The thing is, they won’t get the placement if they don’t push to get a $220k offer and the other recruiter does. It’s competitive. It’s a better model than real estate because you aren’t agreed to work with one recruiter.
But only one recruiter is going to be placing you at that job. Two recruiters trying to place you at the same job is radioactive to the company. The company has to decide who gets the referral money. Lawsuits start happening for the one who doesn’t get referral money.
Also most companies who do work with external recruiters only work with one company
I’ve been in software development since 1996 and looked for a job in 1999, 2001 (took a counteroffer), 2008, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2023 and a month ago. My job in BigTech in 2020 fell in my lap.
I have never seen a job market this bad. Even in 2000, as a regular old Windows developer I could easily find a standard enterprise job.
My only saving grace when I was looking both last month and last September was that I had 3.5 years of working at AWS in the Professional Services department (full time direct hire) and AWS partners love to get people from ProServe because they know we can be trusted to talk to decision makers and fly out to clients and lead and do the work.
But I usually would throw my resume up in the air pre-2020 and have multiple job offers fall in my lap.
Appreciate sharing that experience. I’d wondered about the pros and cons of AWS Professional Services especially; almost went there once…
I have recent experience. It’s definitely slower in the last 2.5 years. I see that as a different issue. If the hiring market is soft, then a recruiter can still be working hard for you if your offers aren’t as good. Some of that sorts out earlier in the process when you pitch yourself to the recruiter to be worth presenting to the employer.
What I personally did in early conversations is express my comfort with a longer search process and focus on the right mutual fit. That let them know that they may be overlapping with other applications, and also that they were competing with my job at the time. I realize I was fortunate to have a job to use as a motivator.
Also most companies who do work with external recruiters only work with one company