What is the average pay i England for Engineers and are salary high?

Engineers: How much would you pay me to be your talent agent?

• I'm a tech recruiter. The system is obviously broken, and many people have thrown around the idea of somebody representing them. A technical talent agent if you will. So how much would you be willing to pay to get those services? Here is what I would imagine doing: Career advice: helping you make job choices based on your goals. Connecting you with more senior engineers to help you figure out what you want to do. Presenting you with potential companies you may have overlooked. Fielding all incoming recruiting emails/calls Interview Prep. Walking your through each step. Performing due diligence on company's financials Interviewing past employees for reference checks. Check for crazy turnover or horrible bosses. Negotiating your salary Making sure you don't get screwed on equity Follow up: make sure the job is what they said it would be.

• Answer:

  Be prepared here - this is long but it's worth a read. Don't do a "tl;dr" because if you do it, you aren't ready to do this job. Disclaimer: I have done this for a while (on a more unofficial capacity) and learned it simply doesn't work. There are countless reasons for this: There were companies like Bernard Haldane and Associates and Stanley Barber in the 1990s who hired "older" men and women to pounce on people with weak-ish resumes promising them huge opportunities if they paid $5,000. Hopefully those guys are in jail now - biggest con-artists ever. There are many books out there as well as career counselors who have already super-saturated the market with the exact same pitch. Some do okay, most don't. Most recruiters should actually offer this as part of their offering anyways, especially for higher level jobs. Recruiters typically get 20-30% from hiring companies to begin with and you want to take from candidates too? Not cool unless you did a fantastic job. Interview prep is nice, but what does that really mean? Do you actually do mock interviews with them or do you just give high level advice or handouts? Frankly, there is enough free stuff out there and most can be found in minutes. What's your value add? How exactly do you do due diligence on a company's financials? No private company will share that and frankly no public one will as well. Besides, if a candidate is valued enough, s/he can weather many problems. Companies in general are so desperate for candidates that they'll take anyone at this point if they are good enough. What do you offer that they won't? I like the idea of helping with reference checks, but still that doesn't stop backdoor ones and what do you do if you find a problem? Can you fix it? Probably not. Negotiating my salary? Based on what? Your numbers? Glassdoors? Salary(dot)com? Salary negotiations are sensitive. What will you do if you ask for too much and the offer gets killed? Are you able to recover that offer? Maybe... probably not. Equity negotiations? See salary. Job followup is good, but still how do you expect to do that? Companies often change job descriptions based on need. Case in point, a friend of mine got a job as their Director of Program Management. She came on board and got switched to Business Development, something she *hates*. That happened based on a whim from their executive staff. How do you mitigate that? Do you help her find another job? Do you fight for that candidate to stay in the field she was hired for? What if you make a mistake and the company lays off the candidate for *any* reason? Do you simply keep the money? Sure it's within your right to do so since you "earned" it, but do you want to deal with the bad will you'll get from a candidate who says that you screwed them out of xyz amount just to shove them in the door? You're business is dead. That aside, let me give you some free advice (and I am going to hate myself for it). This is what you have to offer to make yourself truly different and maybe have a chance. Be accessible. You have a candidate who's nervous about an interview, field that call or at least call back in a day at the most. Don't ignore e-mails. Be prepared to handle people in their time of need. They will come to you because they feel you are the best or they have no choice. Don't be a typical recruiter who hides behind emails. Remember, you're now their agent - agents deal with this. Your job is part therapist, part babysitter and part salesperson. Deal with it. Be honest. Yes, the truth hurts sometimes, but you aren't superman (superwoman) and some candidates may not be right. You can't take a candidate who is a staff member and turn them into a VP. If you can do that, that's fantastic, but chances are that's really hard. Be realistic to yourself and your candidate. Be an expert on the "hidden" job market. Don't tell your candidate that you are familiar with it - we all know it exists. Prove that you can get them real jobs with real companies that don't publicize these positions. Guarantee that you will get them at least a phone screen with them - even better a face to face interview for a real job in the near future - not