Open a job advert, read three paragraphs about culture and responsibilities, and reach the end without a single figure. For many people searching for work in the UK, that experience remains routine: deciding whether to invest an evening on an application without knowing if the pay fits their household budget. Pressure to change that is now coming from a recognised voice in UK recruitment reform, and its argument extends well beyond the pay line itself.

The Better Hiring Institute, which works with UK employers and recruiters on hiring standards, has stated that including salaries in job adverts would significantly help jobseekers. Its position, reported by recruitment trade outlet Onrec, carries a notable caveat: salary disclosure removes one barrier but leaves others standing. The Institute frames this not as a destination but as a starting point for a more substantive reform of how UK hiring works.

What the Better Hiring Institute is arguing

The Institute's case rests on a straightforward observation. When pay is hidden, candidates must guess, ask, or apply blind. That friction lands at the very beginning of the process, before a recruiter has seen a single application. In the Institute's view, pay transparency removes what it calls an unnecessary barrier at that first step.

"Salary transparency is an important first step, but it is not the finish line." - Better Hiring Institute

That framing shapes the rest of the Institute's argument. Salary disclosure helps, the Institute says, but two further reforms are needed alongside it: a shift in how candidates are assessed, and a meaningful improvement in what applicants can find out about a role before they commit to applying.

The CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development), which represents around 160,000 HR and people professionals across the UK, has tracked employer attitudes to pay transparency through its annual Reward Management Survey. The survey's findings consistently show that a significant proportion of UK employers do not publish salary information in adverts, and that pay communication practices vary substantially by sector and organisation size. That gap between employer habit and candidate expectation is precisely the territory the Better Hiring Institute is trying to close.

Why a salary figure alone won't close the gap

The first reform the Institute calls for concerns assessment. Rather than filtering candidates through past job titles, formal qualifications, or CV signals, the Institute argues for hiring based on skills and potential. A CV is, by definition, a record of opportunities someone has already had. A career changer, someone returning after a caring break, or a candidate who built genuine capability in a role with a modest title can be eliminated long before anyone tests what they can actually do.

The second reform concerns information. The Institute argues that applicants deserve better visibility of roles, pay, and progression opportunities. A salary figure tells a candidate what the job pays on day one. It says nothing about what the work involves in practice, how performance is measured, or whether a credible route to the next grade exists.

Put together, the argument is that transparency functions as a package. An advert that publishes pay but still screens on job title or says nothing about career progression has resolved the most visible part of the problem while leaving the harder parts intact.

There is also a legal dimension that UK employers cannot set aside. The Equality Act 2010 places duties on employers to avoid indirect discrimination in recruitment criteria. A blanket requirement for a specific degree or a set number of years in a named role may disadvantage groups with protected characteristics if the requirement cannot be justified as proportionate to the needs of the post. Skills-based assessment is not simply progressive practice; for many organisations, it is also a more defensible legal position under the Act.

For employees and jobseekers: how to read an advert

Whether or not an advert carries a salary, the Institute's three themes - pay, skills, and progression - serve as a practical checklist before committing to an application.

• Pay: if a salary or range is listed, compare it with what similar roles pay in your area before deciding whether it is fair. The ONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) publishes UK pay data by occupation and region, which provides a publicly available benchmark. If the figure is missing from the advert, it is entirely reasonable to ask the recruiter for the range before attending a first interview. ACAS (Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) advises that candidates are entitled to discuss pay at any stage of the process, and that asking early does not compromise a negotiating position.
• Skills: look at what the advert actually asks you to do, not just the title it uses to describe the role. If you meet the substance of the work but not a specific qualification or job title listed as a requirement, say so in your application and support that claim with concrete evidence of what you have delivered.
• Progression: check whether the advert, the employer's careers page, or verified employee reviews give any indication of how people advance. If nothing does, that is a fair question to raise at interview, and the response will tell you something useful about how the organisation thinks about its people.

Knowing the salary range early also strengthens your negotiating position later. You enter that conversation from a shared reference point rather than having to estimate what the employer had budgeted - a significant practical advantage, particularly in roles where pay bands have considerable internal spread.

For HR and hiring managers: what full transparency looks like

For organisations already weighing whether to publish salaries, the Institute's position suggests broadening the review rather than treating the pay line as the final action on the list.

• Publish a genuine salary or range on the advert, so candidates can self-select at the start rather than partway through a process that costs both sides time. A broad band that obscures the real figure defeats the purpose and will be recognised as such by experienced candidates.
• Rewrite requirements around skills. Review whether a degree, a minimum number of years or a specific previous job title is genuinely essential, or whether it is a habit carried forward from earlier versions of the same advert. Where a requirement cannot be justified as a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim, the Equality Act 2010 may make it a legal liability, not merely a diversity concern.
• Assess for potential. Structured tasks, work samples, and skills-based interview questions can surface capability that a conventional CV obscures. The CIPD has published practical guidance on structured interviewing and assessment design that hiring managers can draw on directly.
• Describe progression clearly. State what the next role in the pathway looks like, what it typically takes to reach it, and how pay changes along the way. Candidates who understand the trajectory before they join make a more deliberate commitment - which tends to reduce early attrition.

The payoff is a wider and better-informed candidate pool. Someone who applies knowing the pay, the assessment method, and the progression path is making an active choice rather than a speculative one. That is a more productive starting point for both sides of the hire, and it reduces the likelihood of a resignation within the first year - a cost that the Resolution Foundation has identified as disproportionately concentrated in lower-paid roles where salary information is least often disclosed.

The UK regulatory backdrop: where policy may head next

The UK currently has no statutory requirement for employers to publish salaries in job adverts, which places it behind several European peers. The EU Pay Transparency Directive, which member states were required to transpose by June 2026, obliges employers across the EU to disclose salary ranges in recruitment and to respond to pay information requests from existing employees. Post-Brexit, the UK is not bound by that Directive and can set its own course independently.

The current Employment Rights agenda being advanced by the government does not, at the time of writing in November 2026, include a mandatory salary-disclosure obligation for job adverts. That leaves the field to industry-led initiatives such as those promoted by the Better Hiring Institute, and to voluntary commitments by individual employers. Prospect, the union representing engineers, scientists, and tech workers across sectors including defence and advanced manufacturing, has advocated for greater pay transparency as part of its wider bargaining objectives - a signal that the question is reaching collective-bargaining agendas as well as HR policy conversations.

The wider signal for UK recruitment

A salary in the advert is the visible portion of transparency. Skills-based assessment and honest progression information are the parts candidates experience once they are inside the process. If you are job-hunting, judge an advert on all three dimensions before you apply. If you are hiring, treat the salary line as the first edit in a broader review, not the concluding one.

ONS ASHE data, CIPD reward benchmarks, and verified salary figures shared anonymously by people doing the role all contribute to a clearer pay picture across the UK labour market. Every data point added to that picture makes the next advert easier to assess - for candidates deciding whether to apply, and for employers calibrating whether their offer is competitive in the market where they are actually hiring.