A lot of recruiters say that it's not about ensuring the candidate gets the lower end of their expected range, but that's just what they say.
I actually have a friend who worked at one of the aggressive boutique recruiting firms who mostly focus on the New York investment banking jobs.
He told me that almost always, their client companies would tell them that if they were able to get a candidate to come in with a salary below X, the recruiting firm would get an extra bonus on top of their commission, and the bonus was priced to make sure it was more lucrative to try to suppress candidate wages than to adequately represent the candidate's higher-end expectation.
Whenever I hear a recruiter say anything like, "Look, I don't get paid unless you do so clearly I'm trying to get you the most that I can..." it's an immediate dealbreaker. They are probably being paid a bonus precisely to ensure I come in at a lower salary than what I could otherwise command.
Agreed. I had two different recruiters offer to increase my contract rate when I told them I had accepted another offer. That suggests to me that they're paid amount $X and were offering me $Y < $X, with their commission being the difference.
I hired developers into investment banking for 18 years. If we gave somebody a low number, the next bank would poach them in 1-2 years, wasting all the time we spent training them. After I learned this the hard way, I always went as high as I felt able to on the initial salary, because raises were much harder later on.
That was my experience as well. If you want to pay your team well, the best option is to bring people in at the highest number you can justify.
Raises were always harder to arrange, but it was a lot easier when we had evidence that new hires were costing us 20% more than our existing high performers were paid
I actually have a friend who worked at one of the aggressive boutique recruiting firms who mostly focus on the New York investment banking jobs.
He told me that almost always, their client companies would tell them that if they were able to get a candidate to come in with a salary below X, the recruiting firm would get an extra bonus on top of their commission, and the bonus was priced to make sure it was more lucrative to try to suppress candidate wages than to adequately represent the candidate's higher-end expectation.
Whenever I hear a recruiter say anything like, "Look, I don't get paid unless you do so clearly I'm trying to get you the most that I can..." it's an immediate dealbreaker. They are probably being paid a bonus precisely to ensure I come in at a lower salary than what I could otherwise command.