Satia Rai: Security Leadership, Representation and Raising Professional Standards
5 October 2026
Why Salary Benchmarking Can Still Leave You Unable to Hire
The gap between market averages and the salary required to attract the people you actually want can often be the difference between a successful first market approach and a failed, or duplicated attempt.
I was recently talking with a COO and they were asking for our thoughts and advice, the conversation highlighted one of the weaknesses in traditional salary benchmarking.
They had taken a role to market in the UK, it was a niche market role, specific set of skills, but also culture and performance were both key, additionally the role required a particular language capability. Despite multiple attempts they have struggled to attract the calibre of people they wanted, the candidates coming forward tended to be people already between roles, or individuals who were not quite at the level the organisation had hoped to attract at the salary they had benchmarked, they asked how we were finding salaries generally in the market.
The problem was not necessarily that the salary benchmark was wrong, the problem was that the benchmark answered a slightly different question.
A market average is not the same as an attraction salary
Most salary benchmarking tells you something useful:
What are people in comparable roles currently being paid?
But when you are recruiting, another question matters just as much:
What would somebody good enough to solve our problem need to be offered to leave their current role and join us?
Those figures are not necessarily the same, the strongest people in a market may already sit above the average, they may have recently received a pay increase, they may be expecting a bonus, long term incentive or retention award, and if they are performing well and valued by their current employer, there usually needs to be a reason for them to accept the risk involved in moving.
That doesn’t always mean dramatically more money. Role scope, culture, flexibility, progression, Board access and the quality of the leadership proposition all matter, but compensation still needs to clear the threshold at which a conversation becomes credible, and if pitched at the wrong level initially, can stop the conversation dead in it’s tracks.
Benchmarking is often looking backwards
There is another problem. Much traditional remuneration data is necessarily historical. A survey conducted this year may reflect pay decisions made last year, published reports then aggregate those figures across organisations, role scopes and sometimes very different operating environments.
That data is still useful, but markets, roles and individuals can move faster than published benchmarks.
The issue becomes particularly acute when organisations are trying to recruit scarce capability, perhaps a transformation leader, an experienced COO, a exceptional problem solver, specialist regulatory expertise, a particular technology capability or, as in this case, senior leadership with specific language requirements.
By the time a shortage appears in an annual dataset, employers may already have spent six months discovering it themselves.
The best person may not sit in the middle of the market
Another issue is that averages create another potential trap.
Imagine five comparable executives earning:
£150k
£160k
£180k
£200k
£250k
Swings of £100k for what looks on paper like a near identical role can happen, especially when we consider PE, private equity, LTIPs and other equity or event plays and incentives. An average base salary range gives you a perfectly legitimate benchmark but it does not tell you that the two individuals you would actually want to hire are sitting at the top of that range.
Nor does it tell you what they would need to move.
This is why organisations can go to market believing their package is competitive and still find that the shortlist is weaker than expected and the issue may not be candidate availability.
It may be candidate availability at that price.
Benchmark the talent market, not just the salary
For a business critical hire, we think the more useful approach is to test both.
What does existing remuneration data tell us?
And what is actually happening amongst the specific talent population the organisation hopes to attract?
For Douglas Jackson, that can mean agreeing a small group of comparable organisations and relevant leadership profiles with the client, then undertaking targeted market research and confidential conversations.
We can explore:
- Current base salary and broader package
- Bonus and long-term incentives
- Flexibility and location expectations
- Role scope
- What individuals value in their current position
- Whether they would consider moving
- What would make an opportunity attractive
- Where resistance to the proposed package is likely to arise
- Actual availability of the required capability
That creates a different type of benchmark, comining remuneration data with talent-market intelligence.
An example: £180k may be the benchmark. It may not be the hiring number.
This distinction matters particularly when an organisation is about to launch an Executive search. A benchmark may indicate that £170k–£190k is broadly competitive for a particular role.
But targeted market conversations might reveal that the strongest realistic candidates are currently earning £195k–£210k, have bonuses they would forfeit by moving and are unlikely to consider a new opportunity below £200k.
That is commercially useful information before the organisation spends three months running a search.
It may lead to a higher package, but it could equally lead to a different decision: broaden the market, change the location, reconsider the remit, develop someone internally or alter the structure of the role.
The cost of discovering the problem too late
Salary benchmarking is often treated as an HR or remuneration exercise.
For senior appointments, it is also a hiring-risk issue.
If a role goes to market at the wrong level, the organisation can lose months interviewing candidates who were never likely to accept, compromise on quality or restart the search later at a higher salary.
By that point, the cost is not simply recruitment, it is delayed transformation, slower growth, stretched leadership teams or a business-critical role remaining vacant.
What better benchmarking should answer
Before taking a senior role to market, we think organisations should be able to answer three questions:
What are comparable people currently being paid?
What would the people we genuinely want need in order to move?
Does the proposed package give us realistic access to that market?
If you only answer the first, you may still discover the other two the hard way.
Executive Salary Benchmarking from Douglas Jackson
Douglas Jackson combines executive search insight with targeted salary and talent-market research.
Rather than relying solely on historic datasets or broad industry averages, we can agree the most relevant organisations and leadership profiles with you and test the market directly.
The result is not simply a salary range, it is a clearer view of: what the market is paying, who is available and what it may actually take to attract them.
Explore Executive Salary Benchmarking →
