Two people can contact you about the same job on the same day, and they are not doing the same job themselves. One works for a staffing agency and gets paid only if you sign. The other sits inside the company, on a salary, with a stack of open roles on a dashboard. Knowing which one you are talking to changes what you ask, what you share, and how you negotiate.
Who pays them, and why that is the whole story
An agency recruiter is paid by the hiring company, not by you. In the most common arrangement, contingency, the agency invoices only when a candidate they submitted actually starts. That fee is typically 15 to 25 percent of the placed candidate's first-year base salary, higher for hard-to-fill technical or executive roles. No hire, no invoice. Three months of work can end in zero revenue if the client hires someone from their own careers page.
The other agency model is retained search, used mostly for executive hiring. The client pays in instalments regardless of outcome, often a third up front, a third at shortlist, a third on placement. Retained consultants run few searches at a time and behave differently: slower, more thorough, far more willing to tell you honestly that you are not right for this one, because they are not gambling their month on you.
An in-house recruiter is an employee. They get paid whether or not you sign. What they do have is a req load, the number of open roles assigned to them, which in a busy company runs to fifteen or thirty at once. Their pressure is volume and time-to-fill, not commission. Some have bonuses tied to hiring targets, but nothing like the all-or-nothing structure a contingency recruiter lives with.
Every behavioural difference below comes out of those two payment structures.
What each one actually knows
The in-house recruiter sat in the intake meeting with the hiring manager. They know why the last person left, that the team has been two people down since spring, whether the budget is real or aspirational, whether the "hybrid, two days" policy is genuinely two days, and what the panel wants because they watched the last five candidates get rejected.
The agency recruiter usually has a job description, a contact in HR, and whatever they retained from a thirty-minute briefing. Good ones dig, keep long client relationships, and know the manager personally. Plenty do not. If an agency recruiter cannot tell you why the role is open, you have just learned how far they sit from the client.
So ask different questions. From the in-house recruiter: the team, the manager's style, the reason for the vacancy, the interview stages and who sits on each, where they are with other candidates. From the agency recruiter: how long they have worked with this client, how many people they have placed there, whether they are exclusive on the role, and whether they have spoken to the hiring manager or only to HR.
The push toward a mediocre fit
Here is the uncomfortable part. A contingency recruiter holding a candidate who is a 70 percent fit, facing a client in a hurry, has a strong incentive to make that 70 sound like 95. It is rarely lying. It is optimism pointed in the direction of the invoice.
You feel it as pressure. "This closes Friday." "They will only see you if you can interview tomorrow." "The salary is flexible for the right person" when it is not flexible at all. Or the classic: they call about a role you genuinely want, then spend the second half of the call steering you toward the vacancy they cannot fill.
Push back without burning the relationship:
- "Send me the full job description and I will come back to you today." A vague verbal pitch is far easier to oversell than a document.
- "That is outside what I told you I was looking for. Can we stay in the range I gave you?"
- "I want to speak to the hiring manager before I block out a full interview day."
None of that is rude. Recruiters who work well take it in stride. The ones irritated by a request for the written spec are telling you something useful for free.
Salary, and the incentive that looks aligned but is not
On paper the agency wants you paid as much as possible, since their fee is a percentage of your salary. In practice the upside is small and the risk is not. On a role at 60,000, five percent more salary moves a 20 percent fee by about 600. Losing the placement costs them 12,000. Their real incentive is to close, and to close fast, so they will lean on you to accept rather than on the client to raise.
That does not make them useless in a negotiation. It makes them a channel, not an advocate. Use them to relay firm information: a competing offer with a real number, your current salary, a floor you will not cross. Never say "I would probably take 55 if I had to" to an agency recruiter. That number reaches the client in about eleven minutes and becomes your offer.
With an in-house recruiter the dynamic is cleaner. They usually know the band, often have room to move inside it, and have no personal financial stake in where you land. Ask directly: "What is the band for this level, and where in it would an offer for me sit?" A good one answers.
Never let your CV move without your say-so
This is the one rule where I have no nuance to offer. An agency needs your explicit consent for each specific company, every time. Not blanket consent. Not "sure, feel free to represent me." Per role, company named, in writing where possible.
The reason is ownership of the submission. If Agency A sends you on Monday and Agency B sends the same CV on Wednesday, the client has a fee dispute. The simplest way to make that dispute disappear is to reject the candidate. That is you, quietly disqualified from a job you were qualified for, over an argument you had nothing to do with. The same thing happens if you applied directly a month earlier and forgot: many companies count a direct application as their own candidate for six to twelve months, so an agency submission on top of it is dead on arrival.
Keep a list of every company you applied to directly and every company each agency submitted you to, with dates. A spreadsheet is enough. When an agency calls, name the companies you are already in play with before they pitch.
Spotting the type in sixty seconds
- The email domain. In-house recruiters write from the company's domain, agencies from their own.
- The opening line. "I am recruiting for a client of ours in medical devices" is an agency being vague on purpose to protect the client's name. In-house recruiters name their employer immediately, because that name is the pitch.
- Breadth. Agencies ask what you want in general and your salary expectations across the board. In-house recruiters ask why this role and this company.
- Volume. Three people from three firms messaging you about "a confidential opportunity" in one week means agency territory.
If it is unclear, ask. "Are you working in-house or on behalf of a client?" is a normal question and nobody sensible takes offence.
Several agencies, and the file that does not exist
Two or three agencies is manageable. Ten is not, because you lose track of who submitted you where and duplicate submissions become a matter of time. Pick agencies that specialise in your function or sector over generalists who found you through a keyword.
"We will keep you on file" means your record sits in their applicant tracking system with whatever tags someone attached, and it surfaces only if a colleague searches the exact terms matching your profile. Nobody browses the file. Nobody remembers you in March because you were pleasant in January.
Both types source the same way. LinkedIn Recruiter is the main tool, and it weights job titles, skills, current employer and length of experience far more heavily than your summary paragraph. Agencies add their own database of everyone they have ever spoken to, which is why a consultant you met two years ago suddenly calls. In-house teams lean on employee referrals, their own past-applicant pool, and increasingly on people who engage with the company's content. Being found again is a search problem: the real job titles you want in your headline, tool and technology names spelled the way people search them, location and work authorisation stated plainly.
What to do differently starting tomorrow
Treat the two as different tools. With an in-house recruiter, use the call to gather intelligence about the team, the manager, why the seat is empty, and the real interview process, because nobody else will give you that. With an agency, get the job description in writing, make them name the client, give consent per role and nothing broader, and hold a firm salary floor instead of a comfortable range.
Then do the boring administrative thing that saves more interviews than any negotiation tactic: one document listing every direct application, every agency submission, and the date of each. Check it before you approve a send. Most candidates dropped for duplicate submissions never find out that is what happened.