
Your recruiter is not your friend - JoshDoody
https://fearlesssalarynegotiation.com/recruiter-business-model/
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DarronWyke
>salary negotiations

This is an obvious one. I've dealt with a ton of recruiters over the years. If
they're not willing to discuss a range upfront with you (amongst other
things), they're lying to you. THERE IS NO JOB. They're just building their
virtual rolodex for future sales.

If they want to grill you about what you do, who you know, references, etc.
before revealing the name and location of the client... THERE IS NO JOB. (Hint
for my younger colleagues: never reveal your references until you get an
offer. They're just hitting you up for warm bodies that they can then probe.)

Recruiters do this to play some weird game of Glengarry Glen Ross, and I have
no idea why. They swing in the extreme direction of sales and remove the
technical aspects of it. We're treated like fodder for the job position
sacrifice. And worse yet, a lot of them seem to think we're too stupid to know
better.

I never expect a recruiter to be technical; they're a form of HR, not
engineering. I wouldn't expect one to know how to read a TCP dump, or analyze
a Nessus report for false positives. However a base understanding of what
you're pushing for is to be expected. I had one recruiter almost shy away from
me because he only saw a keyword listed once or twice on my resume... _even
though it 's a core technology used in every single role I've done that's
industry-wide_.

~~~
iceman7733
I'm 3 years into my career with a M.S in CS and I don't know how to read a TCP
dump or Nessus report :( Guess I should be a recruiter. Oh wait, I used to be!

~~~
DarronWyke
Good for you, you're an exception far removed from the rule.

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paul7986
I don’t get the dislike for recruiters?

I use them to boost my salary when asked how much I’m making. I say 1/4 more
then reality. From there they boost their offer.

Why not use recruiters to give yourself a big fat raise? They are after all
coming after you.

Only downside of recruiters for me has been they are distracting and blow up
your ego thinking you can find any job. Yet their offerings are only
prospective.

~~~
JoshDoody
I don't dislike recruiters at all. They're making a living helping place
people in jobs - that's a useful thing to do. But it's important to
distinguish "placing people in jobs" from "looking at for the best interests
of those people by getting them the best compensation package possible".

It's important to take agency of the salary conversation because it can be so
valuable for the candidate to handle that and maximize salary. Unfortunately,
maximizing salary often conflicts with the recruiters' goal of placing as many
people as possible as fast as possible.

Thanks for the question and for giving me a chance to clarify!

~~~
dozzie
> I don't dislike recruiters at all.

In principle, I agree. Execution is vastly different, though. Recruiters I've
met up to now are mostly bunch of people not understanding the thing they
recruit for in the slightest, so they just move documents from pile A to pile
B, rejecting them at random in the process.

I met a few recruiters that understood the industry they operated on. They
just were outliers, not the norm.

> They're making a living helping place people in jobs - that's a useful thing
> to do.

Wrong. Helping people land in a job is an unimportant side effect. They mainly
help companies fill the roles with bodies. It's irrelevant if the candidate
likes the role, is a good fit, and would grow professionally. The only part
that is important is that the company finds the candidate competent enough,
not the other way around.

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toomuchtodo
[mention of typo removed]

Incredibly good advice as usual. I used your information when negotiating for
my current position (internal HR), and earn ~20% more than my colleagues
because of said advice (our team shares our compensation info amongst
ourselves).

EDIT: Also, fantastic use of the analogy to real estate agents. Highlights
what happens when incentives aren't aligned.

~~~
JoshDoody
Ah, thank you! Fixing that now. (And thanks for the kind words!) UPDATE: Fixed
the typo. Thanks again for pointing that out.

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MollyR
I wish this was hammered into all graduating students.

I had several recruiters alter my resumes before I went into an interview. It
was unbelievable.

~~~
Wildgoose
I remember in my twenties having a recruiter rewrite my CV, removing relevant
experience and claiming experience I didn't have. All without my knowledge.
You cam imagine how the resulting interview went....

