Telling a Head Hunter about your Salary

Should I tell a headhunter how much I need to make?

Karen Choper: Headhunters are the one group of people that you want to tell what you make or what your expectations are. The way headhunters are compensated is they’re given a percentage of your first year salary, so they’re incentives are to get you the most salary that they can for the job because that determines what they’re compensations is as well.

They’ve been hired by the company to do screening of candidates and so they really need to know what your salary expectations are and you can be very upfront with them and say, “You know up until now I’ve made a $150.00 but if I’m going to be moving into this arena. I will be looking for a jump to $175.00 to the $200.00 range and I’m not going to be considering positions less than that.”

And the headhunter needs to know that in order to present a slate of candidates that the headhunter knows will take the position at the salary offered. And so that’s why headhunters are a little bit of an unusual situation when it comes to salary, they’re the only place where you are prepared to talk about salary numbers because for the headhunter. They would like you to get a good salary too, so they’re somebody who is working in favor of your goals.


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