish a number before it properly understands the individual it may ultimately hire risks making recruitment less honest, not more. Sometimes you are paying for the role. Sometimes you are also paying for the person and the specific value their expertise brings. In specialist recruitment, that distinction matters.

Recruitment is much bigger than a job advert

There is another issue worth considering. Job advertising is only one part of recruitment. Some of the strongest people I speak to aren’t scrolling through job boards. They’re delivering projects, leading teams and generally quite happy where they are. They need to be identified, approached and engaged in a conversation before they would ever consider moving. For those candidates, the biggest competition isn’t necessarily another vacancy with a higher salary displayed underneath it. It’s staying exactly where they are. Attracting them requires far more than a number.

Leadership, culture, project quality, career trajectory, flexibility, location, rotation, benefits, equity, purpose
and, the people they’ll work alongside. And yes, salary. But salary is one component of an employment proposition, not the proposition itself. So what would I do instead? I’d encourage transparency without pretending every hire can be reduced to a fixed number. Employers should understand their market. Recruiters should have honest conversations about compensation early. Candidates shouldn’t reach final interview only to discover that employer and candidate are tens of thousands of pounds apart. And businesses should absolutely examine unexplained pay disparities and make sure people are being paid
fairly for the work they perform. But I’d be very cautious about assuming that legally requiring a salary on every advert automatically creates a fairer or better hiring market.

Where skills shortages can change the value of expertise incredibly quickly, businesses need some room to
respond to the person sitting in front of them. Transparency is good, honesty is better. I’d rather see a business have an open, credible conversation about what a role is worth and why than publish a salary range simply because the law tells them to. Because ultimately, good recruitment isn’t about putting a number on an advert. It’s about creating the right match between the role, the individual and the value they can bring.