uNeThiCaL recruitment hacks

1. Inflated my candidates’ salary expectations

When I was a recruiter in external agencies and internal corporate, I would present candidates to my hiring teams, and I would ALWAYS inflate their salary expectations.

If an applicant told me their desired salary, I would always round up $10k, $20k, $30k, or as much more as I could get away with depending on the situation.

At the agency level, that equaled higher commissions for me depending on how much money I got for the talent.

At the internal corporate level, there was no financial reward for getting a new employee more money. But I still inflated their salary simply as a game for myself. It was just fun to see how many more “points” I could get for them.

2. Always talked about applicants as “they” even when they were individuals.

So as to not bias the hiring managers one way or another or have them tell me no, before meeting them in person. (depending on their conscious/unconcious preferences).

3. Knowingly would put awesome candidates forward to interviews that I knew were/would be “double dipping” jobs.

Management would tell me about “what to look for” to avoid those types of candidates. Or that we would have to tell them to “stop” running their own business.

But since I’ve always believed in freedom, and I myself was also triple dipping, I thought it was only best to grant others the confidence in their abilities to multitask on the DL so they can make as much money as possible.

4. Diligent recruitment at staffing agencies

When I was working at agencies, sometimes the client would set aside a day to interview 6 of our candidates back to back. I would work to make sure EVERY one of those 6 were someone the client would consider and find highly relevant to their needs.

But I remember sometimes I would freak out because I couldn’t find that many people that would fit the bill for our clients, and I didn’t want to present anyone that was a waste of time AND made me look incompetent. Sometimes I’d say, how about we only introduce 3 HIGHLY relevant people?

And then a manager would tell me to not worry about it. “To just present one really good candidate with the other 5, and that the client would meet the good one, and choose them by sheer comparison to how all the other ones weren’t at all relevant.”

(that didn’t really work, but whatever they wanted numbers, not quality)

But I still did it my way. It was my work, and my reputation. Sometimes, clients would even hire TWO people because of who I presented.