How to read a UK job advert, and what a missing pay line tells you
Most UK job adverts do not state the pay. How to read the pay line, the date, the title and the skills, with the live counts behind it.
Most UK job adverts do not tell you what the job pays. If you read UK adverts and feel you are guessing, you are not imagining it. This guide is for the moment you are looking at one advert and deciding whether to spend an hour on it. It uses what we see across the live UK adverts we read from employers’ own careers sites, recounted every night, and it says where a number stops being reliable.
1. Read the pay line first, and read it properly
When an advert does state pay, the way it says it matters.
- One figure or a range. A single figure is often the top of a band, or the rate for one grade. A range usually means the employer expects to place you inside it.
- In the title. A job title that carries the salary is the employer making sure you see it, and it is a fair sign the number is real.
- A day rate is not a salary. A figure “per day” or “per hour” is usually an agency or contract rate. It does not include holiday, pension or the weeks you are not working. Do not compare it with a yearly figure.
2. A missing pay line is information, but not the information you think
It is tempting to read “salary: competitive” as “low”. The counts do not support that. Public-sector and large-employer adverts often leave the figure to a published pay scale, and many private employers leave it out from habit. A missing line tells you the employer chose not to say, not what the figure is.
What you can do:
- look for a pay scale or grade on the employer’s own careers page, which the advert links to;
- look at what the same role advertises at other employers in the same city. Each role and city page shows the median advertised range and how many adverts it rests on;
- ask early. Asking for the range before an interview is ordinary and, in many cases, expected.
3. Read the date, then read it again
The date on an advert is the employer’s own. Some adverts stay open for months because the employer is collecting CVs, not filling one job. If an advert is more than a few weeks old and has been reposted, treat the application as a longer shot, and check whether the employer’s own page still lists it.
4. Read the title for what it leaves out
Titles that name no role, such as “Join our team”, “Talent pool” or “Future opportunities”, are not vacancies. They are a way to collect applications. We do not offer those pages to search engines, and you can skip them.
5. Read the skills, then count what you have
Adverts name skills in two places: the “must have” list and the “nice to have” list. The first is a screen, the second is a tiebreak. If you have most of the first and none of the second, apply. If you are missing a required item that is a licence or a legal requirement, do not.
What TUNAI does about it
TUNAI puts a stated pay on the job’s card so you can see it before you open anything, shows when each advert was posted, and drops it when it closes or its link dies. Where an advert states no pay we say so and never guess one. If you want to see how an advert measures up against your own CV, the CV check is free and needs no sign-up, and what you are worth shows the advertised pay for your role.
How we count
Every live advert TUNAI reads from employers’ own job boards and public job sites, counted once when the same job appears twice. Recounted every night; a figure resting on too few adverts is left out rather than shown. The numbers are free to reuse with a link to the page they came from (CSV, CC BY 4.0). Read the full methodology.
Rank live roles against your CV
The CV check ranks every live advert against your CV. See the methodology behind these figures.