4 ms·
A good independent recruiter will do this. Many senior engineers I know maintain a relationship with a couple of recruiters who know what kind of startups they
by tibbetts 9y ago
A good independent recruiter will do this. Many senior engineers I know maintain a relationship with a couple of recruiters who know what kind of startups they like and only bring them compelling offers. The recruiter can expect a multi-decade relationship with the engineer and thus has reasonable incentive to treat them well. They will even sometimes place these engineers commission-free when they know it is the right thing.
You can also get into this relationship with certain VCs.
- Aloha 9y agoFinding one of those is the hard part - I work mostly in Telecom - so I'm not looking at companies for the most part that are VC funded (or even in the valley)
- tibbetts 9y agoAsk current and former coworkers or ask former bosses or former HR what recruiters they like working with.
- fecak 9y agoFormer indy recruiter here, and this is good advice. The line between "agent" and "recruiter" is blurry in cases of skilled and highly-ethical recruiters, and I'd toyed with changing my model to an agent approach. The issue is that job seekers don't want to pay someone anywhere near what a hiring company pays as a recruiting fee.
- Aloha 9y agoI would quite happily pay someone 1-5% of the wage of the position, if I could find someone to do the work for me. I dont know how to find the people to do that - its not in my wheelhouse.
- eropple 9y agoRecruiters, on the other hand, are paid up to 20% or so of the position's salary to get you to take it. You're not paying enough.
- icebraining 9y agoSorry, when you two are speaking about percentages, is that of the annual salary?
- joncrocks 9y agoThat's what I understand. A one-off fee of the percentage of the annual salary.
- fecak 9y agoYes, to confirm a recruiter's fee is typically anywhere from 15-25% of employee's first year annual salary. So that 150K engineer in NYC earns an independent recruiter (working for herself/himself) anywhere from 22-37K. Now it's easy to see why some recruiters sometimes act the way they act. People are unlikely to lie just to earn a small fee, but when the numbers get big, the incentive changes.
- Aloha 9y agoSearching for the needle is a hell of a lot harder than searching for the haystack. I think 1-5% is fair to find a job for me - 20% seems reasonable to find a person to take a job.
- eropple 9y agoWhat you think is fair is not particularly relevant: you're not going to get anybody who's actually good to give you the time of day. 20% and you can shoot as many bullets at the target as you want is a better deal than 1-5% and you can shoot one bullet at a bunch of targets.
- 9y ago
- fecak 9y agoNot a lot of people do that. As mentioned, it's a service idea I kicked around a bit and wrote an article about that still gets me inquiries years later. 1-5% might make it worthwhile depending on how high ticket an item you are. The work required by an agent to place a 200K engineer isn't too much different than that of a 50K engineer, other than the 200K engineer likely being more marketable. And the difference between 1% and 5% is substantial. I don't think I'd offer agent services for 1K, but for 5K I would.
- Aloha 9y agoI'm somewhere between those two extremes in pay - but I'd negotiate something that was fair for everyone. I'm just trying to relo to another market from where I am.