By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
What do recruiters do or not do to advocate for you? How do they generally operate? I answer this and more on today’s show. BTW, the website listed under my name on camera has been upgraded and replaced by JobSearch.Community
A Hidden Trap in Your Executive Job Offer
Hi, I’m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter and let me speak today about how recruiters handle salary negotiation. Now, if you think that recruiters go through mortal combat to advocate for you and to demand that an employer pay you what you are asking for, you are kidding yourself. Let me kind of walk through the process the recruiters go through.
An employer . . . and this is true of either retained or contingency search firms. An employer contacts a search firm. They contact an agency.
I’m giving both perspectives and they identify a role to be filled and a compensation that might be paid. Now, they offer a range and outline what their bonuses are like, their benefits are like and a whole host of other things. Now, if the search firm has a relationship with this particular client, do you really think they’re going to start yelling and screaming at this firm in order to get you the money that you’re asking for or are they more concerned about preserving the relationship with the firm that writes the check? Well, yes, you can argue the case that without you, they’re not going to get that check.
But, at the end of the day, there’s always another you. And, yes, there can be another employer, but there’s work to open up that relationship or create that relationship again. So, they tend to advocate for the people who write the check.
So, now, let me kind of walk through the process where your resume is being submitted to. They have a sense of the range and I’m going to pick simple numbers. 60,000, 100, 250, three different salary ranges.
So, for a $60,000 person, let’s say the range of the job is 55 to 70,000. For the $100,000 person, it’s 95 to 110 and for the 250 person, it’s 240 to 275. So, they know that these are the ranges for these positions.
So, they may indicate what your current salary is in the sense of what you’re looking for or they may just indicate your current salary. If they choose not to identify what you’re currently earning and just talk about what it is you’re looking for, often, like always, a firm will turn around and say, so, what’s he making now? What’s she earning? And they do that because they refuse to give someone a prohibitively high raise. Now, sales may be different.
Sometimes, this can get pulled off. But for other types of positions, very, very rare that the huge percentage increase comes up. Why? Because they are all operating on the budget guidelines where HR is being reviewed and all their behaviors are being analyzed.
And when there’s a percentage increase above a particular mean that’s mandated by corporate HR, they turn around and go, what the hell is this all about? And it adversely affects them. So, they operate within these guidelines that basically say, if a person makes 60, you offer them 66. That’s a 10% raise.
That’s good enough. If this person makes 100, you offer them 105 or 110. That’s a 10% raise or a 5% raise.
That’s good enough. If a person’s making 250, you might offer them 260, 265. We don’t give 10% raises to people at that level.
We give X% raises. See where I’m going from? It’s coming from . . . It might be low. Well, let me go back a step.
A Hidden Trap in Your Executive Job Offer
You’re interviewing along the way. Now, if you’re out of work, you may be asked in the course of your interview, so what’s going on for you in your search? Are you close to anything? And if you say, no, I don’t have anything going on right now, you’ve just hurt yourself because you have no leverage. They can basically issue an offer to you and say, take it or leave it.
Your choice. We don’t care. There are other people who can do what you do.
We’ll go find them. And you’re out of luck. If you are working, or if you’re asked this question, you say, well, I’ve got some other options.
Some other firms have expressed interest in my final rounds with three other firms. Suddenly, they understand it’s competitive. They may push things up and they ask, which firms? I prefer to keep their name out of it.
So that this way, everyone’s bargaining with the same degree of knowledge. If I say to you, I’m interviewing at this firm, that firm, this firm, and I do the same thing with them, I think that’s unfair. I want to see what your best offer is based upon your assessment of me, not based upon the competition.
But what you’re doing is creating competition, because they don’t know what the target number is. If you tell them what the number is at these other firms, frankly, that’s around the area that’s going to come in anyway. No one goes much higher.
But if there’s a low offer that comes in, a search firm is going to advocate for you. They’ll spend some time talking with the client. The client will counteract that remark, generally with a comment that says, well, by comparison to an individual, individuals that we have already working here with this level of skills, they’re right.
Now, we assess this person to be X number of dollars. Most of the time, what it really comes down to is you didn’t do a good enough job and you’re interviewing to demonstrate your value at the level that you’re asking for. So they’re making a lukewarm offer to see if you’ll take it based upon the opportunity presented.
The recruiter is not going to go into this deathmatch with the hiring firm in order to get your position. They’d rather go into that deathmatch with you to manipulate you and persuade you to accept the offer at the level that’s been offered. Why is that? Because the job hunter is easier to change than the employer is and they know the relationship with the employer can continue afterwards, particularly if they got you to say yes to the low offer.
So that’s the scenario that normally comes up. Hope you found this helpful. I hope you have a great day.
Take care.
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ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
People hire Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter to provide No BS Career Advice globally because he makes many things in peoples’ careers easier. Those things can involve job search, hiring more effectively, managing and leading better, career transition, as well as advice about resolving workplace issues. He is the producer and former host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 3000 episodes.
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The Easiest Way to Negotiate a Higher Salary for Yourself
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