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Comment by AlexC04 | Hacker News Reader

I recently stopped ignoring recruiters but I instead respond to say "thanks for reaching out, I'm actively looking, but if I'm going to invest the time in learning more about the opportunity, can you tell me the salary range for the position? I need to know if I can afford to take the role"

Most of the time they give a range.

Even if I wasn't looking, I'd have picked up valuable market insight.

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I simply tell recruiters what my current going rate is, and most of them leave me alone after that. This is great for separating the wheat from the chaff.

I do the same. I won't take a call from recruiters until they tell me the company name and salary range. Both are like pulling teeth with some of the shitty recruiters out there! I'm pretty happy with my good mission, fairly cushy, well paid role, so it'd take a significant pay bump for me to consider leaving, and we're wasting both of our (but mostly my) time if the role won't give me the salary I'd want.

My first response to any recruiter is always asking for the compensation range. Recruiters have reached out with insanely varying ranges. The best was one day where I was offered one opportunity for $80k-$90k and another for $350k-$600k (different recruiters).

This is one of the main benefits to the candidate of a recruiter. They tell you what the salary is, and they know it because their pay for placing you is tied to it. It also allows them to decide whether you're worth putting forward, or whether there might be some other role they can place you for.

I do that too. It works most of the time, but sometimes they would reply "what salary are you currently on?", if they do then I either ignore them or I reply that I don't think it's relevant or I that don't feel comfortable answering that question.

I mean, it depends what market you're in. If you're desperate for the job, maybe you should reveal your salary (and bump it a bit?)

I've done basically that but with auto-email reply and a short survey: https://gregor11.typeform.com/to/CjaodBIc (I call it my recruiter-shield)

I copied the Slashdot spam checklist thing and repurposed for work stuff. I don't have that handy, but the original is here:

  https://yro.slashdot.org/story/04/04/06/1629219/analysis-of-spam-and-a-proposed-solution

This is really smart, I'm going to start doing this.

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