mutedatlas :
Hi! I’m based in the UK, and I don’t think this advice translates to every country.
Here, salary negotiation is a completely different experience. I’ve had recruiters refuse to put me forward for roles simply because I asked whether there was an extra £3,000 to £5,000 in the budget. The response is almost always, “No, that’s the maximum the employer is willing to pay,” and that’s the end of the conversation.
This seems to be a really common experience in the UK. Pretty much all of my friends have experienced the same thing. Negotiating here is incredibly difficult, especially because salaries are already relatively low. The average salary in London is around £40,000, and across the UK it’s around £36,000. Asking for a little more money or even an extra few days of annual leave can sometimes make employers see you as greedy or ungrateful rather than simply negotiating.
I even spent some time working in HR, so I’ve seen parts of the process from the employer’s side as well. In my experience, the UK hiring culture is much more rigid than what I often hear from recruiters in the US. There also continues to be a lot of class bias in recruitment, with factors like educational background, including whether someone attended a grammar or private school, still influencing opportunities in some sectors.
So while negotiating may be expected in some countries, in the UK it can genuinely cost you the opportunity altogether. It’s a very different recruitment culture.
2026-07-29 15:39:13