There is a piece of recruitment advice that comes back often, and that deserves to be examined. The idea is the following: when making an offer to a candidate, it is better to position them artificially lower in their pay band, in order to keep room for progression above them.
The intention is understandable. I do not share it.
Why this idea appeals
Let us be fair to this advice, because it has its logic. Positioning an offer lower in the pay band presents, at first sight, two advantages.
The first is budgetary. A person entering low in the band can be increased several times while comfortably staying within the frame of the salary structure. The room is already there, inside the band. It is comfortable.
The second is managerial. A manager who has salary progression room for their collaborator has, they believe, a lever: they can reward, recognise, and sustain motivation through successive increases.
These two advantages are real. That is precisely what makes the advice tempting. But both rest on the same confusion, and this is where it does not hold.
The offer is positioned on the role
A salary offer answers a question: to what extent does the candidate match the role?
Is the candidate fully in the role, do they have all the seniority, all the mastery expected? Are they below, still learning on part of the scope? Or on the contrary do they exceed it, bringing useful experience beyond what the role requires? The position in the pay band reflects this answer.
Positioning an offer low in the band to "keep room" means answering a different question from the one asked. It is no longer stating how the person occupies the function today. Indeed, if the candidate is fully in the role and you position them low in the band without any objective criterion, you are not creating a perspective for them: you are underpaying them for the role they actually occupy.
A pay band is not a reserve where you keep room. A band must say something true about the way a function is occupied. At recruitment as after.
Progression exists, but it is not reserved, it happens
There remains the legitimate objection: what about the perspective of progression? A person entering high in the band, where will they go next?
They will go where all real progression goes. The room for progression is not a void arranged at entry. It is a movement that will happen, or not, depending on how the person brings their function to life. Three paths are possible: progression within their pay band, by deepening their expertise in their function; a change of level within their career ladder, when a set of aspects justifies an adaptation of the level; or an evolution towards another ladder, according to the validated career path. I have developed these movements in another article in this series, [[the-life-of-levels]].
Underpaying at entry to "keep room" means limiting progression to a matter of salary structure. Treating it as a real movement means addressing all its aspects.
What a poorly positioned offer costs
An offer made below the real fit to the role is not neutral. It has a cost, only deferred.
For the person, it sets up a gap from day one: they fully occupy a role, and their remuneration says something else. This gap is not visible immediately. It reveals itself later, at the moment of a comparison, or the day the person measures the distance between their contribution and their position in the band. This is a subject I have addressed in another article in this series, [[pressure-on-base-salary]].
For the organisation, it weakens the coherence of the structure. If two people occupy the same role and hold it in the same way, but one has entered low in the band "for the room" and the other at the right level, the pay band no longer tells the truth. It no longer reflects the role, it reflects negotiation histories.
To this is added a new stake. The European directive on pay transparency (Directive (EU) 2023/970, Article 5) requires transparency on pay before hiring: the employer communicates to the candidate the initial remuneration, or its range, on the basis of objective and gender-neutral criteria, and cannot ask about their salary history. A band used to "keep room" rather than to situate the role creates precisely the gap that the organisation will then have to be able to justify.
The essentials
A pay band is not a manoeuvring ground.
At recruitment, the right question is never "what room am I keeping above the candidate?". It is "where, within this band, does the real fit between this person and this role lie?". As for the room for progression, it is not reserved, it happens through a real evolution in the role, beyond the role, or through a change of function.
This is the objective assessment work that the HDH (HR Decision Hub) platform is designed to equip: linking the function to its level, shedding light on the pay band and helping to define a coherent and justifiable offer. So that each decision remains explainable and defensible over time.