[adrianhoward]

Job Advert is not the worst way to find somebody

Well - in my experience and the experience of everybody else I know in recruitment they're less effective than getting direct recommendations and having a good recruiter. YMMV of course ;-)

No HR professional would agree with you that quoting salary on job advert is good idea.

I know several HR professionals who would disagree with you on that.

The issues that you mentioned do exist (although if you're paying new hires more than existing employees then that's a whole different barrel of problem).

However - they pale into insignificance compared to the increase in qualified candidates that you get applying (and to a lesser experience a decrease in the unqualified and deluded).

It's been my experience on multiple occasions when I've been helping companies hire on developers that adding a salary to the job descriptions gets you better candidates.