5 ms·

This exactly. I'm senior in my field (and pretty damn good), and many times recruiters will contact me about a position that sounds like a great opportunity -

This exactly. I'm senior in my field (and pretty damn good), and many times recruiters will contact me about a position that sounds like a great opportunity - for example, I was recently contacted by a large financial services company who wanted to hire a senior manager to lead a cloud services team. When I told them my salary expectation, they said their range topped out at half that. First, I was a bit shocked to hear that Fortune 500 companies with $USD revenue in the billions would hire senior managers and want to pay them what would be considered an entry level salary for a good programmer right out of university, but honestly, I've defaulted to just telling them my salary because I want to avoid all the time wasting that multiple interviews would require, just to get to the point where they really like me, and would I please consider their great position where I'd have more responsibilities, longer hours, at half the salary...

15155 10y ago
> many times recruiters will contact me Recruiters are easy: "What is the client's targeted range for this position?" or "What have you placed other people for at this company?" If the top-end of the range is within some arbitrary percentage of your target, pursue, otherwise: "no thanks!"
- cozuya 10y ago
  You can turn it around on them a little bit by replying "this sounds like it may be a good fit for me, but I'll need a salary range from you in order to move forward" and then the whole conversation is short circuited.
  - 15155 10y ago
    Third-party recruiters and staffing agencies won't have this conversation or play this game at all: they'll be 100% upfront with you upon demand. "In-house recruiters" would require that kind of short-circuiting, and it will be met with varying results. Asking: "what is the top end of your current employees' salary range for X role/experience?" can be good, too, to preempt the conversation. It's not asking them to make an offer or anchor a price for you specifically, but will save everyone time when you discover that the top-end is 40% lower than you would even interview for. If the prospective team is large and diverse enough, there will exist people that are more experienced and more-compensated than you. At that point you will at least know that they're paying it to someone. If they're not paying anyone what you expect: you do not want to be the most well-compensated or smartest person in a role at a company and should pass on general principles.

15155 10y ago

> many times recruiters will contact me Recruiters are easy: "What is the client's targeted range for this position?" or "What have you placed other people for at this company?" If the top-end of the range is within some arbitrary percentage of your target, pursue, otherwise: "no thanks!"

cozuya 10y ago
You can turn it around on them a little bit by replying "this sounds like it may be a good fit for me, but I'll need a salary range from you in order to move forward" and then the whole conversation is short circuited.
- 15155 10y ago
  Third-party recruiters and staffing agencies won't have this conversation or play this game at all: they'll be 100% upfront with you upon demand. "In-house recruiters" would require that kind of short-circuiting, and it will be met with varying results. Asking: "what is the top end of your current employees' salary range for X role/experience?" can be good, too, to preempt the conversation. It's not asking them to make an offer or anchor a price for you specifically, but will save everyone time when you discover that the top-end is 40% lower than you would even interview for. If the prospective team is large and diverse enough, there will exist people that are more experienced and more-compensated than you. At that point you will at least know that they're paying it to someone. If they're not paying anyone what you expect: you do not want to be the most well-compensated or smartest person in a role at a company and should pass on general principles.