What really threw up the red flag for me was that he didn't want to only know what I earned at my current position, but the 3-4 previous positions before that, including my reasons for leaving each job.
I can understand he wants to find A-type winners that are on a rising arc instead of slumming for a job, but that took a lot of balls to ask.
Wow, it sounds like they were probably just filling out the job application for you. It was clearly a "warm bodies in front of desks" kind of recruiter. I've experienced this sort of thing before where a defense contractor wins some bid and needs to hire like 2000 engineers now and just enlists a team of recruiters to make it happen.
High-frequency trading firm. I didn't think that needed bank-level clearance either, but maybe the hiring firm stayed on the cautious side of background checks.
I can understand he wants to find A-type winners that are on a rising arc instead of slumming for a job, but that took a lot of balls to ask.