Negotation and interviews

[scriptfromscratch]

sounds like you were dealing with a bunch of cowboys! name & shame tim?
having been involved with recruiting through an agency before I always always made sure I knew what I would have to pay for someone before I agreed to interview them. Cover the basics and rest is easy

[tim123]

The company name is <no, not going to say, I'm the only con here>.
They are only a dozen engineers in total, unless you are a consumer of their very specialist product, you will not have heard of them. However, they do have a sister company who are re-engineering their product into the 'normal' consumer space where there is much more scope for work. Ideally, I want to get involved in that.

I don't see that the agent was in any way to blame here. If he'd tried to tie up the rate before speaking with me, he'd have offered 20% less. I would have thought he was having a larf and said no.

As it is, I got a fairly good job, with some potential, at 10% less than I wanted.

tim

[Ruprect]

Read Freakonomics for an explanation of why the agent won't bend his back to get you a higher rate. Once you understand that you'll always go to the agent with the highest rate and work from there.