There are a lot of recruiters on the market. But it's really no different than the market for lawyers; the median lawyer is a very poor man but the average lawyer is rich.
If they can't put a number on the table, they are probably one of those that tries to run a volume game, which I think is a bad approach for engineering. Basically spamming and not giving any info until they get their quotas.
The good ones want you to get hired at a good price because they are often paid a commission on your salary. And the great ones want to keep in touch so they can cash out again once you get bored with your current job. But the spammy one will have moved on to selling used cars at this point.
> I have wanted to escape the dreaded cycle of dealing with these terrible recruiters
Focus on yourself. When you are in a good place yourself you will find non-terrible recruiters. And when recruiters reach out, have a copy/paste response to say thanks for reaching out. +1 bonus points if you have a friend looking for a job and you can share their LinkedIn profile in your copy/paste response.
And don't run away (escape), run towards something.
I love this inspiring response but someone who is on the outside trying to claw their way in cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel. I guess its a self fulfilling prophecy, don't run away and there is a chance in the distant future you jump into that other circle but if you don't try you have exhausted any chance. But what if you spend all that effort trying never do? What have you sacrificed in order to end up failing to get into that other circle?
What do you mean? Either you got a bad deal being underpaid which means your boss got a good deal, or you’re getting paid a lot and your boss got a bad deal but you got a good one.
How can you both be losing?
It's fairly easy to get someone to push your resume forward internally, if that person has some sort of (even benign) reason to think you'd be a good hire. Everyone wants to hire good people and often we're compensated for referrals who pan out.
I'm currently working in Red Bank and have been having a hell of a time finding places that don't seem miserable or just short contract work that I'm not interested in lol
I find the recruiters who get back to me are pretty open and transparent. If not, that's a sign they're probably not well connected with the company and may even simply be front-running a listing they found on a job site.
On preview: what @kortilla said. I don't find it limiting since it's a number I would be happy accepting (all other things being acceptable). I'm not out to maximize my salary. I want to maximize my well-being.
I generally want to understand what someone's ask is first.
After that I'm usually very upfront (ie, immediate verbal feedback) on how that falls into the position vs their apparent skill set etc.
If they have come in low (not uncommon for non bay area folks) I'll let them know that there are opportunities for growth beyond where they would start at. If they are someone we want we'll generally beat their ask as well to get them where they should reasonably be. Then usually there are two years of substantial pay increases. My own experience, these tend to be great folks to have on team if you can give them 3 years of nice growth.
If they are too high I'm usually upfront that at that rate they'd be flat compensation wise for a number of years or that the amount is simply too high relative to skill for position and our needs.
It used to be market was so tight, that if you found a great person you could go 2x what the planned budget was. Not sure if all orgs have that flex so that makes it a bit unusual.
I've heard that once before and it always puzzled me. Basically you're telling the candidate that you want to underpay them now, so you can eventually pay them what they are worth. The math is in their favor even if they don't get a raise next year. And of course, next year they will be worth more anyway because they will have another year's experience plus additional domain knowledge.
I'm curious if anyone has ever fallen for that line.
The quote is saying that the employee will be at the top of the budgeted pay range for that position, so their salary won’t grow much at all year over year.
I’m unclear on where you’re getting “underpay” from. Perhaps you’re assuming that the budgeted salary is below fair market value, and there’s a vague promise to increase the budget/salary in the future? Not sure why anyone would take the position in that case.
That said it feels kinda nice if the company gives you a raise without you even asking but it does mean you were basically underpayed vs. what you might have gotten.
I'm not sure where "The assumption is that the candidate is already worth the top of the pay range for the position" comes into this. As a potential employee, i want to maximize my $$$. How much the employer thinks i'm worth is the employer's problem not mine. If the employer gives me a choice that i can either (a) make more money or (b) make less money, i am going to choose (a), and i don't know why anyone would chose (b), all other things being equal.
I think its good to communicate that they wont be getting raises. I've taken a few jobs where I've been paid well above average, it feels great then you dont get any pay rises for a few years which makes you feel like you're aren't doing a good job.
Stared at this for a while, and can make no sense of it.
1. Bend policy at hiring. $250k. $250k. $250k. $250k. $250k. $250k (no raises)
2. Follow salary brackets. $200k. $210k. $220k. $230k. $240k. $250k (low initial salary, catch up over time)
Having been on both sides, it's nearly impossible to make the case for bending policy further at annual reviews. Over time, employees converge to pay brackets. If you were hired with a on-off exception, you're getting no raises for a long time.
No raises feels shitty to a lot of people. It also brings risks.
