About a week and a half ago a recruiter from a major company (on their payroll; not a third-party recruiter) emailed me with an engineer job opportunity. He said he was impressed by my resume and thought I'd be a great fit. At face value the job appeared like it was right up my alley since I'd worked on most of the listed equipment brands. Then I noticed the location was a high cost of living area. Using an online COL comparator, my salary would have to rise about 50% to maintain the same purchasing power (yikes).
I responded to the recruiter saying the job looked pretty cool, but I also requested the budgeted salary range. I explained that I recently interviewed with a competitor and naively didn't ask this question. Instead, I gave them my salary target when they asked, and no objections were raised. Lo and behold, the offer they made wasn't close to my target, and based on the COL of that area it would've been a pay cut.
This was the recruiter's reply:
May I ask your range you are looking for? That would help me in getting you the answer you are wanting.
My subsequent reply:
As per my previous email, what salary range is budgeted for this position? I'm happy with my current employer, and I am not willing to prejudice an answer to this question. Nor do I want to waste your time.
By this point two days have passed. I waited another three days with no response, so I sent him this:
Please let me know when you have the information I requested. Thank you.
Half an hour later he said:
Will do. Thanks
It's been another three days since that, and at this point I'm done with his games. My final reply:
Based on your last reply and the lapsed time since it, I think it's clear you're not going to be forthright with me. I am incredulous that a recruiter would not have been provided with the salary budget up front, especially from a major company like [REDACTED]. That salary budget does not change whether an experienced engineer applies for the job or if a McDonald's shift manager applies for it. In the past few weeks of dealing with recruiters, you are the only one who has evasively stepped around this question.
Imagine for a moment that I approached you first, but instead of providing my resume upon your request, I asked you to guess my qualifications, experience, certifications, etc. You would find that behavior deeply unprofessional and outright rude. Fortunately, that didn't happen. What did happen is you approached me with a job, and when I asked you a question regarding one of the most important aspects about it, you answered my question with another question and basically told me to guess. If you don't understand why that is unprofessional, then I don't know what to tell you.
I don't expect my words alone will make the lightbulb inside his head turn on, but maybe he will get the message after having multiple experiences like this. Maybe. Providing the salary budget should be a standard practice during normal times, but we're not experiencing normal times. We're in a labor shortage where there are way more jobs than people to fill them, so don't play these games.