Feast or Famine

They say it's a bad time to be a recruiter. Salaries for recruiters seem to be at an all time low. Two years ago a good contract recruiter can ask for hourly rates of $50/hour and a salaried recruiter can ask for $65,000/year. Nowadays, with the recession it seems that the going rate for a contract recruiter is about $25/hour and a salary recruiter is about $40,000/year. That is about a 40-50% drop in recruiters salaries in about 2 years.

What is going on? Market forces. You see, it's about supply and demand. The supply of candidates out there looking for a job is high so why does a company need an outside recruiting firm to look for candidates when they have so many candidates to choose from on their own. Also, the supply of available recruiters are high, so why should a company pay a lot for a good recruiter when they can get one for a whole lot less.

To me this dynamic of supply and demand is good. I've been through 3 of these cycles. It's either feast or famine for recruiters. Either there is such a demand for candidates, that it brings the price for recruiters up, or there is an over abundnace of candidates and it brings the price for recruiters down.

I actually like this dynamic and feel it is this is a great product of a market driven economy.

Now let me ask you another question, what are the only organizations supposedly "immune" to these market driven dynamics. That's right teh government. The government thinks they have unlimited amount of money to hire whoever they want. When times are bad- like it is now, when was the last time you heard of government employees getting laid off, or actually lowering their starting salaries. Never, their starting salaries are actually stay the same or even raise every year. Even in a recession.

I say "immune" because, are they really immune? Yes the government can increase taxes or print more more money to make up the deficit. Those are short term solutions that only fester anger amongst the taxpayers. I say they are not really immune, because those shot term solutions of raising taxes and printing money cannot be sustained forever.

Comments

[Sarah]

For the last two years, our Canadian Recruiter Salary Survey has posted income rises. Naturally, there are variations in the market segments catered to, but hopefully most agencies have a mix of economically-sensitive and recession-resistant specialists on board to ensure they don't see much of a drop.