Recruiters who share too much

stressful recruiters comic
stressful recruiters comic
stressful recruiters comic

It’s important to have transparency and honesty in every relationship, but I have had recruiters who share too much.

For example, I once read an email from a recruiter that said something like “Max Rate $50/hr, less is preferable.” Now why would a recruiter share that with a candidate?

I think they did a copy-and-paste and forgot to edit that out. That was obviously from their client and the fact that they left it in means that they aren’t good with details, or they are trying to push people down on the price. The crazy thing is that the skills that they wanted were not $50/hr and people who would work at that rate wouldn’t have those skills or would jump when they got a better opportunity since the going rate for those skills was at least $70 an hour.

Other recruiters have done similar tricks. They act ignorant of what the law is in NYC and when I remind them they share the salary range. Or they say “This job doesn’t have a salary range.” Fine then talk to me when you find a salary range. I am not going to play games with recruiters. If they don’t want to follow the law I don’t want to have business with them.

I have had recruiters say that they want me to make more salary because they get paid a percentage of what my first-year salary is. So they want me to go high on the range. The recruiter will nudge you to where they think you should give a number. If they have multiple people then I give a high number. The perception is that lower salary people are less capable, even though that isn’t the truth.

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Other recruiters have said that candidates who are mostly concerned about the salary are poor employees. Really? So you are a poor recruiter because you care about your salary? There are a lot of games around money and I don’t play it. If they don’t have a salary range then I say thank you and move on. I don’t need to start a relationship with deception.

If you must, err on the side of transparency. I do and it has worked well to find a company that respects me as a person.