Somewhere in a South African business this week, a hiring manager will hear a candidate confirm their minimum salary expectation and will choose to respond with some version of: “great, let’s offer less and see what happens.”
This decision typically comes after weeks of interviews where the candidate has proven they’re right for the role and well after the hiring budget has been approved. You have to question whether this tactic costs more than it saves in the long run, surely there is a better way?
I mean sure, there will be a candidate who accepts a lower offer, so in some cases, hiring managers may feel it’s worth a punt. If they move forward with the lower offer, the hiring manager can smugly say they’ve saved the company some money and if not, they still have the original hiring budget to fall back on. No harm right? Wrong!
As an example, a R100k gap between R1.1m and R1.2m looks like a saving, but in reality it’s tiny next to everything else already at risk. The cost of the role sitting open for longer, the risk of the wrong hire, and the money and time already spent getting to this offer stage. I’d argue these largely outweigh the R100k saving, so is it really a saving worth risking?
A bigger question to ask is what does a lower offer actually signal to a potential new employee?
Let’s say the candidate does decide to accept the lower offer. The business is effectively telling its newest hire that despite knowing what they’re worth, and the business has the budget, they’re still going to try to bring you onboard for less, just because.
What companies fail to realise is that this becomes the first data point this person gets about how the employer treats people once they’ve said yes. Someone who accepted less than they asked for, from a company that could clearly afford more, starts the job already recalibrating how far this employer will push when it doesn’t have to. This signal extends beyond the initial hiring stage and can likely give a candidate an idea of what to expect when it comes to bonuses, promotions or future salary negotiations. It’s an unusual way to open a relationship, that you effectively want to last years not months.
But what happens if the candidate decides to decline the low ball offer?
If the candidate holds their ground and the business comes back with the original number, something has already shifted. The candidate now knows the higher figure was available from the start, and suddenly the ‘improved’ offer reads more as proof that the money was there all along, but that they didn’t think you were worth the offer, which doesn’t feel great.
"If a candidate senses they’re being tested rather than genuinely valued, they become an easier target for a competing offer, because they've been given a reason to feel undervalued."
Ironically because specialist skills like cloud engineering, data science and senior tech leadership (to name a few) are scarce in South Africa, there usually isn’t a deep bench of equally good alternatives waiting in the wings if that candidate walks.
Now there are genuine cases where there is an actual mismatch between a candidate’s salary expectation and the approved hiring budget. Sometimes they just don’t align, but it’s a simple conversation that should happen before interviews begin, not after. Aligning on the salary range early, validating it against the market, and being upfront about the budget ceiling goes a long way to protect everyone’s time, and stops both the candidate and business from investing weeks in a process that was never going to be successful in the first place.
Ways to avoid disappointment is to take the time to invest in due-diligence upfront and before the offer stage, by putting together a considered first-and-final offer. Take the time to honestly decide what this person is worth to the business, confirm that figure sits within budget, and make an offer genuinely worth standing behind. The objective is to make the person the business has already chosen want to say yes and feel valued for doing so.
Sadly this is where the offer stage most often goes wrong: expectations are never properly tested against the market or the brief early enough, and long before anyone reaches the negotiation table.
Acuity builds alignment into permanent hiring from the outset, it’s a non-negotiable. A dedicated consultant tests fit against technical, cultural and commercial requirements, salary included, before a shortlist ever reaches the client, so the number on the table at offer stage is one the business already knows it can and should pay.
It’s consistent with how Acuity works with its own clients, too. Getting it right the first time is what produces our 90% client return rate.
Getting the number right starts with knowing what the market actually pays, before pressure forces a guess.
Tell us what hiring challenge you’re trying to solve and we’ll help you land on the right number the first time, so you keep the person you’ve already chosen.