[abannin]

Really great points.

Maybe the better response is "I tell you mine if you tell me yours"? If you know how much the recruiter is taking home, you can get a sense of their incentives.

It's also important to weigh these costs at the margin. If they have a candidate who will sign faster and for less money, the recruiter isn't going to advocate for you.

While recruiters do often work with a small set of companies, the challenge of the job is supply, not demand. They are paid to find employees, not to find employers. Even if they're working with a single client, in a hot market this will have next to no impact on salary pricing.