Sunday, January 20, 2008

The Top Six Ways You May Be Sabotaging Your Search: #2

#2: Circumventing Your Recruiter to Do Your Own Negotiating

Too often people subscribe to the thinking that trusting a recruiter during financial discussions costs them money. In fact, not listening to their recruiter will cost you everything.

You see, a recruiter is having conversations with their corporate client (in my thinking, the real client since they are the ones who are paying them) and have access to their tyhinking.

Sometimes this will come across in how they "manage you" into accepting a particular salary or package.

Read between the lines in what you are being told. After all, recruiters, whether retained or contingency are paid for success and failure does not help them achieve their fee (or the balance of their fee if they are retained) and additional business.

So, often they are sending messages to you about what their client is thinking.

Contacting a firm behind their back, attempting to negotiate a salary different than what you are telling them hurts you, not them. After all, the recruiter is the trusted party by the client, not you and they will thow you under the bus and align themselves with their client's interests at that moment to preserve the relationship rather than defend you, despite what you may think.

A friend with another search firm told me a story recently about an applicant who she was representing who after two interviews decided they wanted another $20,000 more than what they had expressed to the recruiter and to the firm directly. The reasons are unimportant; the reaction is.

The client was bewildered; they asked the recruiter about the candidate and their thinking; the recruiter was dumbfounded by being blindsided, pointed out that this was the first she had heard of the applicant changing their thinking, and calmly accepted the rejection of this candidate by the client.

If you have issues with the salary that is being discussed or might be proposed, talk to your recruiter.

They may not be able to get any more because, after all, budgets are fixed for particular jobs.

But if they can, they will. Why, because it is their interest to. After all, recruiters are paid a percentage of your compensation. The more you make, the more they make. But they make nothing unless the negotiation is successful AND they come out with less than what they started with if, in fact, you embarrass them and they defend you without being prepared to do so.

Avoid this tactic unless you believe that scorched earth is the best environment to start a relationship.


Jeff Altman

The Big Game Hunter
 Concepts in Staffing
thebiggamehunter@cisny.com

© 2008 all rights reserved.

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter, is Managing Director with Concepts in Staffing, a New York search firm, He has successfully assisted many corporations identify management leaders and staff in many disciplines since 1971. He is a retired certified leader of the ManKind Project, a not for profit organization that assists men with life issues, and a practicing psychotherapist.

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