[yeezyseezy]

This is a great tip. Earlier in my career I was stuck at a mid-point where I didn't have quite enough experience to get hired by a household-name tech company, and working with third-party recruiters made finding a job easy. Knowing what I know now, I never would have even made it past screening at a lot of companies. They will take a cut of your salary, but they'll also work hard to sell you, as that's the only way they get paid. You are to them what a house is to a realtor, and the market is hot right now.

[brundolf]

> They will take a cut of your salary

I've never had one that did this (or told me about it, at least). My understanding was that the company is basically paying them to find talent, so you're the product being sold. Sometimes there's even a clause that if you quit too soon they have to give back their commission, which further incentivizes them to make sure you really are a good fit.

[dotBen]

I've hired tons of people, I've never offered someone less because they came in via a recruiter. You typically budget for salary + recruiter fee and if someone is hired organically then that's a bonus.

You don't pay someone less because they came via a recruiter because then they are going to be poached for being underpaid. You also don't pay someone more because they didn't come in via a recruiter otherwise now I have guys working on varying salaries which creates issues if that comes out in a team.

source: prior founder, hiring manager at large companies, etc

[HunterWare]

You likely just didn’t realize it. Usually the head-hunter cut is a % of the new hire’s salary for a length of time and is paid by the hiring company. So you never see it... but if someone gets hired directly then they can usually negotiate a higher salary instead of that money going to the non-existent headhunter. Another way of saying it is that initial offerings through a headhunter are lower since the cost is higher to the company.

[danielheath]

If the hiring officer has a budget of 150k for the first year, and the recruiter charges 30k, how much are they going to offer you?