How to read a salary range in a job ad (and what it means when there isn't one)

A job ad says “€35,000 – €50,000 gross per year”. It looks like clear information, but most people read it wrong: they see the 50,000 and plan their life around that number. It’s almost never the one they end up earning.

A salary range isn’t a promise or a lottery. It’s an administrative band, and understanding how it gets built changes how you use it.

What a range actually is

In most companies with an HR function, every role is assigned a band with a minimum and a maximum. That band covers everyone in the role, from the person who joined last week to the person who’s been there four years and is about to be promoted.

When they publish the full range in an ad, they’re showing you the entire band for the role — not the negotiating room for this particular hire. The real budget for a new joiner usually sits between the minimum and the midpoint, because the upper stretch is reserved for people already inside.

That gives you the single most useful rule here: the midpoint is your realistic target, not the maximum. If the range is 35–50, aiming for 42–45 is ambitious and defensible. Aiming for 50 requires that you arrive with exactly what they’re looking for, plus something that justifies sitting at the top from day one.

Four questions to ask of any figure

Before you compare two offers, make sure you’re comparing the same thing:

• Gross or net? Ads usually quote gross. The gap between that and what reaches your account is large and varies by country and personal situation.
• Split over how many payments? In Spain and parts of Latin America, salaries are often paid over 14 instalments rather than 12. Same annual money, very different monthly cash flow.
• Does it include variable pay? “Up to 55,000” sometimes means 45,000 fixed plus 10,000 in performance bonus. Bonuses aren’t always paid in full, and sometimes aren’t paid at all.
• Annual, monthly or hourly? Obvious until an international offer lands. A remote ad may quote an hourly rate that has to be annualised before you can compare it.

When the range is suspiciously wide

A range of 30,000 to 70,000 isn’t transparency: it’s a way of saying nothing. It usually happens for one of two reasons. Either the ad covers several levels at once (they’ll take a junior or a senior, whoever turns up), or the band is designed to span several cities or countries with different costs of living.

Either way, the published figure won’t help you decide. What does help is asking at first contact: “where in that range does this role sit for a profile like mine?” It’s a legitimate question, and the answer saves you the entire process if it doesn’t line up.

When they publish nothing

Most job ads still don’t state pay. That isn’t always a bad sign, but it is information: it means the number will be set based on what you say first, and that rarely works in your favour.

What to do:

Don’t leave it to the end. Ask for the range at first contact with the recruiter. The phrasing that works best is neutral and practical: “so we don’t waste each other’s time, what salary band do you have budgeted for this role?” Nobody takes offence, and it filters out incompatible processes in minute one.

If they insist you go first, give a range rather than a figure, with the bottom set at what you’d genuinely accept, and anchor it in data: “based on what I see published for this role in my market, I’d be in the X to Y band.” A range backed by public figures is much harder to push down than a number that sounds like a wish.

Do the research first. Look at what other ads for the same role in your country publish. You don’t need a study: twenty comparable listings give you a good enough sense of where the market sits.

A caveat about market figures

Any median salary — including ours — is calculated from the listings that do publish pay, which are a minority and not a neutral sample. Companies that disclose tend to be the more structured ones, and often the better-paying ones. Treat it as a bearing, not as the official price of your profile.

And above the median sits what you can actually justify: two people with the same job title and different scope aren’t worth the same, however much they share a cell in a statistic.

Worth remembering

A published range tells you three things: that the company has its bands in order, where the ceiling of the role is, and that you can drop the process without burning hours if the minimum already doesn’t work for you. That alone is worth more than the exact number.

And if the ad says nothing, the question belongs at the start of the conversation, not the end. Salary isn’t the prize revealed when the process finishes: it’s one of the conditions you decide on before you begin.