Dr. Bob

Holy shit that’s low. I was asking for £35k in 2004 for a technical role. They wanted to pay 17.

I was a civil servant. The hiring bands were pretty wide well defined there, at least for technical specialists like yours truly. The 50-60% of max range is considered developmental and would normally be given to an internal candidate who was being groomed as part of a succession plan. 60-80% is the sweet spot, and they will go to 90% for an exceptional candidate. Only once in my career did I negotiate 100% of max - and it was because I was taking a pay cut in the new role. I was changing jurisdictions because I was ( and still am) in love.

100% this. This is pretty classy. We are typically told to not even contact external candidates. HR will send them the impersonal notice.

I feel like the numbers matter here. I recently moved jobs and the posted salary was the full range for the role. The hiring range is a narrower slice of that range. The range below the hiring target is internal development space. The space above is …well they don’t want to use it. They want a couple years of salary increase to keep you from immediately starting your next job search I think. lol.