The UK is moving to make salaries mandatory in job adverts. Why showing the salary leads to better producer hires, from production recruiter Alex Hedges.
Last night the Prime Minister promised that UK employers will be legally required to include pay in job adverts, and he's asked employers to start showing salaries now rather than wait for the law. It isn't law yet, there's no bill and no date, but I've been banging this drum for the whole six years I've been running Curious Connections, so this is a good day. I'm proud to be an ambassador for We Show the Salary, who've got more than 300 employers, recruiters and job platforms to take their pledge since April 2025 and have done a huge amount to get us here, so do go and share their post.
The moral case for salary transparency
The moral case for showing the salary in every job advert is enormous. Hidden pay is where the gender pay gap lives, where discrimination hides and where the people least likely to negotiate hard get paid less for the same job.
We all care about the moral case of course, but we all know very little changes unless there's a robust business case too. And with showing the salary, there really is.
Why producers would never quote blind
If a client calls you about a job, the first thing any producer says is "what have you got?" You could make it for £250k or you could make it for £5 million, and those are completely different jobs with different creative ambition, different schedules and different conversations. No production arm wants to quote blind, so why do we recruit blind?
What "we don't know the salary yet" really means
When a company tells me they don't want to put a salary on a role because "we could hire someone junior, or someone really experienced," what they're actually saying is "we want to hire someone we really like, or who's really cool, and we'll work the rest out later." That isn't a brief. Do you want someone junior you can train up, or do you want someone who can walk in and run the department on Monday? Decide, budget for it, and say so.
You don't have to be exact: use a salary range
The default I see on so many producer job ads is "dependent on experience", which just tells everyone you haven't worked out what you want. Some roles genuinely do carry a wide range, new business or talent development for instance, and it might actually be two different jobs, an EP and a talent manager, so work out which one you're really hiring and advertise that one. If it truly is one role with some flex in it, put a salary range.
Companies that spend the time drilling into the skills and experience their business or production department really needs from each producer role can show a salary range and still negotiate. Every single job description I send out has a salary on it, something like £80–90k plus or £40–55k range, and of course we negotiate from there. Sometimes I'll come back to my client and say, "Do you know what, I think you need someone more senior than this, but I reckon I can get them for 90 grand," and if I can't get them for 90 grand, I won't put them forward; I'll tell you, and nobody's time gets wasted.
Money is the first thing everyone asks, internally from the CFO and externally from every candidate, so you might as well answer it up front.
The hidden cost to producers who are job hunting
The cost of not deciding isn't just the company's time; it lands on the candidates too. At this week's Chatty Chuesday, the producers in the room reckoned no more than 20% of their applications get any response at all, and some of them are sending hundreds a week. That is soul-destroying, and it's a ridiculous waste of everybody's time on both sides of the desk.
Say what you pay
You'll get fewer, better applications from producers who actually want the job at that level, and you'll have done the strategic thinking you needed to do before you hired anyone anyway.
If you're hiring a producer and want help working out the shape of the role, and the salary that goes with it, get in touch. If you're a producer job hunting right now, the Producer CV Glow Up Guide is a good place to start.