Companies Need Recruiters Who Are Headhunters
/The modern day usage of the term “headhunter” has often been applied interchangeably with other recruitment terms like recruiter and executive search. True headhunters, however, take pride in the designation and emphasize the skills that separate them from general recruitment professionals, especially when market conditions demand their skills, like today. Our current market conditions of having 10M open positions consistently posted, unemployment decreasing to now 5.3% from a high of 14.8% in April 2020, and companies desiring to pull employees back to the office from comfortable work-from-home settings and schedules have created a scenario where expert headhunters are needed more than ever.
It’s important to know the different types of recruitment professionals you may be speaking and working with. There are many flavors in the field of recruiting today. Much like any business there are different models for connecting with clients (sales) and delivering solutions (candidate delivery through recruiting). Companies can focus their businesses geographically, by industry, function, experience level, skill set, or myriad combinations thereof. Focus is an imperative to recruitment success. It facilitates growth of the team’s expertise over time as they learn in depth the specific roles, industry, and market drivers within that focus. If you have spoken to a recruiter lately you know the recruiters who have knowledge of your field, roles, typical career path and compensation windows are usually the recruiters that you see value in and respond to. All successful recruiters have some focus, but headhunters build beyond focus.
The defining trait of a headhunter is the unique access they have to a subset of the candidate pool that other recruiters cannot, or will not, engage with. A headhunter has a way to identify and engage with passive candidates, those people qualified for an opportunity but are do not know it. Passive candidates are professionals who are not actively seeking a job change, are generally satisfied with their current role, and even content with the future potential they believe they have with their current employer. What makes headhunters different is their method of engagement. To use an analogy, most recruiters and search consultants recruit with nets.
They throw a series of nets by posting jobs and sending messages through job sites, social media, and user groups. They reach a broad selection of candidates where some are qualified, some not, but they can save all applicants in their database to engage in future assignments. This method of recruiting is more than satisfactory for many roles, especially when recruiters apply professional standards and techniques to grow their network. Of course professional recruiters will find qualified candidates given enough time and enough nets, but consider the analogy. Using the net approach, recruiters are only connecting with candidates inside the net. Any potential candidate outside the net isn’t even aware of the opportunity.
Recruiters
throw a series of nets by posting jobs and sending messages through job sites, social media, and user groups
The candidates outside the net are passive candidates who are not actively looking. These candidates are difficult to identify and even harder to engage. This is where a headhunter stands apart from the rest.
Headhunters
target specific individuals, one at a time, based on their fit for the role
The headhunter has the skills, experience, audacity and resilience to locate those other potential candidates, and then reach out and connect with them. In addition to using a net (we always want to find qualified candidates who are actively looking), they go hunting outside the net in a very specific targeting effort. In our analogy, they use a speargun. Headhunters target specific individuals, one at a time, based on their fit for the role. Headhunters will cast the net, but they don’t wait candidates to apply.
This type of engagement is completely different because the headhunter is now approaching a person who is not aware of the opportunity and isn’t open to the distraction. Headhunters grow their capability to locate and connect with passive candidates through various methods. The method they use is not the special ingredient, it’s really the “umph” in the execution that separates the true headhunter from the rest. The headhunter has the intestinal fortitude and discipline to learn how to identify and then reach out and speak with people who don’t have a need, desire, nor see value in speaking with them. Traditionally headhunters have grown their skill through a specialization like combining industry and function (think “C-Level candidates within Manufacturing”), or a specialization in a specific industry and skill set (think “Healthcare HL7 Integration”). This specialization gives the headhunter a reason to reach out. Of course all recruiters have the opportunity to do this, but most do not. These headhunters will, over time, gain a unique market knowledge, network, presence and access with companies and candidates. Headhunters are often thought leaders within their specialization. In addition to these methods, today’s market has created the opportunity for a different type of headhunter to succeed. With all the activity in recruiting today, there is now potential for a new skill-based headhunter to join other headhunters in the market. Skill-based headhunters are individuals who are quick learners, comfortable speaking with all types of people at every level, and who have a method or technique of gaining access to people in a professional and ethical manner. Their skills allow these headhunters to go hunting outside the net and find success. What’s unique about these skill-based headhunters is that their headhunting activities are calls and conversations that a corporate recruiter either may not be permitted to execute, or just won’t do. They are actively reaching into competitors to find and engage qualified passive candidates. These activities, while professional when done appropriately, are aggressive and against the norm. They set a headhunter apart.
Finding qualified candidates, whether inside or outset the net, result in success for client companies, and there is value in every type of professional recruiter. The challenge in today’s market, however, is that some opportunities almost require engaging the hidden candidate pool outside the net. To find and then attract the right candidates in an adequate period of time, companies will need to have to find a way to get their opportunities in front of and engage with the entire talent pool, including passive candidates. Companies cannot rely on the pool of candidates actively searching and responding to a post. Headhunters can be the answer for the hard-to-find, rare, or high-impact talent needs. They’ll reach out beyond the net and both the company and the candidates will benefit from quality of their effort. Companies have a higher probability of seeing quality candidates sooner, and passive candidates can consider opportunities of which they were unaware.