Recruitment Salaries in the UK: What the Published Ranges Actually Say
A note on where these numbers come from, because it matters more than the numbers do. Everything below is an externally published figure from a named UK source, quoted as it stands and checked on 4 August 2026. PRODICTA does not estimate salaries and produces no figures of its own. Salary data moves, so re-check at the source before relying on any of it.
The thing neither source tells you
Start here, because it matters more for recruitment than for any other field we have looked at. A large part of a recruitment consultant's pay is commission, and neither published source below says whether its figure includes it.
We checked the National Careers Service page directly on 4 August 2026: it does not use the words commission, bonus or on-target earnings anywhere, and offers no note on what its range covers. Reed's average salary page is silent on the same question.
That silence is not a small gap. Recruitment adverts routinely quote on-target earnings, which is base salary plus what you would earn if you hit target, rather than base alone. Two adverts showing the same number can therefore mean very different things, and a published average that does not say which it counted cannot resolve that for you. Where a figure below is ambiguous on this point, treat it as ambiguous rather than assuming it is base.
No commission percentage or on-target figure appears anywhere on this page, because none was available from a source we could cite. Inventing one would be exactly the kind of false precision that makes salary pages useless.
What the National Careers Service publishes
The National Careers Service, the UK government's careers service, gives a range for a recruitment consultant of £25,000 for a starter rising to £40,000 for someone experienced, with typical hours of 37 to 40 a week.
Worth knowing about that figure: the page carries no publication or last-updated date, so how current it is cannot be verified from the page itself. It is a career-profile band spanning a working life in the role, and as above, it does not say whether commission is in or out.
What Reed publishes
Reed, one of the largest UK job boards, publishes an average recruitment consultant salary of £34,405, with a range of £32,312 to £38,307, drawn from 2,011 recruitment consultant jobs listed on the site at the time of checking.
Worth knowing about that one: it is a snapshot of what is currently advertised rather than what people are paid, and advertised recruitment salaries are particularly likely to be stated as on-target earnings. The number of postings changes daily, so the average moves with it.
On this one, the two broadly agree
Unlike some fields, these two are measuring the same job title, and they line up sensibly: Reed's average sits inside the government's starter-to-experienced band rather than outside it. That is a mild reassurance about both.
It does not resolve the commission question. Both could be quoting base, both could be quoting a mix, and they would still look like this.
These figures cover agency recruitment only
Worth stating plainly. Both sources above describe a recruitment consultant, which is the agency-side role. We looked for a comparable published figure for the in-house side and did not find one: Reed had no salary information for either Recruiter or Talent Acquisition Specialist when both were checked on 4 August 2026.
So nothing on this page should be read as telling you what in-house talent acquisition pays. What a career in recruitment is actually like explains why agency and in-house are genuinely different jobs, and the pay structures differ as much as the work does, in-house roles typically carrying little or no commission.
What actually moves the figure
More than the job title does. In rough order of impact:
Your billings. This is the one that makes recruitment different. In most agency roles, what you personally invoice drives what you earn, so two people with the same title and the same employer can be a long way apart.
Agency or in-house. Agency pay is lower base and higher variable. In-house is usually the reverse, with a steadier total.
Permanent or temporary desk. Permanent placements pay larger one-off fees. Temporary and contract desks earn a margin over time, which builds more slowly and drops away less sharply.
Sector. Technology, finance, legal and executive search desks tend to carry higher fees than volume sectors like hospitality, retail or general administration, for genuinely similar day-to-day work.
Location. London and the South East run ahead of the rest of the UK, as in most office-based fields.
What a salary figure cannot tell you
In recruitment more than most places: how stable it is. A commission-heavy income is not the same as a salary of the same size, and a good quarter followed by a quiet one is a normal experience rather than a sign something has gone wrong.
It also cannot tell you whether you will want the job, and recruitment is a field people leave for reasons that have nothing to do with pay. How to know what job is right for you is worth reading alongside any salary page, and the skills a recruitment career actually asks for covers what the work leans on hardest.
Where to check for yourself
The two sources above are the National Careers Service job profile for recruitment consultant, and Reed's average salary page for the same title. Both are free and public.
Prospects, Glassdoor, Indeed and the Office for National Statistics Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings also publish UK figures, each with its own method. For this field specifically, it is worth looking for any source that states whether commission is included, and treating one that does as more useful than one quoting a bigger number without saying.
Do not take the first number you see, including these ones. Take the method, and check what it counted.