4 ms·

A recruiter can do this to some extent, but the recruiter is driven by a need to get the deal closed, so they can get their fee from the employer. In other wor

by dabent 16y ago

A recruiter can do this to some extent, but the recruiter is driven by a need to get the deal closed, so they can get their fee from the employer. In other words, the recruiter will get you the minimum amount needed to get you to sign on. I honestly don't think it would even work that well if you were paying the fee, either. The third party would still have a strong incentive to get you to sign on quickly, rather than extracting the N+1th dollar from the employer. To complicate matters, I've worked with many BigCo HR departments, and really doubt that they'd deal with a third party that they didn't have on their approved vendor list. In fact, a third party would probably be a deal breaker.

Peroni 16y ago
* the recruiter will get you the minimum amount needed to get you to sign on.* Rubbish. Why would we compromise our bottom line for the sake of getting a deal done? Sure I could push you in at your absolute minimum salary but if you get a better offer in the mean time then I lose my fee. It's in my best interests to get you as high a salary as I can possibly get you.
- deong 16y ago
  Because you have more than one person you're working with at a time. You get X% of their offer. If they get a higher offer, you get (X+delta)%. If that delta% of the offer that makes up your difference is lower than the value of your time spent doing other things (finding someone else a job), then it doesn't make sense for you to spend the time. That's the basic issue. If you're getting 5%, then by definition you should care 5% as much as the candidate what the final salary ends up being, and thus care much less if it's a little bit lower than it could have been.
  - Peroni 16y ago
    Firstly, our percentage is a lot higher than 5% so we have more invested than you may think. Secondly, negotiating an offer is the quickest and easiest part. It hardly consumes any time at all by comparison to the amount of time and effort invested just to get to the point where there is any offer at all. If I've invested a massive amount of time and effort into getting a candidate through the process to the point where the employer wants to make them an offer, believe me, I am going to fight tooth and nail to squeeze every penny from the employer that I can get.
    - metageek 16y ago
      >Secondly, negotiating an offer is the quickest and easiest part. It hardly consumes any time at all by comparison to the amount of time and effort invested just to get to the point where there is any offer at all. I'll buy that; the recruiters I've worked with have certainly put in a lot of time getting me to the point of having an offer. The point of serious mismatch is when you're working with more than one recruiter (at different agencies). Some years back, I was almost at the offer stage from company X through recruiter A; recruiter B pushed me to apply at company Y, too. Problem was, X and Y were founded/funded by the same people, and had an agreement (possibly illegal) not to compete on candidates. B somehow convinced me to go ahead anyway; I talked to Y, and X dropped me.
- sethg 16y ago
  It’s not a question of getting the absolute minimum salary, but of getting less than the absolute maximum. If I recall correctly, the authors of Freakanomics discovered that when real-estate agents sell their own houses, they sell for a higher price than comparable houses where a non-agent used an agent as a middleman. This confirms the hypothesis that agents are willing to compromise on price to close the deal sooner.
  - Peroni 16y ago
    This confirms the hypothesis that agents are willing to compromise on price to close the deal sooner. Correction: This confirms the hypothesis that ESTATE agents are willing to compromise on price to close the deal sooner.
  - achompas 16y ago
    The Freakonomics result only applies to that sample of real estate agents. Even then, the sample is only taken from a population of real estate agents. In other words, results don't extrapolate to all agents.
    - URSpider94 16y ago
      Nonsense. For your argument to be true, you'd have to assume that there was something special about the sample population chosen by the authors. That flies against the laws of statistics. Further, there is a clear explanation of the behavior that aligns with the economic incentives of the parties. In buying and selling homes multiple times, I have always casually mentioned the study to my agents, and they have vehemently denied that it is true. However, in every transaction save one, the agents have eventually acted in ways that would close the deal quickly for a loss to me, yet get them their (slightly reduced) commission sooner.
      - achompas 16y ago
        Of course there's something special about the sample Levitt chose: it's all real estate agents. If the statistical results are sound then we can infer some characteristics about the population. But in this case, the sample came from a population of real estate agents. There is a fixed effect found across the whole sample: they're in the housing business, not the headhunting business. No recruiters in that population, so we can't infer anything about recruiters in general. Sorry to argue semantics, but this is a basic sampling concept that people forget about.
- chollida1 16y ago
  For the same reason a real estate agent wants to get a deal done. After a while negotiating for an extra few thousand gets the recrutor an extra few hundred. If it takes 2 days to get this much more then the recruiter has lost money. However to the employee, this takes none of his/her time and compounds onto top of each additional raise so it's in their interest to get the most they can no matter how much time, with in reason, it takes the recruiter to get the deal done.

