How Headhunters Work
The role of the headhunter in business is to find people to fill open vacancies so that businesses don’t have to do it themselves.
This simple definition belies the enormous amount of work that headhunters must do to find candidates that meet the guidelines and qualifications that an employer is looking for; a difficult task when you consider that most employers are also looking for someone that is: reliable, honest, hard working, intelligent, easy to get along with, savvy, up to date on everything going on in the field, and has more experience than they are generally willing to pay for.
A headhunter’s job falls into two main categories; dealing with the client, and dealing with prospective hires.
It works like this; a headhunter is either contacted by a client who is looking for someone to fill a vacancy, or contacts the client themselves imply as a matter of routine, or because they’ve heard of an opening. Either way, the headhunter/client hookup is made. Then client then outlines what it is he or she is looking for while the headhunter listens and takes notes. When both are satisfied that both know what the client is looking for, the headhunter leaves to go find someone to fill that role.
Most headhunters maintain a database of names they’ve acquired through years of work. Some of the names might be of people that have been placed before, others might be names of people the headhunter has only heard of, and other’s yet may be referrals. Headhunters also spend a lot of time online looking at resumes of people that have posted on career or job opportunity sites.
Next, the headhunter contacts the possible candidate, lets them know why they are calling, speaks about the position that needs filling and then asks if the candidate might be interested. If there is interest, the candidate is usually invited in for an interview with the headhunter; and if that goes well, and interview is arrange with client. It is then up to the client to hire that person or not. If they do, a commission is paid to the headhunter and the job is over. If not, the headhunter goes looking for someone else.
The reason that a client would use a headhunter is because of the enormous amount of work it takes to find a person that fits with what they are looking for. Also, the headhunting business is generally centered around candidates that are considered highly skilled and valuable, which because of its very nature means that the number of candidates and those do the hiring is relatively low compared to the general labor pool. Thus, it wouldn’t pay for a company to maintain its own pool of headhunters, which is why they go to headhunter shops when they want to fill a vacancy.
One more thing of note; because of the nature of finding a resource for a customer, headhunters are generally by nature salespeople; this is because they not only have to find the candidate the client is looking for, but they have to sell them on them as well.
