Treat Recruiters like the bitches they are

Recruiters do not represent you. They are not brokers. They are not looking out to you. They will lie to you. They will feed you BS. Treat them the same way, but pretend like you like them. Learn the ancient art of BS. Recruiters are sales people. If you go to a recruiter office its often a room with some desks. They just do accounting.

This is how they work. They suck up to companies and feed them garbage. So they get vendor status with the company. They then forward resumes and people onsite do interviews. So it does not matter who your contract company is. Your boss is the person onsite. I have repeatedly heard vendors state things like "we have worked with such and such for 'x' number of years." We have tier one vendor status or some other name with the client. The programmer who is interviewing you does not care who forwarded your resume. You will pass or fail the interview on your own merits.

I have been contacted by as many as 10 recruiters for the exact same job. The rate varied by $23/hour from low to high. I picked the highest one and one of the few who would give me a corp to corp contract so I can get my tax breaks.

Recruiters make money two ways. Increase the bodies and increase the profit margin of the rate they are paid to what they pay you. That is the only way they make money. They are the only ones who know what that margin is. I have told clients that they should institute standard rate markups so that they can control their costs. If you are making $50/hour and your bill rate is $150/hour and the guy sitting next to you is making $100/hour and his bill rate is $110/hour who do you think has higher expectations? Why you with your $150/hour bill rate. Who do you think will get cut first? Well typically you with your $150/hour bill rate.

There is a myth that when recruiters do full time placement they are always trying to get you the best salary because they get more of a markup. That is similiar to the myth that the real estate agent is trying to get you the highest price for your house. In both cases they want to make the sale so they can work on the next sale. Look there is competition. If they can get you to take $10k less than the next guy they think they will look good to their client and increase the chance of getting their commission.

Now you are thinking... if they sell you for $10k less they will make less money. Correct, but they will get the sale. Which is what they want. The typical commission is around 20% of your salary. So $10k in salary is $2000 in commission. Sounds like alot of money. However, recruiters work for an employer. They don't get the whole $2000. They get a portion. How much they get typically varies from employer to employer. They would rather get 20% of something then get nothing. That being said you don't know whether the company is hiring on cost. Companies typically don't care about $5-10k drops in salary. Recruiters want to make themselves look good so they can hit the forward button on more resumes. I actually had one recruiter tell me to just take the job and quit when I passed on a permanent position.

Here are some more tips:

If you are an "employee" of a temp agency you are still a temp. They are just trying to trick you and the client into thinking you are a real employee. They do this so they can increase their marketing by going hey look at all of "our" consultants. They also do this in many cases so they don't pay you overtime(but they pocket the money), they have gimick bonuses, and/or they can try to get you to do work off the clock for them because you need to be a team player.

Now lets look at gimick bonuses. I have heard this before. "We don't pay overtime, but we have a good bonus plan". My Response: Give me my money. They have the bonus plan for a few reasons. They don't have to pay you right away so they can do stuff with the extra money. Also, if you quit you don't get your bonus(overtime), and they reserve the right to not pay you if they have a bad quarter. As if you should care about that...

Here are a couple of my favorite gimick compensation plans.

1. We pay everyone $45,000/year + 15% of their rate. This way you have an incentive to work over time.". Give me my money.

2. We consider 35 hours to be full time and then have a bonus plan. This really means you work 40 hours plus, but they don't pay you right away(and reserve the right to not pay you) and then pretend like they are family friendly.

I am seeing an increase in the number of "move at your own expense" temp jobs where you become an employee of the temp agency. Has anyone else been spammed by Ace Technology? I have gotten 25+ emails from them. They want me to move at my own expense to New York City for $80,000/year. A quick search shows me that my skill set pays $95k-$130k(at an I-Bank) on salary in New York. So no wonder they can't fill these positions. They claim to pay relocation, but its basically a week in hotel. They don't cover moving costs. Plus since they won't give a 1099 or Corp to Corp none of your expenses are tax deductible. This is clearly an H1B company. The number of move at your own expense temp jobs where you pretend to be an employee will increase as the number of H1Bs goes up.

This is one of my favorite lines from recruiters "While working with us we ask that you not work with any other recruiters". Then you never hear from them again. This is what you say back "Sure you sound like a great recruiting agency". Then continue to use other pimps.

When recruiters ask you where you are in your job search you always tell them that that you just got started and you don't have anything yet. Or else they won't talk to you again. I have said this when I have had multiple offers in my lap. You never know if they can get you a better deal...

Remember as I said in a previous blog entry, ALWAYS use an alias when communicating with recruiters until you get past money and the name of the client. You do NOT want them submitting you and locking you up. A small number of companies will throw you out if you dual submit. However, contract companies lie to you and try to get you to sign a binding contract with them so this does not happen to you. Very few companies actually do this. The first company owns you.

When you look at alot of recruiter websites they all look like the same thing. All they do is keyword searches, forward resumes, and then accounting. So do not fall for the "we are not a body shop". I have never heard a body shop go "we are a body shop". They are just liars. The worst are the ones that really pretend like they are more than a body shop and want you to come in and interview with them. This typically entails wasting time taking off of work to talk to them and then they hit you up for other resumes. One pimp wanted me to drive 52 miles to see them and they did not even have a job req. Yeah that was going to happen. I generally blow off pimps who make me go in to see them before talking to the client. Why should I waste my time? The client is all that matters.

All this being said. When you talk to recruiters sound positive. Lie and tell them you want to be a team player and their agency looks like a terrific agency. Tell them that they are the only pimp you are working with if you need to. They will lie to you. So lie to them. They don't matter.
Only the people who are interviewing you matter.