Stop Playing Recruiting Games With Compensation
We’ve all been there, in the interview, when the recruiter asks one of two questions,
“How much are you getting paid in your current position?”
Or
“What are your salary expectations for this position?”
The primary reason that recruiters ask these questions is to see if the candidate’s expectations align with the salary ranges that are set internally in the company for the position that they are hiring for. The sneaky reason that some recruiters actually ask these questions is to lowball the candidate and save money for the company (or for other, even more biased reasons, which can often violate fair hiring practices and laws, and which are even more egregiously unethical and/or illegal).
Let’s say the position posted has an internal base pay salary range of $50,000–$75,000/year. The recruiter asks a great candidate what they expect to be paid (asking the candidate what their salary history has been is illegal in many cities and states in the U.S. now, so let’s use the good faith argument that they are solely asking what the client’s expectations are instead), and the candidate responds, “$45,000/year,” because the candidate has been making $38,000/year for a similar position at a different company for years with no increases and they don’t know the company’s salary range (because it’s not posted), so they are doing their best educated guess and trying to get themselves a little bit of a raise to offset the move to a new company and starting over.
The candidate’s skillset and experience would actually translate to a base pay of $65,000/year for this company according to this company’s job posting, internal expectations, and position requirements, and they are an attractive candidate for those reasons, and because the recruiter likes them, so they want to bring them on board and therefore, make an offer. But the recruiter now knows that the candidate has a lower expectation and “would be happy” with the lower end of the pay range set for the position($50,000) or even less ($45,000/year), which would save the company money and the recruiter themselves may be implicitly or explicitly rewarded with bonuses or incentives for saving the company money or career longevity for “getting good candidates for less.”
So here we sit, at the corner of business ethics and business greed. The correct answer, of course, is for the recruiter to offer the candidate what their skills and experience have already been determined to be worth to the company, which is a base pay of $65,000/year, and make that candidate’s day! But the ACTUAL correct answer is for the company to list the salary range in the job posting from the start, and define in the job posting the escalation of skills and experience that they are looking for in the defined range, so that the candidate comes into the recruiting process already knowing what their skills and experience are worth to the company and expecting the company to compensate them accordingly within that posted range.
Transparency and trust are important parts of the recruitment process on both sides, and a recruiter looking to net their own benefit by shortchanging a candidate will lose that game in the long run. In recruiting, much of the power lies with the potential employer, and it is imperative that they work to share that power with the candidate to benefit both parties in the long term. Great candidates will become great employees, but only if you are transparent, trustworthy, fair, and equitable from the start.