A salary guide for Recruiters across Europe

Here's a breakdown of the average basic salary across key tech hubs in Europe.

I know there's nothing less exciting than looking at a recruitment agency salary survey. You’re mildly interested, so you skip through all the wE’rE sO DifFerEnt marketing to find your role because you’re selfish and only care about yourself. You look at the massive range and vague market overview. All interest dies, and you now need to nap.

I'll try to avoid this here. I’m sharing an average salary across key European tech hubs and guessing some of the questions you might have to keep me entertained. Internet quizzes tell me I have undiagnosed ADHD, so I can’t think about numbers and graphs for too long.

I’ve barely survived two business apocalypses in three years, so I can’t risk the trust I have built with clients and share everything I know publicly. I’m full of secrets, so I asked Ravio to step in and protect me with theirs.

Haven’t heard of Ravio yet? Ravio is a comp management platform designed specifically for Europe’s high-growth tech companies. They connect directly to HRIS systems, offering Europe’s most comprehensive dataset and live market trends.

Brace yourself...

Are you feeling underwhelmed, indifferent or surprised at the above? Here’s the section where I will guess and give my opinion on some of your questions to keep my heart rate up.

- “I’m underpaid and ready to fight.”

Calm down and double-check that you’re not delusional first. Search for the level and expectations of your role and have an honest career conversation with yourself before you approach your manager. Take a look at the level above yours and make a plan of all the things you need to do to get there. It’s not your manager's responsibility to do this for you. If there are no clear expectations for your level, offer to create them for the team. Stick this project in your next performance cycle review and showcase why you deserve to be paid more rather than just asking for it out of rage.

- “I thought there would be a bigger difference between seed to series C+?”

The basic salaries on offer aren’t that wildly different across each growth stage, but you need to factor in the total value of your comp package. Nobody pays enough attention to this until it’s too late in the process, you’ve given the wrong salary expectation, you get an offer, and you’re suddenly emailing about the value of your free food. Don’t do this. It’ll be awkward for everyone.

- “I’m paid way more than this, but I think I’m starting to hate it here. Am I trapped?”

No, but you have to be more strategic with your search, as your options will be limited. You’re probably trying to pull talent from the same high-bar brands as your own, so you already know your target list. Network earlier than you think you need to and build peer relationships with other recruiters in those companies. They can refer you when you’re at your limit and need to leave before you have a meltdown.

- “I was affected by the Meta/Google/Amazon purge, and my salary was very high. Where do I go next from here?”

Your main priority should be finding somewhere you can build, own something and show your scrappiness again. I hate to generalise, but most scale-ups now think anyone from big tech will struggle without all the resources. I know this isn’t true because I worked at Facebook, but you need to rethink your CV’s content and interview examples to anticipate this concern and weave a story of how you can still build things in chaos.

- “Where’s the P6 level?”

This level exists but often falls on the same track as an early management level. It’s probably safe to add 10k if you’re a principal-level recruiter who still loves to manage reqs. Don’t feel the pressure to move into a management role to progress. You’re rare and very needed in a world of senior people who don’t actually enjoy hands-on recruiting any more.

- “Are we all just in a simulation? What is life?”

I’ve run out of steam. Make me feel less unhinged, and ask and answer your own Q&A. Tell me your thoughts on how we can encourage even more salary transparency across tech. We’re the ones who are going to be leading the salary transparency conversation with candidates soon, so we should be paving the way.

Encourage Ravio to continue to share even more data with me by signing up through our partnership link here. You’ll get 15% off their tool for the first year.