True story: I was hired by a not-for-profit doing good work. Pay was maybe 1/3 of Google, and I'd be the top tech person at the org (not by ladder, but by skills). Pay was about 85% of what I needed to cover cost-of-living. They stretched brackets to get up to covering my cost-of-living exactly, so I was almost 20% over the upper cap of my pay bracket. Come next re-org, what do you know, they re-jiggle salary brackets standardize things, and my salary comes down 20%.
Fortunately, in the meantime, my cost of living had come down, so it worked out okay. I'm doing important, fulfilling work, and it's fun. So long as I'm doing that and making ends meet, I'm not tempted to jump ship to FAANG.
And no, my employer wasn't simply f-ing me; I understand the organizational structure, psychology, and dynamics well enough to understand what happened, how, and why. These were dynamics well above anything my boss, their boss, or their boss has any influence over, and I'd rather spend the social capital of going to their boss on something more important (e.g. making sure everything I do is open source).
A common career mistake people make is to assign intentions to places where the other side has no control. If you're worth $350k on the free market, and you receive a $180k offer, odds are the other side isn't low-balling you or doing anything mean or improper. They're operating from their constraints. You're operating from yours.
If you need $350k, and they can spend up to $500k, you'll be hired, and how well each side negotiates sets at where you'll get paid. If you need $350k and they can spend up to $200k, you're not getting hired, period. It's good to discover that earlier rather than later, but in practice, that usually comes up after the interview. In the no-hire $200k/$350k case, although you might not get a job now, things might change in five or ten years, and it's good to leave without bad feelings, and I'm not just talking about expressing bad feelings, but about what you're actually feeling. If you come out thinking "low-ball exploitative !@#$%," that's not very healthy; if you come out feeling "good people; no fit; difference in expectations; maybe next time," that is healthy.
Note - I've always given my number first (and all consultants tend to) and it's worked out fine.
Note, most people don't like dealing with places that are not upfront with the number to purchase the item / time etc. So if you are selling your labor, have some sense of its value /price.
There is no objective measure and you likely underestimate what you are "worth" to some companies.
As a consultant it might be different because roles are different and you aren't really talking to HR at that point, e.g salary negotiation
The concept of your "worth" as the salary that you can manage to negotiate is so stupidly backwards that I cannot express how much it makes me want to burn everything to the ground.
"I've actually done a few of these calls at this point and i know what the best practice / right move / way to play this is, so instead of me telling you what i'm looking for i'd like you to tell me the range on your hiring document:)" and just be totally silent.
Worked twice for me now.
Most people want to fill the audio void and will talk. Extensively.
Usually that comes with the offer letter, or comes with the numbers that the recruiter reads to you before the offer letter.
But this is usually much before offer letter.
Now I ask back with “what is the total compensation for this position/role?”. I almost always get an answer, often above my expectations. I used to give my range (mistake)
When they answer "no, we want you to give a number first", I'm at loss about what to do, so I usually give them a number. Answering "no, you" feels kinda puerile.
I assume you have to be the first to do the power play?
Do your homework. These days it's not that hard to determine what a competitive rate for a job is. Then ask for the top end of that, or even a bit more. It shows that you know what you are getting into, what you are worth, and quickly surfaces that there's been a misunderstanding about the job, if there has been one.
Sure maybe push back a little to see if they'll throw out the first number. But don't dance around it too much. Have your number in mind.
I always just say stuff like "I assume that the compensation at amazing company xyz will be competitive enough to consider"
Additionally, remember that most independent recruiters work on some form of commission. It's in their best interest to get you more money because then they also get more money.
Most people ignore these contacts, so it does kinda work to match needy recruiters with underemployed IT pros. But when you're already at FAANG making 400k a year, it can take a recruiter phone call, two tech screens, and an onsite before compensation comes up, and you're now invested like 10 hours into a negotiation where your BATNA exceeds whatever budget they have written down. I've had one recruiter get a bit angry even over it, as if my number was unrealistic (I assume they were unprepared to make a competitive offer).
Since there are so many of these lowball recruiters, some people resort to screening them out up front with a salary negotiation.
If you don't set some kind of expectations with a recruiter then you might end up in processes where the 'negotiation' happens at the back-end, when you've been through the hoops, and the company has no chance in meeting what you're looking for.
This can waste a large amount of your time. Which is probably valuable if this is a situation you're concerned about :-)
It's not so much that as a negotiation technique it's outdated, it's more that you need to pre-select positions in some manner so you don't waste your time. If you are being paid X and a company pays their best employee X/2, but think they are paying 'really well', you're never going to not be wasting your time.
I admit it's not exactly applicable to salary negotiation, but IMO leading with a high number can help cement the counterparty's perception of your value. I think it really depends on what type of company (and what level of its food chain) you're applying for.
They may get more money total, but less money per unit time spent. Their ideal scenario is getting their commission instantly, even if it leaves some money on the table.
