Writing the correct online job advertisement is key to finding and placing the best talent within your ranks. Some online job ads contain a salary figure, while others do not. With organisations putting forward their reasoning both for doing so and not, this article explains which side wins in the end.

When your company decides to recruit for a new vacancy, one of the first things the firm does is define what is needed, usually on a traditional “job description”. This is then sent to the recruitment companies or recruitment division, who then advertise it. But very often the salary for the position is not communicated to the public, for a number of reasons.

Companies mainly state the following four reasons when they omit salary details on an online job ad:

• We don’t want current staff to see what the new hire is going to earn! This is a rather concerning worry for a company to have. Are all your staff earning different salaries, even at the same level? Are they trawling job websites to find out this information? How do they know that the new hire hasn’t negotiated a better or worse salary that they have? This is a fear that shouldn’t affect how you place a job advert.
• We don’t want our competitors to know what our people earn! While there is some merit in this, competitors can very easily find out what your staff earn by checking on CV databases that they either have access to directly or through their recruitment partners. They are also making headhunting calls to your staff through recruiters and finding out salaries that way. So in reality this is not secret information.
• We want to have a better negotiating position when we offer candidates. This is one point that companies don’t want to change their minds on. And research actually shows that making salary available does see the company end up hiring at higher salaries, but also that they hire better candidates. This trade-off is better for the firm in the long run, especially if extra salary expense is funded through a more efficiently opertaing recruitment division.
• Because we can! You can, but should you? Let’s find out…

So, some companies say that adding an exact salary is not in their favour. Meanwhile, job seekers are facing more and more choice and a greater array of opportunities online. In addition, they have to fill in more forms and take longer to apply now than when they had to simply fax or email in applications many years ago. Thus, one of the main considerations good quality candidates have in choosing to apply to a job advert is whether or not they fit the job, a decision for which they need as much information as possible.

In other words, theoretically, the more information you put in your job advertisements, the better the quality of job seeker you will find applying, overall. Thus, if you add a salary to your job advertisement, you will see more of the right person sending you their CV. You will create a better quality of recruitment funnel, helping your recruiters to sift through less CVs that are more tuned to the vacancy at hand. To test this, an employee from recruitment advertising company Adzuna completed in-depth research using a large dataset. And the research shows clearly that the above is true - you will receive more applications from more relevant candidates.

As they explained: “The research done recently was with data from a South African job portal, which when dissected showed clearly that online job advertisements that stated a salary figure had more applications or a better quality.” In the research, quality was defined as a having a higher qualification and more experience.

The message is clear - adding a salary to your job adverts will help both you and job seekers viewing your advertisements, earning you more, better quality applications and hires. Whether one of the above-mentioned reasons to not show a salary truly overshadows these benefits is up to the individual company in question, but overall, it is better to state a specific salary or range on your job adverts.  

Salary negotiations between staff bodies and University of Cape Town management have become deadlocked after management refused to negotiate as per the recognition agreements with each Union, and instead provided the Unions with a final, non-negotiable offer in response to Union demands. Both the Employees Union and the Academics Union’s members voted to reject this final offer, and management has indicated its unwillingness to return to the negotiating table. Both the Employees Union and the Academics Union declared disputes on Friday with the University in efforts to break the deadlock.

Despite the Unions’ attempts to get the University to negotiate as set out in its recognition agreements, Prof Francis Petersen (on behalf of Management) has responded by reiterating that it considers the proposed below-inflation increase a “major stretch for the University” and underlined that management “cannot agree to any higher increase”. Petersen informed staff bodies late on Sunday night that  UCT intends to unilaterally implement its proposed offer, despite rejection by staff.

The EU and the AU are concerned that the implementation of the increase, while couched as an attempt to ease the financial pinch for staff, is in fact a strategy aimed at dividing staff and removing the urgency for reaching agreement.

Staff view management’s treatment of the wage negotiations as a slap in the face as it continues a worrying trend of low priority afforded to staff concerns, and a blatant disregard for the agreements that are in place for consultation. Management’s offer forces staff, many of whom earn low salaries and struggle to make ends meet, to take a pay cut for the second year in a row. The deadlock over negotiations also further erodes already-low staff morale, which suffered as a result of efforts to keep UCT open for business during the protests of last year.

UCT’s staff are cognisant of the fact that the higher education sector is under severe financial pressure, but do not believe that this crisis can be solved by sacrificing salaries. UCT’s staff have already worked to meet management’s saving targets and austerity measures, and have borne the brunt of frozen posts, voluntary separations, early retirement processes, and even retrenchments to help the University weather the financial crisis.

The greatest disappointment for staff bodies has been the bad faith bargaining that has characterised this round of negotiations. Management not only proposed a final offer that is well below UCT’s own negotiated policy, but is also claiming financial affordability as the justification for their offer, whilst still planning a surplus budget. The Unions have provided for a number of non-salary items in order to improve working conditions, which have been ignored up to now.

Contact for comment:  

Ulrike Rivett, Chair: Bargaining Unit (Academics Union), 082 9404349

Andrea Plos, President: Employees Union, 083 6637072

Maanda Mulaudzi, President: Academics Union, 082 813 3857

Yasmin Fazel-Ellahi, Organiser: Employees Union, 082 553 1833

Kelley Moult, Vice President: Academics Union, 082 625 6722