Recruiters lying about salary? Is this just me or is it getting out of control? | Hacker News Reader

Recruiters lying about salary? Is this just me or is it getting out of control?

35 pointsforgotmyacc35 comments

I recently had a recruiter message me for a salary up to one million dollars. How impractical is this?

This is a classic bait and switch strategy that recruiters use. They have contracts for 3-4 "sexy" 1M+ positions open, so they dangle them in front of you to entice you into a conversation. Once they have you on the phone, they ask you for a resume they can send around to all of their entry-level positions.

IMO these recruiters are a big waste of time.

I always start with, "The job posting mentioned $1M/year. I'm flexible, I'll work with you. I'll consider 50% of that."

I usually just say "I'd be interested, please feel free to make an intro and I'd be happy to take it from there. Thanks!"

Ask who their client is. If they bait and switch you, that information gives you the freedom to contact the client and complain.

In my experience, they usually won't tell you who the clients are unless they are actually interested in you for the role. I have tried this with one recruiter, and it didn't work well.

If they don't tell you the client then why would you continue interacting with them?

If they do tell you the client, why would you stay? Going direct is cheaper for the hiring company and can net you a better deal.

That’s why they don’t tell you the client up-front, it’s the only leverage they have.

Any decent internal recruiter has an agreement that if they reached out to you, even if you bypassed them to contact the company, they get credit. And you are probably being contacted through a CRM that automates it for them.

I'd love to see how this is written into the contract. I've worked on the company side with a lot of contingency recruiters and the wording is never broad enough to cover "we talked to them but didn't actually send them to you".

I wouldn't want to hire someone who goes behind the back of the recruiter who did the work to connect the company with a prospective employee. It seems demonstrative of a lack of ethics.

Seems obvious in isolation like that, but the employer probably wouldn’t know you skipped past the recruiter. All they would know is that you came to them direct, and direct hires are a lot cheaper

Depends on the industry, I guess. Recruiters in my industry tend to interact directly with the hiring managers and it would be pretty obvious.

Bingo! I always ask for salary, tech stack, industry and client name. The first three are to help me decide if I care. The last one is so I can research the company, position, salaries, etc.

I find it slightly annoying if they don't give those details up front. If they refuse to give them when asked, we have nothing more to talk about.

Sounds like it worked out pretty well if it ended your contact with that recruiter.

If they did bait and switch you, it will come out when you get to salary negotiations with the client. The client might not know how slimy their recruiter is and probably won't honor their promises.

Throwaway: I make about a million and I’m an IC software engineer. It’s possible. Is it specifically salary or is that TC?

I also made the same but due to stock appreciation. Practically no one is an IC and getting 7-fig out the gate.

Honestly I have never found recruiters useful, and I've had some incredibly rude responses from them when I have politely declined, or when I have simply ignored them as spam. It's amazing to watch as a series of emails just gets progressively more aggressive and argumentative, as though they believe that they are entitled to my time.

If you send an unsolicited recruitment email you haven't earned a response.

Of course they always hide who's they're recruiting for (except for one time with a FB recruiter who got passive aggressive with my not responding - this is after I'd responded to multiple prior recruiters that I would literally never work there - where honestly I feel I should have tried to find a contact at FB to forward it to.

[edit: I also realize the "up to X" is bullshit, and should reply asking what the minimum is]

Please provide more background.. If you are recruited for the CEO of one of the FAANG, 1 million salary seems too low.

I have always assumed that when we hear about $1M, $500k "junior", etc devs they're including stock based comp. While I am just an IC so obviously not near the upper echelons, I've never been aware of base salaries for ICs being in those regions.

It's normally inclusive of stock comp, although some companies like Netflix let employees choose to get most or all of their total comp in cash if they want to.

I think the 500k TC posts are usually talking about the massive stock appreciation that the FAANGs have gone through.

For example on Feb 4, 2019 Amazon was trading at 1623. By Feb 4, 2022 stock is trading at 3,112. This multiplies the value of any TC in years 3 and 4 by a significant sum (given the 5/15/40/40 vest) due to the near doubling of stock value over 3 years.

Nigerian princes stepping up their game huh?

Ask them for a copy of the req before providing your resume.

Have never heard that before. I would probably respond that I can work up to 40 hours a week depending on where the salary lands.

Curious—- have you checked out this recruiters individual profile and his firm? Do they look remotely legit?

There are certainly some eye-popping compensation packages out there these days.

Basic rule of thumb: recruiting at the $1M level requires a certain finesse and sophistication to engage high caliber prospective talent.

Coming at me cold with a $1M tease, just sounds bogus.

TBH probably better if their lies are getting unbelievable. Makes it easier to separate the wheat from the chaff!

The worst new trend I've seen is a "soft offer" prior to the final round interview. These are also usually way out of alignment with the role / other teams. Not willing to name and shame here - but it's annoying and a waste of time.

"Up to" is upper limit on what they claim you could potentially make - a meaningless term. You can make up to $500 million dollars selling water filters in an MLM marketing scheme if only you sell 6 billion of them.

WTF?

Suuure, "up to" one million, but over what time period? Technically $100k/year for 10 years is one million.

My salary is up to one million dollars.

Well, it's at the high end of the range, anyway.

By the way, I define high as being in the top 90%.

what do you do?

In my experience, recruiters (not all of them but some) lie about EVERYTHING. Why not the money?

I receive this kind of offers from linkedin nearly daily. I do not even bother to look.

Recruiters lying?

In other news, water is wet so long as bears shit in the woods.

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