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jrs95
I actually had a really positive experience with a recruiter. I had a
relatively low salary and they negotiated twice what I was making before at my
current position. And I don’t even have a degree.

~~~
commandlinefan
I've honestly only ever had positive interactions with recruiters, and
negative experiences finding jobs any other way. I know I'm just a single data
point, but I'm a data point that's been programming professionally now for 23
years across 10 different employers. About half of the jobs I've gotten have
been through recruiters and the other half through my "personal network" which
conventional wisdom suggests is the best way to find a job; yet by far the
walking nightmare jobs I've had have all been the personal network type. As
best I can tell, there's a reason for that: when somebody who I knew from a
past job wants to bring me in as one of his underlings, he has to make a
relatively hard sell to management to get me on board, so they (apparently)
end up misrepresenting my abilities by a bit. So the first time they expect a
miracle, I fail to deliver, and things get... tense. On the other hand,
whenever I'm brought in through a recruiter, the expectations on me are mostly
in line with what I put on my resume and nobody's personal and professional
reputation is on the line if it takes me a few days to get up to speed with
the codebase.

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jnordwick
The article doesnt describe "your recruiter". It describes some random person
calling you asking you about switching jobs.

MY recruiter is often somebody i have a working relationship with, i trust to
some extent, and I've vetted. The author seems to not understand this dynamic.

I love my recruiters i work with. I make sure they understand and specialize
in my industry, have a good reputation, have good connections, i can't talk
honestly too, and other intangibles.

Of course a recruiter isn't trying to get you the very best offer in purely
numeric terms, and neither should you. But both of you have the same problem
and your incentives are aligned: you shouldn't take two more months to secure
and extra $5000 since you are giving up way more in foregone salary.

There are a lot of bad recruiters out there, but you need to make am effort to
deal with good ones. Don't treat your resume like buckshot and spray it
everywhere. Work with good recruiters and you'll be fine.

And stop the recruiter hate. If you treat your recruiters as enemies, instead
of valuable business relationships, I expect you'll probably have problems.

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rjmill
Most of my experience with recruiters has matched this article. Recruiting, on
a small scale, is the "volume game" described in this article.

That said, the best recruiters I've known don't look at the game like that.
Imagine how the real estate business would change if homeowners were selling a
house every couple of years. Realtors would want to attract and nurture
relationships with homeowners selling the most expensive houses in order to
secure many recurring high-value payoffs. They'd also know that "high-value"
homeowners are likely to be friends with other high-value homeowners. If they
do their best for one homeowner, that one will likely lead them to other
homeowners and high-value payoffs.

Of course, there are precious few recruiters who truly take that approach
(even though they all claim otherwise.) Recruiters aren't a free lunch. It
takes time and effort to find the rare recruiters who truly want you to
maximize your career potential. If/when you find one who truly gets it,
however, you should try to nurture that relationship. (You both stand to make
a lot of money off of each other over the course of your careers.)

My last job hunt ended in an offer through a recruiter. The offer was a 40%
raise from the job I was working at the time. The recruiter was initially
skeptical about my desired salary range (which was actually lower than I ended
up getting offered), but she listened when I said that I'd be able to get that
number.

I wouldn't have been able to get that much money without this recruiter's
help. I had another offer at that time where the company asked me what I
thought was reasonable and just gave me that. The number was ~15% lower than
the offer through the recruiter. She had all the data on what other engineers
with comparable skills/experience were making, so she was able to help me
realize that I was undercutting myself.

To be clear, this recruiter is an exception to the rule. She's certainly not
the only recruiter I've worked with, but she's the first and only recruiter
I'll reach out to when I'm looking for new opportunities. She's been a
tremendous help in my career, and I try to help her whenever I can by
introducing her to great engineers that fit roles she's looking for. Pretty
much every other recruiter I've worked with has fit the description laid out
in this article.

(full disclosure: I consider this recruiter to be one of my closest friends,
so my views are surely biased.)

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UserJS
Wouldn’t this apply to investment bankers who provide M&A advisory services
for companies/startups looking to sell? It’s essentially the same business
model as real estate.

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borski
The salary question is illegal now in California.

~~~
JoshDoody
It’s true that the CURRENT salary question is illegal in a few states, but
salary EXPECTATIONS are still fair game. So there’s still a lot of room to
make a misstep, unfortunately.

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elechi
Asking OP, what market do you work in? Government? Finance? Tech? Health? And
in what city?

~~~
JoshDoody
I'm currently a salary negotiation coach, and most of my clients are in tech
(Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, some smaller tech companies). In my
previous life, I was a project manager and consultant in the HR Software
industry. I live in Florida, but have worked for companies based in Florida,
California, Indiana.

~~~
elechi
The reason why I ask is because in Washington, D.C, at least in tech, it's
almost impossible to get a job in this area without going through a recruiter.
So how would you go about dealing with them in an unable to avoid situation?

~~~
JoshDoody
If you MUST work with a recruiter (staffing firm, for example), I think it's
important to be firm that you're excited for good opportunities, but that your
salary history and expectations are your private business. I also recommend
going around the recruiters whenever possible by using your own network
(people who work at the company or in the industry who can make phone calls to
put you in touch with the company directly).

~~~
elechi
I recently interviewed someone for the new company I just started working for.
This candidate was recommended by someone already in the company for a
position we're trying to fill. The company reached out to their staffing firm,
and contacted him through them. So, that's what I mean by D.C. tech companies,
they seems to LOVE using recruiters.

Thank you for the article. To actually get to the point, I'm not sure how
helpful it is to me. It seems to me like a game: if you're sure you have a
strong hand, it makes sense to not disclose your salary. But if you have a
weak one, disclosing early/knowing the salary range makes it worthwhile to
disclose the range that you're looking for.

~~~
briffle
I think a big part of the issue is why do you need to tell them your salary?
why doesn't the recruiter tell you the expected salary range. The same
questions can be answered...

~~~
elechi
In D.C., the place where I've spent most of my adult career, that is the case.
If your recruiter doesn't tell you the salary range, it's because they (75%)
honestly don't know themselves. Either because it may be based on experience
of the candidate, or because there are multiple roles which you as a candidate
could fill and the company doesn't want to throw out numbers to confuse/hide
things.

In fact, it's usually the opposite situation here. It's weird to NOT know the
salary range, and how much wiggle room there is. (It honestly helps that
salary range is usually defined in the proposal for contract companies to the
government, and they've already built in profit before they even begin to hire
employees.)

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dmlab
Whenever I read an article with the phrase "stay with me" I go on click-bait
alert.

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paulsutter
This is a lead gen website / SEO spam, exposed by this gem halfway down the
page:

“I’m a salary negotiation expert. My goal is to maximize my clients’ salaries
with simple, proven salary negotiation tactics.”

Which is hilarious really

~~~
personjerry
I think there’s a lot of solid advice in these posts, and they aren’t
clickbaiting into buying anything. Check out the article about not disclosing
salary, I liked that one a lot.

Could you explain why it’s such a problem to disclose what he does?

~~~
paulsutter
The problem is that his stories are interlinked repetitive direct marketing
spam-copy. He has one or two points (don’t disclose a range, make them do it),
and repeats those two points over and over within a phony story about a
recruiter.

