A while back someone asked me “why recruiters get paid so bloody much”. Yes good recruiters are well paid, some even more than the Prime Minister, but are we really paid too much? Recalling this question inspired me to do a Linkedin piece on it, below is my post. It certainly got a lot of attention and some great additional points in the comments from recruiters supplementing my own opinion, no we are not paid too much. So rather than waste the great input I got I added some of these comments to my own view on this subject and recorded this podcast.

“Why are recruiters paid so bloody much?” I was once asked.

We are certainly not overpaid we’re paid what we’re worth, market forces dictate what anyone is paid. But below are my top reasons why a lot of recruiters earn more than the Prime Minister!

(Incidentally, not included in the answer I actually gave – swearing is frowned upon on LinkedIn!)

• We sell one of the few things that can actually turn down a keen buyer – that’ll be our candidates.
• Our “product” (candidates again) can be bought back at the point of sale by the “supplier” (dreaded counter offer!)
• Virtually all recruiters send and receive emails, take calls at night and at weekends. We do a hell of a lot of hours.
• The majority of growing businesses name finding good staff as one of their biggest challenges. The solution – a good recruiter!
• We run our own business, our desk. We find our own candidates, own vacancies and decide each and every day which we work to make the most money.
• Because we run our own mini business (our desk), all we need is a PC and a phone to move it, any business will pay good money if they can literally buy revenue.
• We have 2 very different customers – candidates and clients, so we need 2 different business development and marketing strategies and constantly need to do both better than our competition.
• We need exceptional people skills. We need to advise, tease out information, get buy-in, push back, negotiate, deliver bad news and, on occasion, tell senior people they are flat out wrong.
• Recruitment is a true survival of the fittest sector, you can have any background to work in our sector but what you absolutely must have is the ability to make money solely through your own efforts, month in, month out.
• Recruitment is relentless and our performance is totally transparent. One bad quarter of bad numbers and you’re gone!
• For a good recruitment consultant, the emphasis is on the consulting bit so we’re not “just salespeople” and we don’t “just post on Linkedin!” we advise businesses on their most important asset, their staff.

I got a whole range of responses from recruiters and non-recruiters alike – many agreed that we are paid what we are worth, some thought we were paid what we were worth but other’s should be paid better (like nurses etc.) and we even had the odd person who thought all recruiters should be shot and we shouldn’t be paid anything at all!

So, I thought I’d put some of these reasons along with my own thoughts into a podcast on the subject. Listen to it here and let me know on LinkedIn if you can think of anything I’ve missed.  

Read a transcript of this episode here.