So from a candidates pov, it's very hard to see if the recruiter even has a relationship with the companies they are passing to. If you have a way to ascertain a good recruiter from a bad (maybe through personal recommendations) then sure go ahead. But I don't think it's useful to use cold call emails.
As another datapoint, I've had several friends go through the job hunt where we each applied to 20+ companies. All of us independently stopped using recruiters when we saw that it was more efficient to work directly with companies.
This is my experience as a junior dev. Ymmv with other roles but I find that the SNR is too low to get any benefit from recruiters.
I have about half a dozen recruiters I trust. All of them contacted me with a cold call email after finding me in LinkedIn or elsewhere.
Yes, the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty bad, but you can essentially pattern match the good from the bad really easily based on the emails they're sending out. The bad ones look like templated emails. The good ones send personal emails clearly not sent to anyone else.
I think recruiters can be great, but don't put too much stock into this point. Recruiters are similar to realtors- yes, they get more if you get more, but they would rather close the deal then to risk no deal at all over a few more thousand dollars.
Also, if they know the budget, they may know how small it is too. If they are no other jobs, they may try to convince you to take whatever's in their book.
When asked, I always say "I am looking for between $Y and $Z" to set the tone. If they continue pushing for my current salary I end the conversation.
To which you respond, "Then I guess we won't be working together". If he really cares about your business, he'll come around. If not, then it really doesn't matter either way because your likelihood of getting what you would ask for otherwise is slim.
It's somewhat like lying about a credential.
Also, I could be wrong but I don't think a new employer will contact a previous employer to specifically learn how much a particular individual was earning.
This isn't the question that I answered. It was asked how stating a specific, untrue salary might be fraud.
Refusing to answer and giving an untrue number are different.
> Also, I could be wrong but I don't think a new employer will contact a previous employer to specifically learn how much a particular individual was earning.
Lying doesn't mean you'll get caught.
Also, be careful. For example, during a background check for one my jobs (a rather "ordinary" one), they said they couldn't verify one of my previous employers, and asked if I could send them proof. I sent W2s for both years I was employed and my offer letter, which satisfied them. Maybe some would feel that's too remote a risk to worry about, but it's not out of the question.
But don't lie to them, especially if they're going to pay you more because of that lie.
The salary negotiation is a completely separate event.
If the potential recruitee said "I'm looking for $X" they're not deceiving anyone.
I've seen how a hiring company might look at a person who wants $X, but earns lower-paying figure and think, "Well, market pay is $X, but if the company before was paying them $X-20%, we can get away with offering $X-15% or $X-10% because it's a marginal increase for the applicant and we still save money."
evilduck, below: nails it with this[0]:
"companies aren't going to tell your their actual upper bounds for what they'll pay in salary, why should you tell them your actual lower bounds? "
I'm just saying that lying about your previous salary in order to get a higher starting salary is pretty clearly fraud. While it's unlikely to ever be prosecuted it is probably grounds, as has already been said, to withdraw the offer or to fire someone.
It's total BS that a potential employer would base their offer on your current salary, but at the same time lying about what you currently make is dangerous
If you're not well networked and you're not enough of a rockstar to have companies approaching you out of the blue, your best bet is to control where that salary anchor is placed. There's hardly any way to verify your claim and you're almost always better off placing it at a believably higher position. I mean, companies aren't going to tell your their actual upper bounds for what they'll pay in salary, why should you tell them your actual lower bounds?
One time I was contacted about a role in London offering between 65k and 90k (can't remember exactly, but a range along those lines). I said I would only consider moving for the 90K end. He asked what I was on. I refused to tell him then eventually got wore down and told him my relatively small Spanish salary. He refused to put me through for that saying that it was not usual to get more than 10% more than what I am on.
The company was willing to pay more for "the right candidate", but my salary at the time meant I wasn't that candidate.
Don't disclose your salary to recruiters.
Stay away from those recruiters and never negotiate your salary with recruiters.
I have worked with a great recruiter in the past, but lately I've been turned off by the whole process, I talked to one the other day and he said "Do you have any MVC experience? MVC is a big technology these days, you didn't list that on your resume ".
I would also look for ones who are investing heavily in one community. Someone who does exclusively Python in London, sponsors all the conferences, and has done for a while is likely to know which places are nice to work at, where pays well comparatively, and so on.
are they putting you in front of the right companies? are they asking you questions about your needs? are they pitching you on the job (it should be worthy of a pitch), as well as vice versa? are they working with the right hiring budget?
these are the basic questions you use to judge the quality of a sales person. they have to "get it" on a relationship level, not a technical level.
Why should I do this myself?
I hate sausage on pizza. If I order a pepperoni and mushroom slice, I'm gonna get mad if the guy gives me back a pepperoni, mushroom, and sausage slice and tells me "it should be easy to pick out the sausages if you don't like 'em".
Near as I can tell, AngelList does this, for example.
This is why I really appreciated going through recruiters early in my career. Companies will never give feedback directly to candidates, but for some reason they feel perfectly comfortable passing it along when there's a recruiter acting as a middleman.
Look for job aggregators like Adzuna, Indeed, etc, which scrape all jobs on the web. When you see results, it should be easy to work out which jobs are posted by recruiters, and which have been posted directly by the company.
In my (massively biased) experience, you are better off applying for a position when you've been put forward by a recruiter:
* The recruiter knows what the client's salary range is, and wants you to get paid as much as possible (as the role is commission based) - they'll be able to make sure you're getting a good deal out of the client
* The recruiter is a professional sales person, and will chase the hiring manager for feedback, technical interviews, etc etc, in a way that as a direct candidate you'll come across as too pushy if you do yourself
* The recruiter will genuinely have a good view of other similar jobs you may not have found that you'd be a good match for.
* The recruiter will get much much more candid feedback about you than you'll ever get directly from the client
... and a whole bunch of other factors.