I.T. Service desk assistant vacancy

[Heorot]

In 2003 I applied for an analyst role at the Halifax and when asked what salary I wanted, I asked for £35000. I was given an initial and a follow up interview and travelled from Edinburgh to Halifax and back (twice). I was offered the job for a salary of £27,500 and they were quite surprised when I said I was not interested at that level. Why offer an interview when they know they won't pay the going rate.

I had the opposite once. I applied, giving my salary expectations, the HR lady phoned me up saying the hiring manager was really interested, but the budget for the role was about 2/3 what I was expecting. We talked for a few minutes to see what else they coudl offer to make up the shortfall (like training allowances, increased responsibility etc.) we couldn't so I politely declined and that was that.

I imagine that sort of thing would also really help a company trying to fill a brand new role, they don't actually know what the going rate is, so they need to have those conversations to find out, the only other way of dong that is to go through a recruiter, but I know a lot of companies would rather not use a recruiter if they didn't have to. Possibly better to pay the 20% recruiters fee to the candidate and get someone better.