brendan woulfe (7/8/2013)
Touching on what I wrote above...another problem I have with the recruiting companies is when they call you for a job they are placing, they'll ask the rate your looking for. If I'm telling everyone I want $60/hour and someone else is saying $50/hour. They'll always call the other guy first, they're making more off of him, even if I'm far and away the better person for the position with more experience etc.
That's how it works. Contracting companies are not interested in hiring perfect candidates at all, because good specialists will ask for more money. They just want to find someone not super bad so he/she can get through all the interviews with their client. And the client has to pick someone eventually, wondering why there are so many mediocre applicants.
I've seen an example when 2 guys have been hired at the same time for the same job, the same title and the client was paying exactly the same amount of money for both of them to recruters, but guess what? One of them was getting $10/hr less just because he was too shy to ask for more.
I was asked once by a contracting company to lower my rate. It was after a few successful interviews with the client. And the reason was that there are so many candidates and the position was so demanded, therefore if I want to get this job I have to ask for less to be more attractive for the client. And I'm 100% sure that's a BS! These mediators will keep the money for themselves, period. They will lie to you in the face to get some money from you, that's their job. You just have to learn how to deal with it.