How can I offer the right salary for my role?

Adding key members to your team could prove very successful for your business. But equally, a recruitment process done poorly could cost your firm alot more than you think.

In 2019, we asked over 100 legal professionals about salary.

The first question we asked was “What is the most important benefit when searching for a new job?”  32% of legal professionals surveyed said salary was the most important benefit.

So, if you want to attract skilled workers to a legal role you’re advertising, doing your research on salary first is crucial. 

Below, we look into how essential it is to include salary into your job advert, and how you can benchmark it for your role:

Why should I include a salary band?

 As experts in recruiting skilled legal professionals, we’d like to share some statistics with you regarding salary for your job advert. 

70% of legal professionals surveyed told us they would not apply for a job that didn’t display a salary band. And since the salary band is one of the first pieces of information a jobseeker will see in the job listing results, consider how many people you’re losing out on in the very first instance. 

We also asked if they preferred all job adverts to disclose a salary. 89% said yes, suggesting this is a key piece of information they are searching for from a new role.

Finally, we asked them “Would you prefer a job advert to display a salary range (for example £25,000 – £30,000)?” Of those surveyed, 50% said yes, highlighting that while you may not have a specific salary in mind, an indication of the range you’re considering provides more insight to job seekers than displaying nothing at all.

Here are a few more reasons why you should be including salary into your job advert:

• According to our research, job adverts that displayed a salary were twice as likely to get more views than a job advert that didn’t display a salary
• Most people looking for a new job are hoping for a better overall offer, including salary. So if you’re offering less than the average salary, your job advert likely won’t convert as well as those who do offer a competitive salary. 
• Displaying a salary now saves unnecessary conversations at interview stage later. Applicants know what to expect, so there’s no ambiguity
• If your job advert is listed amongst 50 others for the same role, for example, all of which display a salary, your role will likely fall by the wayside, receiving less clicks than others due to a lack of enticing information – money talks, so don’t forget the essential piece of information for your job advert  

How can I find the right salary for my role?

So, you’ve decided that including a salary is the best thing for your job advert. The next step is to identify the average salary for your role and decide on a suitable figure your company can offer.

In order to do this, you need a comprehensive guide that reveals the average salaries for different roles within the legal profession. Which is exactly what we can offer you. Download it here.

Monitoring job ads from organisations of a similar type or size can help you to make sure your compensation package is competitive – which is why our guide comes in very handy to our customers. Once you know the average salary recruiters are offering, you can make the decision on whether to match that salary, or go above it to edge out competitors for top talent. 

Make sure you have criteria set to decide which skills a candidate would need to have to achieve the highest level, and which can be sacrificed for a lower salary. 

The more senior the role, the more flexible you will need to be with salary.

Stick to the salary range you promised. Nothing is more likely to make a candidate reject an initial offer without any possibility for negotiation than going back on the advertised salary package, meaning you may have to start your recruitment process again from scratch, hence more money wasted as a result of a poor recruitment process.

Remember, specifying an extremely low compensation package for a role will obviously limit the quantity and quality of responses, which is why most organisations advertise using a salary range – as long as this accommodates the average salary, your job advert has a higher chance of attracting skilled professionals.