The salary gap is £4,000. The vacancy is costing £2,500 a week.

Offers get negotiated with great discipline. Empty desks get counted not at all. The asymmetry is rarely a deliberate decision: which is exactly why it persists.

By Steve 5 min read
Abstract bridge artwork for The salary gap is £4,000. The vacancy is costing £2,500 a week.

A hiring manager and a candidate are £4,000 apart on a £60,000 role. There are two more rounds of conversation, then a week of silence, then the candidate accepts something else. The role stays open for another eleven weeks. Nobody works out what those eleven weeks cost, because there is no line in any report where that number would appear. The £4,000 was a decision, owned by a named person, visible in a budget. The eleven weeks was an event: something that happened to the business rather than something it…

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