I am defining headhunters are those who are retained paid search by the prospective employer to find an employee to match their requirements. A recruiter I’m defining as someone who works in HR for the prospective employee’s company. I wanted to make that clear, I’m talking only about headhunters.
I was talking with some friends at dinner about this tonight, since one of them is thinking of leaving his company to leverage his skill and experience for a better place. Someone mentioned using a headhunter and a couple of us, me included said that thinking about over our careers headhunters simply wasted our time. We never got a job using a headhunter.
So we were talking about what situations are headhunters actually useful to a company and why anyone would use them anymore with the internet and being able to post jobs so easily. One said that companies that are looking for executives including CEOs use headhunters because they have specific requirements, or they actually know someone they would like to hire for an position but don’t want to approach them directly. So the headhunter is the go-between.
That begs the question, are headhunters in 2015 used for non-supervisory jobs? We talked about it and couldn’t think of anyone who got a job for that type of position this way. If so, is there an advantage to using a headhunter and using the internet to find a job and apply? Someone mentioned that some companies don’t want to publicly advertise a position and prefer a headhunter give them several ideal candidates to select from.
I’m in the IT field, specifically information security. Headhunters are pretty common and do find candidates for nonsupervisory roles in my field. My most recent job before my current one was one I got through a headhunter. I previously got a job offer through a headhunter but turned it down. They were both nonsupervisory. I get contacted by headhunters pretty routinely for similar openings.
It probably depends a lot on the field. I’m lucky to be in a hot field right now. I’m also fairly senior and highly paid, so headhunters are champing at the bit to get me placed, since their commission is based on my salary (I think it is anyway). Earlier in my career, headhunters were a lot less helpful to me.
Thanks for the post. Did you look for a headhunter, or was your resume posted in a job board and they contacted you? Also, do you feel the headhunter got you a better compensation offer?
I’ve worked with headhunters / recruiters throughout my career (I work in market research), both when I was a younger (i.e., non-supervisory) worker, and now, when I’d be placed at a level that would usually have a “director”-style title. The first time I switched jobs, I was placed in the new place by a headhunter.
I’ve always kept in touch with the headhunters who work in my industry, and always returned their calls, because you never know when you’ll need one. However, it’s important to remember that they really don’t work for the employee whom they place; they’re working for the company who’s looking for an employee. Thus, they are, nearly always, only interested in filling those positions for which they’ve been specifically retained. So, if you’re in serious job-search mode, it’s good that they know that you’re on the market, but they aren’t going to work hard on trying to find a spot for you; they’re trying to fill specific jobs.
Some are great, but others tend to approach you with anything that they think might even remotely be a fit (though they do often approach it with the idea of, “even if you aren’t interested, maybe you’ll know someone who would be.”)
In consulting, all the time. Most of my projects come via headhunting; the rest, via agencies who know how to do their own searching. I’m in ERP consulting, but have met consultants (read freelancers) in other fields ranging from engineering to finance, who had been found via headhunters.
I’m on LinkedIn, so there’s more than enough material for headhunters to contact me. The do so quite regularly. I also have an agency I’ve worked with when I’ve been looking for work so I generally ignore the headhunters. High tech, non-supervisory positions (currently).
This was my experience in IT - I stayed at the same job, never needed the service, but occasionally when there was a seriously specialized and important job to fill, the company would contract through a headhunter. If there are a thousand people in the area who qualify to do the job, why bother? If it’s a specialized as “security expert” or “database manager” better to use a headhunting agency that to reply on a few in-house employees to interview and evaluate skills they themselves are lacking.
Don’t recall the exact terms, but IIRC it was a percentage of the employee’s salary for about a year, plus a promise of some refund if the employee did not stay the year or did not meet standards.
Of course, for your average accountant or engineer, probably not worth the head0hunter’s while, unless you’re the accountant who knows the local complex sales tax intricacies inside and out or the engineer who specializes in large refrigerator design or some such specialized job. IT is especially prone to this because there might be a variety of different software for operating systems, database, programming etc. and finding someone with a depth of experience in the specific tools you use is often a major time and money savings.
Recruiters don’t mind head-hunting, but they are generally set up to attract people looking for new positions instead of actively pursuing people already employed. Head-hunting generally occurs for non-management positions when the pool of applicants is weak. Head-hunting is used at the higher end to find people with proven track records who are generally not in need of any kind of recruiting service. The difference between head-hunters and recruiters is like the difference between carnivores and scavengers, it just depends on the nature of the food supply.
My current non-supervisory job was found through a headhunter. I am a non-clinical statistician in a big pharma company, which is specialized enough that the pool of good candidates is fairly small.
There is a recruiting company that specializes in statisticians (among other areas) that would send me emails about job openings, asking me to contact them if I am interested. Once I got the interest of the company, the recruiter helped me along the way. This included biographies of the people who would interview me, and tips on what to expect at the interview. I’m pretty sure that they received a payment when I was hired, and another after I had been in the job for six months.
Sometimes I applied for jobs that were posted by headhunters, sometimes I sent a general inquiry to a headhunter, sometimes they contacted me because my resume was on Dice.com. Once or twice I got contacted just based on my LinkedIn profile (which is not very detailed, but I guess they saw some of the certifications they were looking for). The best results I’ve had were from headhunters I’ve built a long term relationship with. There are a few who kind of always have me on the back burner and check in with me periodically.
I’m not sure if they got me a better offer than I could have got on my own. The times I got offers through headhunters, the jobs were not widely posted, so I probably wasn’t going to get that particular job at all without the headhunter. The headhunter is motivated to get the highest salary they can, since that determines their commission, but I’m not sure if I could have done as well without using them.
Yeah, I’ve tried to maintain a good relationship with a few headhunters who understand my goals and who don’t bother me with unrelated openings. I got an email from a HH a while back for something like a forensic accountant. Uh, I’m a computer forensic examiner. Why would you think… Anyway, I did not bother to reply. But there was another guy I was in touch with for over a year off and on, just keeping each other updated, and one day he finally sent me an awesome job, exactly what I was looking for. I got it and stayed there for a while, and it was probably the best career move I’ve made in a long time. So, HH’s are definitely a mixed bag.