Got an offer from a fang company recently and during negotiations, the recruiter kept saying “ well Nicole (who is also a recruiter) put together a really strong offer for you” and “ this is about the most I’m willing to stretch” etc etc. I finally got almost what I wanted but am curious how much the the recruiter has a say in my comp.
Yeah, the more the recruiter likes you the more money they will get for you. Within limits of course.
This blows my mind though! How can the recruiter be a judge of my skills? How does the recruiter differentiate between two candidates, both who go through the interviews, but one happens to be a superstar and the other isn’t?
The recruiter doesn’t do any of what you said. The hiring manager decides they want you and the recruiter tells them how much it’ll take to get you. If there’s two candidates, the hiring manager picks one. The recruiter says things like “you won’t get them at that, how badly do you want them?” and tells you things like “this is the best we can do” because the manager doesn’t want you that badly. But they have a lot of power pushing the managers to make sure you’re both happy. If a manager is stubborn and only ever offers below market to candidates they want, eventually recruiters will go to management and say this manager isn’t going to get someone so have me recruit for someone else.
I see. Did not know this. Thanks for sharing
The recruiter wants to hire lots of people as they are measured on successful hires (I don’t think they are even measured on successful hires that prove out to be good hires) They are somewhat incentivized to throw money at you. There are standard package amounts and they need approvals to make the offer - but they’d biased to giving you more money as it helps them with their hire counts The feedback from the interview guides how much they can throw at you. If you are deemed a superstar, they can get easier approvals to throw higher amounts of money at you If you look like you have other offers that will also drive the recruiter to try and get approval to throw more money at you The recruiter is your advocate, so if they like you, they probably will try a little harder. Certainly, if they hate you, they can low ball the money and adopt a take it or leave it attitude with you
Interesting. Thanks for sharing
A lot. It’s typically decided by the hiring manager, within the limits set by HR and a potential VP exemption, depending on the company. But the recruiter is your advocate to that group. They’re talking to you and translating your asks and facilitating the conversation. If they don’t want to advocate for you, you’ll do poorly.