Competing offer and negotiating salary - How to handle various scenarios?

Do recruiters ask to show the competing offer email or letters when I negotiate?

It's very rare (at least among reputable companies in the US), but I have seen it happen. In fact, my first company PayPal actually did ask for hard proof of competing offers. I remember my fellow new coworkers mentioning how weird it was, haha.

I read it is not legal to ask for it or ask for the previous salary.

It depends on state/country. In California, it is illegal. But I think in many places across the world, it is fair game. This is something a quick Google search should be able to find out.

I wanted to find out more on this, do they ask for more details of competing offers and should I plan to show any details for that?

They will generally want to know:

1. The company
2. Offer amount

For #1, you can share it if it's a big name like a FAANG company - That gives you a ton of leverage.

For #2, you can share a range, especially if the amount isn't that competitive. In general, you want to avoid giving numbers at all costs to avoid setting a ceiling on yourself as we talk about in this video: The #1 Rule Of Negotiation - How To Avoid Giving A Number

Also, would you mind sharing your experience on how you handled negotiation when trying to switch teams within the same company and negotiating a better salary within same company with an competing offer from outside the company.

Unfortunately, I don't have experience with either of these scenarios, but I'll share what I know about them at a high-level.

The first scenario is very, very rare - It would be strange changing comp as you switch teams as you're usually staying within the same role (e.g. software engineer) and level. I talk about this more here: "How can I best switch internally and uplevel?"

The second scenario will vary based on company, and I talk more about it here: "Should I switch jobs in the current economy?"

From talking to Taro Premium members in India, engineers are unfortunately expected to share previous salary and compensation details with a potential employer. Like Alex mentioned, this depends on where you live.

For proof of competing offers, this can happen. In fact, I was asked to show proof of offer details multiple times!

After I graduated, I received a strong offer from Google due to fortuitious timing with the Twitter IPO in 2013 😂 I was able to use this as leverage to increase my signing bonus at Facebook from $75K to $125K, but the FB recruiter did actually ask me for proof of the Google numbers.

I talk about that whole saga here: https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/4MBOiqWEMbCTCcLPjisz/5-offers-w-faang-companies-as-a-new-grad-details-lessons/