some informational discussion -- that's your job to get that info. Be prepared that these candidates may blow up your reputation with these contacts, but if you have a good enough relationship with them, that should not be a problem (right?) Really coach your candidates. Don't follow some trite script and the like. Work with them intimately and see their strengths and weaknesses and help them through them. Some are relatively easy to fix (e.g. lack of technical knowledge), some not so much (e.g. a person's personality is combative). Fix them and you'll be a hero(ine). Do mock interviews with your candidates. Try to get others to do that for you as well. Make them as easy/tough as needed. Make your candidates think so that they are prepared for anything, or as much as you can predict. Ensure that the "little" things are "fixed" - you say that you can do background checks for candidates. Let's say that you do find that spoiler out there that gives a milquetoast or negative reference. Fix it so that is not a problem. You see that a person has misspelled some words on their resume - fix them (with their permission of course). Do that little bit extra and it will pay back big time. Give names of references. Don't point me to your Linkedin page and show me your endorsements or hide your network. I don't care if you have 99+ endorsements in underwater basketweaving, startups or whatever. Those mean NOTHING. I want recommendations of people - real people that I can call and ask them what they think about you, good, bad or otherwise. You don't share that, you look like something to hide. Provide a guarantee. Most important of all of them. Find me that job and you get paid. I keep that job for 90 days (probation period) you get your money. Anything less than that, you get a prorated amount. No questions asked. (NEW) Find me the right kind of jobs. If a candidate has enough experience for a certain job, don't try to shove them into something else. I personally have had situations where recruiters in the haste to make quick money sent me job listings for job listings that were way below my paygrade thinking that I'd be happy with what they shared with me when it actually pissed me off. Case in point, I have 15 years in high tech. Find me a job that's commensurate with that level experience. Translation: Don't come to me saying "Oh, I found this product marketing associate job that looks really cool" because it happens to be in my industry. That's a waste of both of our time. (NEW) Do your homework. Want to make us love you? Get info about the people that I am interviewing with and the company that I am speaking with (especially if it's a startup). LinkedIn is making it really hard for people like me to learn about my interviewers, especially if they keep their profiles private for any reason. Help me with understanding their background, their motivations and their hot buttons. Many companies are tight-lipped about their company, get me details - and be as specific as you can. You practically made your money with just that. (NEW) Fight for me to get that job. If I am not on that hiring manager's short list, get me on there somehow. If I am on the borderline and there is something that you discover that I can do to get me into the hire column, share it with me. Don't throw your hands up and say, "Oh, the hiring manager has three people that he likes already, I guess he'll get back to you if s/he doesn't like any of them." Clearly, you don't want to be so obnoxious that you screw your own relationship with the hiring manager because that will mess you and your candidate's chances in the future, but if you have a solid relationship with both, that should be doable. (NEW) Find out the real requirements for the job. Some hiring managers expect the moon, draft nearly impossible job descriptions while others give nothing at all and still others simply don't know what they want thinking everything is fair game until they submit your resume. Present these positions to me and give me as much Intel as you can to help me out. That's really important. (NEW) Be transparent. Don't hide anything from me. I hate it when a recruiter comes to me saying that s/he found a great opportunity and refuses to give me the company's name. If you are so insecure that you can't withstand that sort of visibility, then why do I need you? If you have such a truly strong relationship with that company/hiring manager, they should be happy you are introducing us. I am not stupid enough to go to the company myself and screw my chances in a high paying job if you have a a better chance in getting me a conversation with the hiring manager than I could by myself. Remember, people do talk and that's life. It's your job to deal with that sort of frustration. Yes, this is a lot of work and chances are you don't have to do all of these things to be successful, but frankly, I wouldn't pay anything unless most of these issues are addressed. I will say on a positive note, if you can actually do everything that's listed here, I'd gladly pay a premium for it. I would imagine many people would as well, especially for executive level jobs. Good luck.