Tuesday, October 7, 2008

A Nice Chat with a Romanian Recruiter

From time to time I get calls from Romania as I left my Resume posted there to test the waters and keep an eye on the job market.

E.S. of Bucharest, Romania seems like a nice fellow endowed with a sense of humour (this is not something readily available in the recruiters populace). I shot back a short e-mail at him asking for pay level and letting him know I have this blog.

Here's an approximate translation of what he replied:
[...] Judging from the number of talks you've had with recruiters one could say you are a quasi-pro candidate :)

The reasons why I haven't given you more details about the payment level at this stage of our conversation are:
1. the employer only gave us a range, not a fixed number; the actual number is negotiated directly between employer and candidate according to your level of experience and according to the pay scale of the respective company. [...]
2. the specificity of the Romanian job market (rather chaotic with significant pay variations for equivalent positions between similar companies and even within the same company). The salaries are supposed to be confidential so they never get published on a job posting unlike the Western Europe and N America where the market is well-structured and one can speak of a "market level".
Well I've been at this for 10 years so I am a pro altho this blog only extends six months in the past.

He provided me with good insight on things that happen back in Romania: nothing much has changed in eight years; employers still rip you off at every turn (think of the intra-company wild pay level variations).

The only thing I don't have an answer for is whether employees are still treated like property or garbage as it happened 10 years ago. This should have improved because of the massive work-force drain towards the Western Europe at the end of 2006 but you never know.

-ulianov