by dabent 16y ago

Peroni 16y ago

* the recruiter will get you the minimum amount needed to get you to sign on.* Rubbish. Why would we compromise our bottom line for the sake of getting a deal done? Sure I could push you in at your absolute minimum salary but if you get a better offer in the mean time then I lose my fee. It's in my best interests to get you as high a salary as I can possibly get you.

deong 16y ago
Because you have more than one person you're working with at a time. You get X% of their offer. If they get a higher offer, you get (X+delta)%. If that delta% of the offer that makes up your difference is lower than the value of your time spent doing other things (finding someone else a job), then it doesn't make sense for you to spend the time. That's the basic issue. If you're getting 5%, then by definition you should care 5% as much as the candidate what the final salary ends up being, and thus care much less if it's a little bit lower than it could have been.
- Peroni 16y ago
  Firstly, our percentage is a lot higher than 5% so we have more invested than you may think. Secondly, negotiating an offer is the quickest and easiest part. It hardly consumes any time at all by comparison to the amount of time and effort invested just to get to the point where there is any offer at all. If I've invested a massive amount of time and effort into getting a candidate through the process to the point where the employer wants to make them an offer, believe me, I am going to fight tooth and nail to squeeze every penny from the employer that I can get.
  - metageek 16y ago
    >Secondly, negotiating an offer is the quickest and easiest part. It hardly consumes any time at all by comparison to the amount of time and effort invested just to get to the point where there is any offer at all. I'll buy that; the recruiters I've worked with have certainly put in a lot of time getting me to the point of having an offer. The point of serious mismatch is when you're working with more than one recruiter (at different agencies). Some years back, I was almost at the offer stage from company X through recruiter A; recruiter B pushed me to apply at company Y, too. Problem was, X and Y were founded/funded by the same people, and had an agreement (possibly illegal) not to compete on candidates. B somehow convinced me to go ahead anyway; I talked to Y, and X dropped me.
sethg 16y ago
It’s not a question of getting the absolute minimum salary, but of getting less than the absolute maximum. If I recall correctly, the authors of Freakanomics discovered that when real-estate agents sell their own houses, they sell for a higher price than comparable houses where a non-agent used an agent as a middleman. This confirms the hypothesis that agents are willing to compromise on price to close the deal sooner.
- Peroni 16y ago
  This confirms the hypothesis that agents are willing to compromise on price to close the deal sooner. Correction: This confirms the hypothesis that ESTATE agents are willing to compromise on price to close the deal sooner.
- achompas 16y ago
  The Freakonomics result only applies to that sample of real estate agents. Even then, the sample is only taken from a population of real estate agents. In other words, results don't extrapolate to all agents.
  - URSpider94 16y ago
    Nonsense. For your argument to be true, you'd have to assume that there was something special about the sample population chosen by the authors. That flies against the laws of statistics. Further, there is a clear explanation of the behavior that aligns with the economic incentives of the parties. In buying and selling homes multiple times, I have always casually mentioned the study to my agents, and they have vehemently denied that it is true. However, in every transaction save one, the agents have eventually acted in ways that would close the deal quickly for a loss to me, yet get them their (slightly reduced) commission sooner.
    - achompas 16y ago
      Of course there's something special about the sample Levitt chose: it's all real estate agents. If the statistical results are sound then we can infer some characteristics about the population. But in this case, the sample came from a population of real estate agents. There is a fixed effect found across the whole sample: they're in the housing business, not the headhunting business. No recruiters in that population, so we can't infer anything about recruiters in general. Sorry to argue semantics, but this is a basic sampling concept that people forget about.
chollida1 16y ago
For the same reason a real estate agent wants to get a deal done. After a while negotiating for an extra few thousand gets the recrutor an extra few hundred. If it takes 2 days to get this much more then the recruiter has lost money. However to the employee, this takes none of his/her time and compounds onto top of each additional raise so it's in their interest to get the most they can no matter how much time, with in reason, it takes the recruiter to get the deal done.