[aantix]

If you care about maximizing your take home pay, you will not use a recruiter.

Regardless of what they tell you, their fee will factor into your salary negotiations and give you less leverage to the upside.

While the potential employer won't tell you the recruiters fee, behind closed doors the conversation goes "Well, he wants 125K and the recruiter has a 10% fee on top of that, so..."

You're automatically a more expensive employee if you go through a recruiter and that's a bad thing. If you're half-way good at what you do, reach out to the company you like directly.

[fecak]

I'm a recruiter, and I often see the opposite effect. There are quite a few candidates that are underpaid and don't realize it until they start talking to a recruiter. If they'd gone directly to the company they may have received that 30% bump to bring them to market rate, but perhaps not. One benefit a recruiter provides to job seekers is the info on the market - of course this only applies to recruiters that know the market.

I'd think fee only figures into the salary conversation when fees are exorbitant (which they can be), otherwise it's a cost of doing business for some companies. Once a startup taps out their friends and family plan, they often reach out to me for some hires, and those usually lead to some referrals from those new hires and the company can subsist off friends/family of the new hires for a little longer.

This is part of the reason I charge lower and fixed (fees paid in advance, well below market rate, and fixed meaning not tied to salary) fees than my competitors, as it takes this argument off the table from both sides. It doesn't prohibit a company from making a hire because the 'tax' on the hire isn't high enough to be prohibitive, and candidates know that the 'tax' on their hire is also relatively low and prepaid. Under this model, any hire is judged based on compensation to value, and not based on a high 'tax'/fee.

[bcbrown]

I feel like I have a disincentive to share salary info with recruiters - they'll just give that to the company for whom they are soliciting me. I know that's less true in the agency model you've talked about before. What's your advice on when it is and isn't appropriate to discuss current salary and salary expectations with a recruiter?

Edit: a specific scenario from earlier this year. I was cold-contacted on LinkedIn, the job sounded interesting, so I talked with the recruiter, ended up applying, interviewing, and declined an offer. I told them the range I wanted, they asked what I was making. I dodged the question, so they asked if it was more-or-less X, and I confirmed. Turns out that when they talked to the company, they said I had wanted about 10k less than I had actually said I wanted. The number they said I wanted was a 10% bump on my current salary, and it seemed to me that they were trying to find out the lowest number they could give that would still be a 10% raise. It seemed pretty scummy to me, and I'm not going to work with him again.

[fecak]

It's actually true that an agency recruiter will likely share your salary info with the company - in fact, the company may require the recruiter to provide at least some context (current salary, expectations, or both) when submitting a candidate.

There is a ton of 'fear' or at least awareness about being at some disadvantage if a company knows your current salary. I personally think the only number that matters is your salary expectations.

If you are truly underpaid and you are aware of this, then your expectations might seem a bit high relative to where you are now, but not high if you consider the market. As an example, when candidates move to the US from foreign countries, they can see themselves earning double or even ten times what they made at home. If you make $10K US in India and tell the recruiter that, and the recruiter shares that info with the hiring company, do you really think the company is using that number as some baseline? Of course not. Expectation is the key number here.

If you are overpaid for a certain market (which can be dangerous from a career mobility perspective) and aware of it, usually due to some externality, your current salary makes little difference. When someone changes geographic markets, such as moving into or out of SF, their current compensation is basically thrown out the window. Should you have fear telling a recruiter that you were making 100K in Philadelphia when you are moving to SF? Your market value in SF may be closer to 150K, so current salary means little.

If you know your market value - and a good recruiter who knows a specific market should be able to price you out - discussing current salary doesn't matter much. When I'm working with underpaid candidates, I'll always mention to my client company that my candidate is underpaid and we expect that will be remedied during this job search.

[hkmurakami]

On the flip side, what if you're terrible at negotiating? For those people, even s theoretically reduced salary may be higher than what they'd get for themselves.

[protonfish]

In my experience I have gotten better salaries when I went through a recruiter. I am a terrible negotiator and they have greater knowledge about going rates for my skills and what the employer is willing to pay.

[hcho]

Most recruiters don't care about the number; they only care that you signed the dotted line. Their downside is much, much bigger than their downside.

[fecak]

This is partially true, although you have to keep in mind that agency recruiters never have the incentive to minimize your compensation. They do have an incentive to get you more money, and their biggest incentive is for any offer (high or low) to be accepted - but their incentive is never to get you a lower salary.

[chrisbennet]

It isn't that simple. Like real estate agents, they only get paid for a placement. Numbers wise, they are motivated to place you any way they can. They don't have much more to gain from getting you another $10K. They risk not placing you if you are too expensive.

I don't have anything against recruiters but one should be realistic as to how things actually work.

[fecak]

They do get paid for a placement - this is true - but there is certainly motivation in getting someone another 10K. For someone like me that owns their own small company, an extra 10K for my candidate could mean $2,500 in my pocket.

I'll always advise candidates on the risk of asking too much or the potential for an offer to be retracted if we don't negotiate in good faith and reasonability, but it isn't accurate to think that the incentive to raise a candidate's salary isn't there for many recruiters. For your example of 10K that may result in $2,500 to the recruiter, that isn't an insignificant amount. That's a mortgage payment for some.

I do agree that the risk of someone being too expensive is real, but the recruiter doesn't decide on what is too expensive - that is a decision made by the market and participants in the market.