Why don’t recruiters put salaries on job advertisements?
The lack of salaries on job advertisements, both on and off line, is a criticism I hear directed at myself and my competitors working in the Intellectual Property sector a great deal. There is (at least in my case) unfounded suspicion that the advertised positions are in some way not genuine, because no salary information is contained; or, that whilst genuine, we do not understand the firms well enough to know what they will pay; or, that it is just a fishing expedition on behalf of a firm (or worse still just the recruiter trying to generate candidates). The aim of this article is to hopefully shed a little light on the recruitment process and get to the bottom of this critique.
There are severe shortages of candidates within the Intellectual Property sector. Currently, we have many more opportunities for candidates (particularly in the areas of electronics, mechanical engineering and chemistry) than we do people to fill them. This has an impact on the recruitment process in two ways: 1) firms are more flexible with the level that they recruit, i.e. it is not uncommon for us to get a range of anticipated experience for a particular position of a few years, such as ‘Newly Qualified to 3 years PQE’ which may mean the salary range is fairly wide and 2) we as recruiters try to persuade clients to consider candidates beyond the initial brief, for example, more/less experience, qualified in different jurisdictions, etc. All of this means that deciding on what salary to put in an advertisement becomes very difficult. Too high and it will not represent the most likely financial scenario and therefore be misleading, too low and it could dissuade excellent candidates from applying. Added to that, and particularly in electronics, when presented with excellent candidates firms are not afraid to abandon salary principles and pay more than they would have anticipated when going into the process (when the decision is between potentially losing a client because of short staffing or paying an extra 10% then in some cases, the latter option wins).
Candidate shortages alone are not a full explanation, however. Politics come into this a great deal. If you look in the July 2013 issue of the CIPA Journal you will notice a few firms and companies advertising directly. None of the advertisements include salary details at all. The reason for this could be that the firms do not wish competitors to know what they pay their staff and/or they are concerned that by publishing salary details it could cause conflict internally. I am not suggesting that firms are necessarily treating current employees unfairly but that, because of the issues above, one might inadvertently upset existing staff by implying that someone coming in would earn more than them. For example, if you put a salary range for a newly qualified attorney of £70-£80,000, there may be reasonable, explicable justifications for paying the higher salary (such as someone being a year or so post qualified, or having particularly specialist technical knowledge, litigation experience, etc.) that would be understood and accepted by existing staff but these reasons may be less clear in the abstract before a candidate is generated. This could result in Partners having awkward conversations with Associates who feel, wrongly, that they are being underpaid. It is also of course possible that the Associates are right in which case a firm would clearly not wish to make this obvious via advertising.
Another concern about publishing salaries is that it is easier for competitors to outbid if they know the range a firm is prepared to pay. This counter-selling could result in competing firms and their recruiters enticing candidates away from even showing interest in the advertised position (or continuing the process if already in motion) through offering a salary higher to the range stated. The candidate may, sometimes wrongly, conclude that there is no further negotiation with the advertised firm and decide to no longer pursue the opportunity.
It is sometimes the case that a firm offers a salary that is not in line with market rate or less than what is being currently offered by their competitors. The firm may be fully aware of this fact and frame the salary as “excellent” or “competitive” in order to generate candidates to which they can then sell the other major benefits of the role. That is not to say that the firm is being devious, or in fact the recruiter working on behalf of said firm, it may simply be that the starting salary is not main driver of the role. Perhaps the bonus scheme is outstanding, regular international travel is offered or it could just be that the firm offers ‘little and often’ pay increases rather than huge increases infrequently.
Finally, as recruiters, we do get, from time to time, vague instructions from clients of the type ‘we could do with an electronics attorney soon’. Now of course it is up to us to seek more clarification and at times recruiters are spectacularly poor at asking sensible fact-finding questions which can lead to a lack of information in advertising as well as when you follow up with a recruiter over the phone. However, sometimes the client themselves do not have a fully formed idea of what they want and are using a recruiter to see what might be available. This is a legitimate, understandable way of allowing the process to define the role rather than the role to define the process. In fact, a great deal of recruitment happens this way, firms realise that there are shortages so will give recruiters broad instructions and follow through when a candidate is produced. A reasonable percentage of the people we place in new jobs have been as result of a speculative request from a firm or a speculative request from us to a firm on behalf of a candidate. The recruitment process is not as simple as, we have a need, let’s advertise our need and then choose amongst the applicants. Often firms recruit ahead of an anticipated need or are opportunistic when presented with a good candidate. All of this means that deciding on a reflective salary is sometimes an exercise in futility.
So what are we doing about it? In this month’s Journal we have decided, with one exception, to include salary information on all of our advertised positions. We intend to continue that policy from now on. You will notice that there is quite a range in many of the advertised positions; unfortunately this is unavoidable for the reasons discussed in this article. However, we do understand the frustration when salaries aren’t published at all and we will do our best to address this.
It is entirely understandable why firms and recruiters are nervous about including salary information, particularly when the profession as a whole is fairly small and any recruiter might naturally be concerned about annoying their clients. However, greater transparency and more information can’t really be a bad thing from my point of view. It is one of the reasons that we conduct a salary survey every year using a rigorous methodology and ask for contributions from attorneys themselves, not simply asking firms what they tend to pay, or worse basing data on ones limited perspective on a market. That would not be a survey at all but an opinion piece – fine in principle as long as it is not the latter masquerading as the former. And so with any luck, someone who is currently massively underpaid spots our advertising and gives me a call. Whoever you are, I’m looking forward to speaking with you.
by Pete Fellows, Managing Director.
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