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Comment by ornornor | Hacker News Reader

> it is in the recruiter's interest to get you as much money as possible so you might get a better offer via them

Up to a point. They get a fraction of the marginal increase in salary, and they’d much sooner “close the sale” than risking having someone else fill the job to try and get an extra 500$ commission.

It’s the same story with real estate agents: selling your house for an extra 20k might be a lot to you but to the agent it’s an extra 400$ in commission (exact percentage varies). In other words, it’s hardly worth risking the seller losing interest or working an extra 2–3 weeks for so little.

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Yeah, however real estate agents will close later (and for more) when selling their own home.

> Real estate agent-owned homes are on the market longer and sell for more (2005)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26840289

They’ll also tell you pricing lower will incite a bidding war. Yet the first offer that comes in they’ll say wow it’s a good offer!

This works if you have an open house/2-5 days dedicated to showings and a set time where offers are allowed (which is at the end of that showing period). However, even now, houses need to be appraised by the bank for the buyer to get the loan for the house, and many people aren’t ready to get in a bidding war only to then need to come out-of-pocket an extra $10k because they bid too much and the bank appraised it that much below the offer amount.

Exactly. When I sold my house a few months ago I found a good agent that helped me price correctly and we sold the same weekend. Made sure it went to someone that actually needed a house and not some investor looking to flip. Still came in over asking.

> Made sure it went to someone that actually needed a house and not some investor looking to flip.

As someone who has been trying to buy a house on and off for a few years now, thank you for caring about this.

My point exactly. The seller’s (or job seeker’s) upside is much higher than the agent’s, and so the agent won’t try and get you a higher price/salary if it means delaying the sale.

Assuming it is an active real estate with lots of transactions, yes, the agent is absolutely more motivated to close the deal and move on to another deal than to get the highest commission possible on a particular deal. The situation is similar with recruiters. It is important to understand these motivations to correctly interpret what you are hearing from the agents/realtors.

I used to work as a waiter when I was in my first summer out of high school. The calculus was similar there. When it was busy the tables turned as soon as the person got up, so I would often not emphasize dessert. The added $15 on the check from dessert increased my tip a couple dollars, but regular desserts could cause me to lose 1-2 full turns of my section over the course of the evening, so with a four table section of everyone for dessert, I might lose 8 tables total, and if the average tip was $20, I’d lose $160 minus the extra $16 in tip gained from everyone having dessert. Point is, I much preferred quick turns over small per capita increases in per table tips.

In non rush times though where tables didn’t get filled when people left, it made a lot more sense to play up dessert.

You can split the extra margin 50/50 so your motivations are exactly equal.

I’ve never encountered a recruiter who would even entertain that idea. They loved “cookie cutter” deals and hated this kind of unusual arrangements for the same reason that they can’t understand anything else than keywords.

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