I am looking at my options for next year. In some fellowship programs they advertise a salary range instead of a fixed salary, such as: from £25,000 to £31,000 pa plus London Allowance of £2,497 pa. according to experience.

How do they decide how much to give to you? Of course everyone would want the 31k per annum, instead of the low end of the grade. When it comes to experience, do your employment in the past (before PhD) count for example?

As a newly qualified post-doc (or maybe even a writing-up student?) you would most likely be given the bottom spine point on the salary scale. In my experience, pre-PhD experience is not considered when deciding the salary scale. However, I have never pushed this i.e. was just very grateful to be offered a post-doc position and didn't try to negotiate my way up the salary scale (knew there wasn't the grant funding available to support a higher salary anyway!). Good luck though

BTW, I've been postdoc-ing since 2004 (although didn't complete until 2005) and have not hit £25K yet, so I don't think £25K is too bad for a first post-doc!!

Thank you very much Ann. It makes sense.

I've never tried this, but i wonder what a question like 'how negotiable is the salary?' during the interview would yield?

I suppose it would create similar effect to asking if they will supply a company car

I haven't submitted an application yet (deadline is end of April). But as they have that pay scale, there wouldn't be any harm in asking

I wouldn't ask during the interview! The time to ask is when they offer you the job!

thanks Ann