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Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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That depends. We pay significant money for recruiters to do nationwide (even international) searches for executive positions, and they are not spammers. The name of their company would be recognized by those they contact. On the other hand, there are many scammers including recruiters for insurance sales that end up costing you money with no resulting job.
My son just got a job thorugh a recruiter- it is not a high-paying job but one he really wanted. He contacted the recruiter a couple of times telling him how interested he was in the position and I think that helped.
I've had a lot of luck with recruiters. But, I don't use them as my primary means of job searching. Consider them as icing on the cake you've already baked. They can be helpful, even the Indian ones.
The Indian ones are the biggest scammers and don't really "have" job orders. Long story but don't use them... they'll tell you they're submitting you for a job order they don't have.
Meanwhile if you were submitted by a legit company... you would actually have a shot at being considered.
Either way, like anything in life.. there are good and bad recruiters.
I'd never provide my ssn or any of that information without a solid job offer.
And there is no reason to feel loyalty to any recruiter.
Use them as just another tool in your employment search.
I'd never provide my ssn or any of that information without a solid job offer.
An employer might ask for your SSN as part of the on boarding process, but a recruiter has no business asking for your SSN. Giving it to a recruiter is just asking for your identity to be stolen.
It's more likely that the client wanted to pay $16-18, didn't get any qualified applicants, and had to raise what they were willing to pay. A recruiter has zero incentive to "low-ball" you, unless it's to get you into the client's salary range. They get paid based on your salary.
To my understanding, recruiters also get paid based on the bill rate. So they can charge a client say $150 an hr than pay the employee $50 an hour and they get the rest so that's $150-$50 = $100 an hour for the recruiter/agency as I was dealing with a temp agency and that's how they work. So in that instance, a recruiter has a HUGE incentive to low ball a candidate as they get a bigger cut of the pay due to profit margins.
There are different ways that recruiters/headhunters get paid and yes you mentioned one of them that is known as a headhunter, which typically wants the candidate to make as much as possible because they get a huge cut of the employee's first year salary.
I'm not making this up as you can do an internet search on "how recruiters get paid" and it's all there.
To my understanding, recruiters also get paid based on the bill rate. So they can charge a client say $150 an hr than pay the employee $50 an hour and they get the rest so that's $150-$50 = $100 an hour for the recruiter/agency as I was dealing with a temp agency and that's how they work.
Nobody goes to a third-party recruiter and says, "Get me a warm body, I'll pay $150 an hour." If all they need is X number of unskilled plodders, then yeah, they may well say they'll pay $25 per hour each, and the placement firm pays as little as possible to keep as much as possible. When you call a recruiter to fill one given job, there is no way on Earth you're going to treat that as a commodity... you interview people, determine their worth, and pay based on that. It's extremely commonplace to say, "Here's Candidate A, we're OK with him, we'll pay $80 an hour for him. Candidate B is a rock star, we'll pay $120 an hour if we can get him."
At the end of the day, though, if you don't negotiate, or negotiate badly, you get what you get. If you accept $18 an hour, and find out later you could've gotten $25, you only have yourself to blame. No point in yelling about the guy who did a better job of retaining that money.
Nobody goes to a third-party recruiter and says, "Get me a warm body, I'll pay $150 an hour." If all they need is X number of unskilled plodders, then yeah, they may well say they'll pay $25 per hour each, and the placement firm pays as little as possible to keep as much as possible. When you call a recruiter to fill one given job, there is no way on Earth you're going to treat that as a commodity... you interview people, determine their worth, and pay based on that. It's extremely commonplace to say, "Here's Candidate A, we're OK with him, we'll pay $80 an hour for him. Candidate B is a rock star, we'll pay $120 an hour if we can get him."
At the end of the day, though, if you don't negotiate, or negotiate badly, you get what you get. If you accept $18 an hour, and find out later you could've gotten $25, you only have yourself to blame. No point in yelling about the guy who did a better job of retaining that money.
That's why I always negotiate and encourage others too as well. The $150 an hour is just an example and the agency has fees and expenses to pay on their end including any benefits and unemployment insurance. You're wrong some companies do that, recruiting is a very expensive process. The client doesn't have to pay out benefits nor worry about unemployment insurance as that is all on the agency so $150 may seem like a lot but it's not really.
That's why some recruiters have an incentive to low-ball candidates due to profit margins. Why pay someone $25 when they can low ball someone at $18? It all depends on what the agency wants to bill the client. I'm shocked you've never heard of this as it's been around for ages. Again there are different types of recruiting and how they earn there money as I mentioned in my earlier post.
My guess is that the agency couldn't get quality candidates low balling them at $18 so they raised it up to $25. I don't know what the agencies bill rate is though so it all depends.
I've never heard of a recruiter getting paid on someone's bill rate. That sounds like consulting, not recruiting. That said, I'm sure things have changed a lot in the 20 some years since I was a recruiter. We got paid a negotiated percentage of the salary, by the employers who hired us. So, it was in our best interest to get the candidate the highest salary. We only got a percentage of that, as the firm we worked for, did the billing, had overhead, etc.
What I meant, when I said recruiters are paid in all kinds of different ways, is that the firm employing the recruiter (not the client company) pays their recruiters in many different ways, such as salary+commission, commission only, draw against commission, etc. It would be tough to work for commission only, as when I was a recruiter, these were professional positions, even though they were sales & we still had to make a good salary to live on. To give you an idea, I was an IT recruiter, after having been in IT for about 10 years. I became an IT Recruiter with a draw against commission type salary that matched my IT salary & still made more money than I'd ever made before in my life. I was in that market at a VERY good time historically though. It was a well paying, professional gig, on par with the IT work I was doing prior. Then I fell in love with a technical job I was recruiting for & presented myself as a candidate :-)
There seems to be a lot of hate for recruiters here & I'm kinda stunned. I'm sure things have changed a lot since I was doing it in the 80s & 90s, but it was a professional position & was the standard way that most IT folks got jobs back then. Direct apply, friends or recruiters. Everyone knew good recruiters & used them regularly & we were almost always treated with respect by prospective candidates. At least I was, but I did have a technical advantage that gave me credibility. Most potential candidates though knew that it was worth their time to talk to us, b/c you never knew when we'd get an order, that they would be a fit for. I'd usually touch base with my pool of candidates once/twice a year, just to keep up on what was going on in their professional lives.
Don't get me wrong, there were jerks back then too (it is a sales position), but they weren't scammers or anything like that, they just were jerks or were not very good at their jobs, but they weren't out to scam anyone. Of course the internet didn't exist yet & offshore IT, was still in the future.
It saddens me to read that there are so many scammers or weird scenarios, b/c I still think of an Executive or IT Recruiter as a professional position which provides opportunities to employees & helps clients meet their staffing needs & provides a much needed benefit to both.
Ok, are staffing agencies & consulting firms, considered Recruiters these days? Those are not what I consider recruiters. But maybe my terminology is out of date.
It's more likely that the client wanted to pay $16-18, didn't get any qualified applicants, and had to raise what they were willing to pay. A recruiter has zero incentive to "low-ball" you, unless it's to get you into the client's salary range. They get paid based on your salary.
They have every reason to want to low-ball you. They staffing agency makes what the client will pay-what they have to pay the worker. If they can maximize the former and minimize the later which they do they make a killing.
They don't care about retention, quality, worker engagement. As long as they can place a body that is just barely competent enough not to get fired immediately and can charge a huge markup they have accomplished their goal.
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