Ask HN: Why don't recruiters do our salary negotiations for us
Most recruiters I have worked with get us in the door but when it comes time to salary negotiation it's up to us. Why don't they handle that aspect similar to agents in the media world. Salary negotiation is complicated and recruiters are mostly useless middlemen. They're sort of used car salesemen (with used car being you :) ) that need to move inventory off the lot. It less important to spend time to get extra 5% then sell two cars quicker. No offence but it's a good analogy. In the freakonomics book Dan Ariely makes the same point. Here with real state agents when they are selling your house they tend to encourage you to accept the first rational offer because for them is better to move the house inventory tan the extra % in the commission. However when they are selling their own houses... the houses tendon yo stay 3 weeks more on average, because there they have a better incentive to wait for a better offer. Totally agree. In fact real estate agents are pretty much never acting in the best interests of their customers (buyer or sellers). All of them are interested in making transaction happen faster to "move inventory". Negotiating better deal for their client is a waste of time for agents, although none of them will ever acknowledge it. > Salary negotiation is complicated It’s really not unless you’re attempting to extract the theoretical maximum from each negotiation. What else would people negotiate for? A salary that’s acceptable to them. Personally, I don’t need the most money somebody is willing to pay me. I need enough money for my goals in life. In fact, I’ll happily accept a number that’s lower than an employer’s maximum because it makes me a good value. If their number is less than my number, I ask for my number plus a little bit and they say either yes/no. No stress and I’m perfectly happy either way. depends on the 'salesperson' (i.e. recruiter). third party recruiters run the gamut, and in my experience if you work with a good one they'll help you negotiate higher, provided you make their job easier (fast communications, transparent, etc.) They're paid by the company that hire you. That's a pretty huge conflict of interest for you to let them negotiate "for" you. It's also why they don't want the job (do well and piss off your client, do badly and piss off the employee). Also no one can really negotiate for you because ultimately you have to know what you will accept and that depends on feelings as much as facts. Recruiters just want to close deals. They don’t care particularly if you get an extra 5-10k, they work in volume. As the candidate if you tell them the deal will be closed if you can get an extra 5-10K then you can use them to negotiate for that on your behalf. Recruiters have a conflict of interest. They get paid by the company that hires the tech. So in theory they should work hard to get you a great salary, if they negotiated it. But, what ends up happening, when there is a conflict of interest, is that most recruiters would try to get the best salary that would get you hired and keep them from losing the opportunity of a commission. Which is not always the best for the tech. I think that the salaries of some programmers and such have gotten high enough so that something similar to an agent should be available to negotiate salaries. There are some programmers that should be called superstars and they should be paid as such. I had a recruiter who did this once. He got me 30% over market rate by telling the company I was a senior engineer whom he had known for years. As someone who had graduated from uni about a year earlier, I had a very bewildering year at the company. Hahaha that's awesome. Thanks for sharing! It was not awesome. Strongly do not recommend. Maybe not as an experience, but it seems worthy of that as a story. It was too confusing for me to craft a clear story. The good ones do that. I think many recruiters here charge based on the candidate's salary. I once applied for one job directly and via a recruiter. I didn't realize it was the same job. The recruiter basically pitched me about 30% higher than what I'd aim for when applying directly. Direct applications can often result in HR trying to lowball you, but recruiters know the range. Some recruiters might see it as a violation of trust telling the candidate the salary range, and often they value the one who's giving the money, so they usually let you handle the negotiations. I think that would be an agent, which would basically be a recruiter working for the candidate. I have had some who pushed the upper bounds of the salary range for me. We recently built this into a service where experienced tech recruiters are in your corner, and help you negotiate your offer: https://levels.fyi/services/