Can I Ask a Recruiter About Salary?

Anytime you are discussing a potential hob, it’s important that you discuss salary. While there are a lot of things that are important such as company culture, the commute or remote work availability, and the hours, you cannot discount the salary.

The fact of the matter is that your salary is one of the most important things to discuss when speaking about a new role. And it is important that you learn how to discuss this with your recruiter.

The short answer to this is that you certainly can ask your recruiter about salary. In fact, you might not even have to ask them as most skilled recruiters would preemptively ask you themselves about the salary.

The understanding as to what salary you are seeking is one of the first things that needs to be discussed with your recruiter. It helps to eliminate roles where you would not be interested due to the salary being too low.

The takeaway: you certainly can ask your recruiter about salary.

Why Would You Need to Ask About Salary?

For a whole number of reasons. First, you need to know if you would be interested in the role at all. There’s no reason to waste your time or your recruiters time with a role that won’t pay the salary you require.

Most recruiters know this, so one of the first questions that they will ask you is how much you are seeking as a salary package. This is the base question that they will ask you. They will normally follow this up with questions such as what sort of compensation package you are seeking (that would include health insurance and other variables).

Can you imagine spending your time researching a company and going on an interview only to find out they are offering ten or twenty thousand dollars less than what you are seeking as a minimum salary?

Of course not, and that’s why you need to ask about salary before the process gets too involved.

In fact, one of the first questions you should ask is actually the salary. Keep in mind, recruiters are not delicate people who you can offend with questions like that. Especially if they are agency recruiters, they certainly want to cut through all of the B.S.

Look at it from the point of view of an agency recruiter. They are only going to make money if they make placements. If the role is only paying someone 50k and your minimum salary requirements are 80k, then they will not want to waste time setting you up on an interview, scheduling calls, and wasting valuable time that could be spent doing other things.

How Do You Politely Ask a Recruiter About Salary?

So, here are a few things to consider. First, what sort of recruiter are you speaking with. Are you speaking with an internal company recruiter or are you dealing with an agency recruiter?

It’s important to differentiate between the two different types of recruiters. Agency recruiters will be more forthcoming and more proactive with info as they are being paid and incentivized to fill a role. Internal recruiters are basically working along with H.R. (notorious for slow moving work).

Agency recruiters won’t want to waste their time so they will be forthcoming about the salary. Only the most inexperienced recruiters would waste your time (and theirs) setting you up with interviews for a role which you wouldn’t take because the pay is too low.

Internal recruiters, on the other hand, oftentimes are not even aware of the salary. It sounds ridiculous, but the fact is that if internal recruiters were competent, agency recruiters would not need to work on roles.

So, there is a difference in speaking with an agency recruiter and someone who works for a company on salary to be their internal recruiter. The agency recruiter can be more forthcoming. So it never hurts to ask them straight out what the salary is.

Recruiters vs Internal HR: Different Approaches To The Salary Question

The other thing to be aware of is the different ways to approach salary question.

If you are dealing with an internal recruiter, there is very little nuance or sophisticated dialogue. Internal recruiters are going to be dealing with a number of variables, and a number of interviews.

When you reach out to an agency recruiter, there is very little use in being delicate. You don’t have to beat around the bush. It doesn’t benefit anyone to play coy. Make your intentions known and ask exactly what the salary range that the client is offering.

If you’re seeking a particular salary, but are open to less, then it’s perfectly fine to tell the recruiter this.

Unlike an internal recruiter, an agency recruiter isn’t looking to lowball you. In fact, they want to get you the most money possible (this is in regards direct hire recruiting, not temp recruitment). I cover this in more details in an article that covers the question of whether or not recruiters take a cut of your salary.

On the other hand, if you’re dealing with an internal recruiter, the question of salary is more of a delicate topic.

Why? Because internal recruiters are paid employees of the hiring firm. They don’t care what salary you want, they have a set number that they can work with and that’s all they will use.

The corporate recruiters are basically Human Resources employees and they do not have to spend the amount of time that agency recruiters need to in order to fill orders. As such, they have a much more stringent attitude when it comes to salary questions.

Basically, when you’re dealing with an internal recruiter, they don’t care what you want, they are only there to see if you fit an exact profile that they can use to fill their bosses request. And they are oftentimes hiring for things besides talent. Sometimes an internal recruiter is privy to hiring quotas that a firm will have implemented for diversity quotas. These might not be explicit to the person interviewing, and the internal recruiter would never let it be known during the interview.

Overall the interview with the internal recruiter is going to be a more strained and one way conversation with almost no communication to the interviewee regarding salary etc…beyond what was officially put out on a job site.