Why would I even bother giving them a number if they dont do it first? My way of saying, dont waste my time.
Dictating salary reqs up front does two things:
1. Reduces time wasted on folks or orgs that don't want to pay your rate.
2. Immediately moves discussion away from a dance around salary to salary _negotiation_. Any good HR org that can't meet your salary reqs and still wants you will try to compensate in other ways (stocks, RSUs, benefits, bonuses, etc).
At some terrible companies even, it's harder to hire someone outside of their defined salary band. Even if you don't care about being nice or paying fairly, your life is just made easier by paying them the bottom of the range rather than dealing with HR about salary bands.
(I also agree with many of the parents: you don't really want to be the first mover — it isn't advantageous — but recruiters are very rarely going to give you that, and will force your hand in naming a number first.)
Queue up yourself asking for 150 coz you make 100 right now and you did your research. The recruiter might just begrudgingly give you the 150 they were prepared to go to anyway coz you seem to know your stuff. Of maybe he's gonna haggle you down to 140. Big deal. But you set the tone of the conversation. This is not gonna work if you don't know your worth but either way either you are gonna lowball yourself and they will just accept or they are gonna lowball it.
Episode 10 here but the rest are awesome too:
I would imagine (perhaps unreasonably) that a relatively seasoned person on the job market would have a reasonable understanding of their market value within a few percentage points - so the recruiter might be willing to pay up to $105/hour, while you low balled it at $100/hour.
Just to have concrete numbers to work with, suppose initial offers exactly correspond to final pay and that you're currently making toward the lower end of that range (e.g. because raises haven't kept up with your increased skill and increased market demand).
If you're currently making $X/yr (total comp), you think you _might_ be worth $X+$50k to somebody, and you spit out $X+$50k as your target range, a prospective employer could generously offer $X+$60k and you'd be happy as a clam and none the wiser while missing out on a new Tesla per year in extra pay.
There's a separate argument that if you'd be happy with $X+$60k then you shouldn't try to squeeze your employer for more, but I'll let somebody else make it if they'd like. Regardless, that big of a spread really does exist, and I imagine it grows further into one's career.
Specially in small/medium companies, a lot of the times businesses don’t know what they are looking for.
I know of a place that was looking for a “hardware engineer with 10y experience”. The average salary for this kind of job posting is not that high, they offered way more, but that’s because the actual position was “we’re looking for someone to become COO, and we need him to understand hardware development because the rest of the team doesn’t”.
To my layman understanding, the larger the difference between expectations, the lower the value in this tactic of not revealing your expectations.
Negotiation is an adversarial game played between humans. Therefore there can't be any simple advice except to get better at the things that make you more competitive at negotiation itself. Instead of subscribing to basic rules like, "never give the first number!", put yourself in a position of being well networked, well informed and experienced. Then you can decide how to negotiate well on the fly according to the context. You will probably earn vastly more by focusing on those areas than you will by diligently following simple rules of thumb.
For example: I received an offer from Stripe and got them to add a $100k sign on bonus to it even though I previously gave the first number. Which party gives the first number doesn't matter.
To me that feels more complicated in Silicon Valley with equity. Once a minimum salary is met, I'll care about total compensation, not just the base salary. I'd be nervous that mentioning a low salary could lower an offer, and I don't a have reasonable number for salary I would accept if the company doesn't give much equity.
From my experience recruiters prefer to be told the salary ranges you are looking for to no waste their time neither yours.
If their response doesn’t come with the answers, or it’s just “let’s have a call to discuss”, I already give up and disregard them as spam.
In the article, the author is referring to internal recruiters who are employed by the company itself.
Two very different experiences there.
There are very few high quality third party recruiters but the ones who are typically are very good but overworked and only serve a specific market. If you are not that market then you are a waste of time to them.
"Compensation will depend on your experience"
I have had very little luck getting a recruiter to supply a range. I've had a few, but they are few and far between. I've also had a few that I've gotten to name a range by first naming something comfortably above where I suspect their range is — to which the reply is then to talk me down to that number.
(And, in the cases where I've done this, I've found out the recruiter's range was well below my own BATNA…)
Plenty of recruiters in the past were happy to give me specifics... I'm unsure why you haven't had much luck.
Here's the info I ask them to provide:
- Job Title and Salary
- Job Description
- Company Overview and Location
- Steps in Hiring Process
Whenever I'm emailed by a recruiter, I politely thank them for reaching out, paste the link to the cheat sheet, and invite them to review it and write back if they still think I'm a good match. It quickly separates the professionals from the wannabes. (You usually don't hear back from the wannabes.) The ones who do write back often thank me for it.
I'm pretty cynical when it comes to recruiters. So I find it interesting that 3 of my last 4 jobs have come through one.