I’m of two minds. If it’s a crappy recruiter, I open with a ludicrous salary request to compensate for the wasted time - if I get it, I retire 20 years early. If I don’t, no harm done.
In an interview situation, I’d lead them along. Let them get to an offer and then explain that I’m not available to stroke their ego. Waste their time some.
Every recruiter that has called me over the last three years when I tell them my salary requirements, they ask me if I’m serious, and they tell me that there’s no job in the world that would pay me that amount of money, and I’m like, I’m already working a job that pays me that amount of money within a few percentage points.
Why should I take a pay cut to come work for you? And they never have an answer.
More explicitly, I’m making mid-six figures, and they’ll call me up and offer me a job that pays like $60,000 a year, and I say, sorry, if you want me to come work for you, I’m gonna need mid-six figures, plus a little bit extra to make it worth my while, and they realize they have called the wrong person.
And it’s always some dipshit recruiter who is trying to hire me for a starter position in the field that I have 14 years of experience in.
MSP tech consultant for law firms, working on becoming an IT director or CTO though.
I do things from basic tech support all the way up to rolling out and deploying firm wide software.
I would say that I’m pretty good about not only dealing with new issues when they pop up, but also with establishing practices that can be repeated by other people, diarizing and cataloging the common issues that the companies I work for encounter, and minimizing the mental overhead of technology so they can get to the work of doing their business of protecting or attacking on behalf of their clients.
And that sounds like jargon tech-speak shit, but I do everything in my power to back it up with action and with logs that other people can read and follow, even if they’re not especially technical.
I started working for a mom-and-pop IT shop when I was in my early 20s, got my A+, started working for hospitals, and just ended up winding my way through the entire IT field. And the annoying thing is, is my whole life I wanted to be an engineer, lol, but I took IT jobs because I had bills to pay and I was good at it, so I just stayed with it.
I’ve found that a lot of recruiters who reach out are offering really mediocre jobs, and probably have one themselves. I had a recruiter email, text and call me within 2 hours for a role he had, which would be paid about half of what I’d been making when I was recently unemployed. Starting at 8:30am my time. When he told me what the role paid, I basically told him I’m not desperate, but he clearly is.
I think I’ve had one recruiter reach out in the last year about a role that isn’t at least a 30% pay cut, and that was one with a step up in responsibilities, with a small pay cut.
At first I was offended that they were even bothering to reach out for super entry level roles, when I’m clearly not at that level, but I think they’re just spraying and praying, and probably paid mainly based on how many people they get into jobs.
I’m of two minds. If it’s a crappy recruiter, I open with a ludicrous salary request to compensate for the wasted time - if I get it, I retire 20 years early. If I don’t, no harm done.
In an interview situation, I’d lead them along. Let them get to an offer and then explain that I’m not available to stroke their ego. Waste their time some.
Every recruiter that has called me over the last three years when I tell them my salary requirements, they ask me if I’m serious, and they tell me that there’s no job in the world that would pay me that amount of money, and I’m like, I’m already working a job that pays me that amount of money within a few percentage points.
Why should I take a pay cut to come work for you? And they never have an answer.
More explicitly, I’m making mid-six figures, and they’ll call me up and offer me a job that pays like $60,000 a year, and I say, sorry, if you want me to come work for you, I’m gonna need mid-six figures, plus a little bit extra to make it worth my while, and they realize they have called the wrong person.
And it’s always some dipshit recruiter who is trying to hire me for a starter position in the field that I have 14 years of experience in.
There’s a lot of offshore recruiters trying to make a win by spamming for every opportunity that opens.
My number for them for in person office work is 3-4x current gross. It hasn’t worked out for me yet but maybe one day!
I guess I’m overcharging at 6x…nah.
For me, it’s just a slightly more polite way to tell them where they can put their in-office requirement.
When you say mid-six figures do you mean ~$150k or ~$500k?
Last year, it was in the 200s, so I guess low-mid six figures is more accurate.
What profession are you in? I feel like I got into the wrong one.
MSP tech consultant for law firms, working on becoming an IT director or CTO though.
I do things from basic tech support all the way up to rolling out and deploying firm wide software.
I would say that I’m pretty good about not only dealing with new issues when they pop up, but also with establishing practices that can be repeated by other people, diarizing and cataloging the common issues that the companies I work for encounter, and minimizing the mental overhead of technology so they can get to the work of doing their business of protecting or attacking on behalf of their clients.
And that sounds like jargon tech-speak shit, but I do everything in my power to back it up with action and with logs that other people can read and follow, even if they’re not especially technical.
I started working for a mom-and-pop IT shop when I was in my early 20s, got my A+, started working for hospitals, and just ended up winding my way through the entire IT field. And the annoying thing is, is my whole life I wanted to be an engineer, lol, but I took IT jobs because I had bills to pay and I was good at it, so I just stayed with it.
I’ve found that a lot of recruiters who reach out are offering really mediocre jobs, and probably have one themselves. I had a recruiter email, text and call me within 2 hours for a role he had, which would be paid about half of what I’d been making when I was recently unemployed. Starting at 8:30am my time. When he told me what the role paid, I basically told him I’m not desperate, but he clearly is.
I think I’ve had one recruiter reach out in the last year about a role that isn’t at least a 30% pay cut, and that was one with a step up in responsibilities, with a small pay cut.
At first I was offended that they were even bothering to reach out for super entry level roles, when I’m clearly not at that level, but I think they’re just spraying and praying, and probably paid mainly based on how many people they get into jobs.
To be fair, the reason they expect 60k to be reasonable is that 500k is absolutely not.
Can you explain how that is fair in your opinion? Why do you think I should not be paid $500k for my work when you don’t even know what I do?
I mean, these kinds of recruitment offers are like offering Warren Buffett a job as the assistant general manager of a rural dollar general.
I’m sure he would be very good at the task, but you can’t afford him.
Because I don’t think anyone should be paid $500k for work. It’s too far from the median. There’s nothing more to it than that, really.
In this context, I think “mid- six figures” means about 150k.
I did clarify later but I came in just a hair under a quarter mil last year. Taking one of these jobs would be a 75%+ pay cut.