The Best Headhunting Techniques

This article features some headhunting techniques which could help you land that ideal candidate for a key position in your company. Whether you represent a large corporation or whether you are just starting out your business and you have to do your own recruiting, rethinking the matter and starting fresh is paramount. There are cases where headhunters get completely stuck and cannot lock down a candidate, especially for positions higher up in the company. This is where the best advice is not to force things, maybe it wasn’t a match made in heaven. Another mistake you have to avoid is to oversell a position which might result ultimately in ending up with an unhappy employee. Considering all these, let’s take a look at the most effective headhunting techniques.

1.    Wisely select from a sea of CVs. In some cases, you might get flooded by an enormous group of willing candidates, each of them claiming they are the one. You have to arm yourself with patience and actively scan all the resumes for details which might indicate more about each candidate. It goes without saying that the content is paramount, but the layout of the resume, the relevance of the details and the writing style are also paramount. These also point out character traits in your candidate which are advantageous to know beforehand. After scanning the CVs, make a list which candidates are below expectations, which are decent and which are great. With this database in hand you can proceed to the next step.

2.    Background research. After you select the best candidates for the job, typically you would do a little background check to see if all that was presented in the resume is accurately depicted. You might check the college degree, their projects or contact the persons who offered references. The most important thing is to be able to deduce the degree of preparation and the personality of your candidate.

3.    Scan your own backyard. One of the more obvious headhunting techniques, but nonetheless equally efficient is to look through your own colleagues to see if anybody would fit the ideal candidate profile. It could happen to get so lucky that one of your colleagues would want to make a transfer and that he/she would fulfill all the conditions. After getting this clear, it might take a while to analyze if the candidate has the proper experience and preparation for the new position or if he/she needs specializing courses. In any case, in the end you would obtain a candidate who is familiar with the organization of the company and who can skip the induction period. Some companies encourage this practice as it motivates employees to go after what they really want, therefore it ensures retention.

4.    Keep track of your database. One of the more popular headhunting techniques is to remember good candidates in past interviews make notes on them and then contact them again when a new opportunity has arisen. In direct relation to the previous point, if you keep track of your colleagues and remember who applied for which job, if you think they have a potential to be promoted, you should support them to enlist in specializing courses in order to be ready for a transfer or a promotion the next time around. Saving said this, you should always keep an open mind and select the best candidate for a job, not necessarily the one you have grown if he/she still isn’t the best you have seen, making sure you don’t commit a positive bias.

5.    You want the candidate with a positive vibe. Always keep in mind that having the right attitude is the shortest route to success in business. Try to choose candidates with a strong psychological profile, they are the ones who, with the right incentives, can be motivated into learning new skills, acquiring more information and increasing their performance spectacularly. My advice is to choose the optimist over the pessimist even though he is slightly inferiorly prepared, but pay attention to monitor his performance and his promises.

6.    A profile of the competition. In the world of headhunting techniques, stealing personnel from your competition is the worst crime imaginable. But there is nothing wrong in making a profile of the best candidates out there and keeping an ear to the ground to check if any of them is looking for something else.

7.    Offer all kinds of stimulation: money and a challenge. Especially for the ungettable gets, for those white whales of the recruiting world, offering huge amounts of money is not enough anymore. You need to offer them something extra: a good old-fashioned challenge. A riddle, a puzzle, something to put their great mind at work. In addition to this you could put on the table some amazing benefits or a working environment which feels more like a family, this having been aspects which have always attracted people in the past.

These are the most effective headhunting techniques available at the moment. Just remember to make sure that the person actually wants the position, do not make it into something it could never be or else he would be disappointed. And keep looking for that ideal candidate, but be realistic and accept those who might meet 80% of your conditions.