is stating the salary too much to ask of a job ad?

I've just seen a recruitment ad by a major bus company - obviously nothing unusual about that. 

For obvious reasons, most recruitment done by bus companies of late is for drivers. Nearly every campaign in the last few years has had one prominent message to encourage applications - the salary/hourly rate.

To most people, that's an important carrot as to whether a potential job has enough appeal for them to apply. Applying for a new job is a big step. It takes time, and it takes effort. 

You want to give yourself every chance of success, but you also need to know success will have a salary you believe is equal to what you're bringing to the table. Hopefully, it's more than you currently earn, too.

But this recruitment ad wasn't for a driver and didn't state a salary or even a salary range. 

Hours - check. 

Specification - check. 

Tasks - check. 

Big fat apply button - check. 

Salary (you know, to help pay the bills) - Nothing.

It did, however, state that the salary was 'competitive'. 

Competitive only really has context if you know what the people applying currently earn. So, if the new job in question has a salary of £30k and you know those interested earn £28-32k then yes, you could have confidence your hidden salary is in the ballpark once it's revealed.

But you don't. You can't. And you never will.

So rather than ask people to jump through hoops when they don't know if the effort is worth it, just put the salary on your job ads. 

It's really not much to ask.