Why employers keep the number hidden

Ask most hiring managers why the salary is not listed on a job advert and you will hear a familiar set of justifications. The budget is ‘flexible’. The right figure ‘depends on experience’. They want to stay ‘competitive’ without tipping off rivals. Or, more candidly, they want to preserve a negotiation advantage by keeping candidates in the dark so they open lower than the employer might otherwise have to offer.

These reasons sound pragmatic, but they rarely hold up under scrutiny. According to UK job posting salary transparency stats , omitting pay information from job adverts is not an occasional oversight. It is a structural norm in how many organisations hire.

The harder question is whether that norm serves employers. Holding the number back to gain negotiation leverage only works if candidates stay in the process long enough to negotiate. Many do not. When a posting says ‘competitive salary’ and nothing else, strong candidates with options often move on. The flexibility argument is equally weak: a defensible pay structure should already include a range. When none can be shared, that absence suggests the budget is undefined, inconsistent, or applied according to negotiation strength rather than the value of the role.

What salary secrecy actually costs

Hiding a salary range may feel like a negotiating tactic. In practice, it is an expensive one. When pay is withheld until late in the process, candidates can spend time preparing for interviews they would never have accepted had the numbers been visible upfront. Hiring managers may similarly spend time screening, briefing, and meeting people who turn out to be unsuitable on compensation alone. That wastes time on both sides.PRINCE2 glossary

The pipeline cost compounds quickly. A strong candidate who drops out after a final stage offer mismatch leaves a vacancy open for longer, forces the team to restart sourcing, and may accept a role elsewhere while the process resets. Repeat hiring cycles can be significantly more expensive once you factor in recruitment, training, and lost productivity costs.

Reputational damage is harder to quantify but just as real. Candidates talk. A dismissive response to a salary question, or a late reveal that feels evasive, may surface in employer reviews. Once that perception takes hold, it affects the quality of future applicants before a single job is posted. Research into Simon BuehringPay transparency and hiring impacts

This does not mean flexible pay is inherently problematic. It means flexibility without transparency, or without line managers who understand how it works, tends to erode trust and candidates notice.

What good practice looks like in a salary conversation

The simplest fix available to any hiring team is also the most overlooked: publish the salary range in the job advert. Salary transparency in job adverts removes ambiguity before a single application arrives, filters for genuine fit, and signals that the organisation respects candidates’ time. ‘Competitive salary’ or ‘depends on experience’ with no supporting figure tells a candidate nothing useful and invites suspicion.Interview with Madeleine Parsley

Once a candidate applies, first stage screening is the right moment to confirm alignment openly. A simple statement such as ‘The role is budgeted at X to Y; does that work for you?’ takes little time and prevents hours of wasted interviews. If a candidate’s expectation sits above the range, a professional response explains the budget constraint honestly rather than mocking the figure or refusing to engage. Dismissing expectations, or reacting with visible surprise, destroys trust quickly and will often be shared online.

The UK government’s own guidance on pay transparency makes clear that fair, open communication about pay and rewards is the standard organisations should work towards. Recruiters who stonewall or belittle candidates fall well short of that standard.Sevcan Yasa

Building a more credible process requires consistent habits: a stated range in every advert, a salary check early in screening, and an honest conversation whenever expectations differ. Getting this right protects employer brand, reduces wasted effort, and helps strong candidates stay in the process long enough to accept.19 Feb 2026

Where to go from here

If the sections above feel familiar, there is a good chance these issues are already affecting the hiring pipeline, even if the full cost has not been measured. Salary secrecy rarely feels urgent until a pattern of withdrawn candidates, stalled offers, or declining application quality becomes hard to ignore.In this video, Madeleine Parsley describes how her career was helped by taking a PRINCE2 Foundation and Practitioner course with Knowledge Train.

Most of what needs to change is straightforward. It requires honest internal conversations about pay structures, a willingness to brief recruiters properly, and the discipline to have salary conversations early rather than late. None of that requires a complete overhaul of the hiring process, but it does require interviewers and hiring managers to be confident and well prepared.

If the hiring team is losing strong candidates because salary conversations go wrong, structured training can help. Interview skills courses can show how better prepared recruiters build the credibility that attracts the candidates the organisation wants to hire.