Do recruiters really take as much as 20%? This seems ridiculously high to me. How much of their time are they investing compared to the employee?
As for recruiters taking 20%, that's a comparitively low figure for such a high daily rate. If one of my clients was requesting a £500 a day calibre candidate I wouldn't touch it for anything less than 30% in reality.
We are providing a service, plain and simple. The service fee is calculated in relation to the calibre of candidate as the more senior the candidate, the more difficult they are to find.
I'm sorry, but this is an accounting fiction. The cost of an employee to an employer is the total cost; dividing up the total cost and ascribing it to this or that is irrelevant from the perspective of the employer, and disingenuous from the perspective of the employee.
In the US we have social insurance taxes which are sold as having an "employee" portion and an "employer" portion, but this too is just accounting fiction:
Perceived:
Gross Salary: $100,000
Employee Tax Rate: 7.65%
Employee Tax Amt: $7,650
Net Salary: $92,350
Employer Tax Rate: 7.65%
Employer Tax Amt: $7,650
Actual:
Gross Salary: $107,650
Net Salary: $92,350
Tax Amount: $15,300
Tax Rate: 14.2%
If so, does that truly not sound ridiculous to you? If all people got employed through recruiters then the recruitment business would make up about one fifth of the total economy!