> "Proof of previous income" was required at one place I applied years back

It's best to immediately walk away from a situation like this.

Yes; proof that everything that comes out of your mouth isn't a lie suggests a lack of trust.

> recruiters

Dude, that right there is the problem. They make a commission off your starting salary, so OF COURSE their primary concern is your past and future financials.

This is why I hate recruiters.

I disagree. Recruiters have a conflict of interest that often goes to the candidate's advantage and against their employer's interest. The higher your salary, the higher their commission. And employers are fine with that because a good hire is better than no hire.

The conflict of interest is more complicated:

For the recruiter, getting you in at 160k is twice as good as getting you in at 80k, and infinitely better than you walking away.

As a candidate that currently earns 100k, an 80k offer is worthless.

(Threatening to) walking away from a deal is one of the strongest strategies in negotiation. But that's the one thing a recruiter will never want you to do.

Candidate: High salary > no deal > low salary. Recruiter: High salary > low salary > no deal.

You are right, that the recruiter has an even bigger conflict of interest with their employer. But that conflict does not mean the recruiter's interests are aligned with the candidate.

(One way to align any interests is generally to repeat games. That's why internal recruiters are usually less sleazy than the external kind: they are at least clearly on the site of the employer. And honourable employers have a reputation to defend---another repeated game.)

That is what you would expect, but they want to optimise both on commission and on throughput. If a slightly lower salary makes it easier to position you and get you hired fast, the cost of the lower commission is less than the cost of working on your case for a long time. It is the same with real estate agents. From that perspective, their knowledge of the market should theoretically set the price at the optimal short-term, hiring decision point. Nevertheless, for the employee and employer this is a long term relationship and it works out bad on both sides (lower salary than could be achieved for the employee, greater employee turnover for the employer.)

While a fair salary is ideal for all parties, optimizing for job satisfaction would be a wiser decision than optimizing for salary amount. Scoring a high salary may merely mean the new hire will be one of the first to be cut from the crew should the firm hit choppy waters... an outcome that recruiters do not need to care about.

I guess you're right, that does happen sometimes. In those cases you also shouldn't be mad, though, because they just gave you a crystal clear sign they aren't worth working for.

I've gotten "I need a number for us to continue" multiple times.

Just say "my salary expectations for this position is $XY0,000". I use it as an opportunity to set the ballpark for the negotiation. Sometimes bosses don't know what people are worth so they ask these kind of questions. Once we opened an office in a new country, and when we hired people, we asked them what they expected and gave them that + 20% because we really had no idea how much we should be paying.

> I've gotten "I need a number for us to continue" multiple times.

"Considering your obnoxious lack of professionalism and the fact that your approach is apparently acceptable to the company, I'm not sure there's any offer you could make that I'd be excited to accept. But everyone has his price, so write down $500,000 for now and I'll decide how much to increase it after I hear the rest of what you have to say."

Threaten to walk away.

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What's really fun about that is that most people I interview, when asked "what are your salary expectations?" answer with "I'm currently at XYZ a year"