Ask HN: If you're working with an agency recruiter, let them negotiate for you?

3 points by ninetax 4 years ago | 3 comments

Agency recruiter being a recruiter who is independent of the company with whom you're interviewing. This recruiter likely has an arrangement to be paid ~15-30% of your first year's base salary.

If you're a candidate who found a company through this recruiter, do you prefer to let them help with the negotiations be pre-screening the offer, sharing comp expectation with them, or even letting them negotiate on your behalf?

How about the other way around? If you're a hiring manager working with a recruiting agency, do you shop the offer to them before the candidate? Do you just negotiate directly with the candidate and sideline the recruiter (even if they ask you not to?)

There are multiple incentives at play here and I'm curious how folks approach this.

crate_barre 4 years ago |

I always got the impression that they want to close the deal as soon as possible. They won’t make much more money if you squabble over 5-15k, so they will usually advocate that you just accept the initial offering by telling you ‘this is a great deal’. It’s much better to let them know ahead of time what your salary range is because they don’t want to deal with the negotiation, I think. They just want to close.

Just make it clear so they don’t waste anyone’s time trying to land you in a gig that doesn’t fit your expectations - all that work for nothing is no good.

ksaj 4 years ago | |

I think this is indeed the case. They have a long list of recruit candidates to get through. The ones that are going to be the easiest and make the recruiter the most money are the ones that will get in first.

You can naggle, but remember they already know how much they can/can't make on the gig. You aren't naggling with the company you might be working for - you are asking for a bigger slice of the recruiter's take. If they know you are worth it, of course you'll get it. If not, that list they need to get through is pretty long.

It's like buying a used car from a lot. They know how much they will make from the sale. When you naggle with them, they are opting to give you some of their take in order to get that car off the lot. Find the sweet point if you can, but the busier the salesperson is, the less patient they'll be with negotiating, since there will be another buyer right behind you that won't ask for a piece of their cake.

Of course on the other hand, if the car has already been on the lot for too long, they will want to negotiate an enticement.

GianFabien 4 years ago |

In my experience (Australia) you cannot negotiate directly with the potential employer you have no choice but to go through the recruiter.

I have heard of people who got a "signing bonus" at the end of their probation period which was kept a secret from the recruiter.

Personally, I usually asked for a condition in the contract for a review at the end of 6 months. In that, I would negotiate a 10%+ increase. Which is usually easy when they see that you are competent and do good work. In my experience, that approach works in small firms and hardly ever with large firms.