Headhunting vs Flat Fee Recruitment : Which is best?

Headhunting can be defined as: Identifying and approaching potential passive candidates for a client’s role or for general roles within a specific client base

So that’s the definition, but what roles or scenarios is the recruitment practice of headhunting most suited for?

Headhunting is ideal for: Specialist roles where an identifiable skill or background is needed that may be rare. When a client wants to draw someone from a limited number of competitors. If the job is highly confidential. Senior roles at ‘C’ level. Finding passive candidates who are not in a competitive situation with other roles and consultancies. Roles guaranteed by a retainer. Clients with a poor reputation. No success with advertising or agencies.

It’s a poor choice for: Non-retained roles except under certain circumstances. For generalist roles where candidates are hard to identify, especially if non-retained. Increasingly, retainers are being used to identify generalist candidates who have a scarce skill set and who cannot be reached by other means – often a long, hard process but can be rewarding. High risk with no retainer. For low-level, non-business-critical roles, as cost is too high to justify.

So what are the alternatives?

- Flat Fee Recruitment

- Data Mining

Flat Fee Recruitment: Advert and sift for a flat fee. An alternative advertising recruitment option for active job seekers. A firm will draft all the documentation and advert copy so it’s properly optimised for all the major job boards. The ad is then placed online and each applicant is then hand sifted and delivered usually via an Applicant Tracking System.

Data Mining: In a similar way to headhunting, the data mining is in place where candidates are not actively looking for a new job. Data mining is a passive candidate product. A research team works to scour all the major job boards and delves into social media platforms identifying candidates who might suit s role.

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. 

Headhunters Vs Recruitment Agencies

Recruiter

Headhunter and Recruitment Agencies both offer what can be very valuable services to recruiters, particularly when it comes to helping to cut down on the work involved in sifting candidates. While recruitment agencies generally charge anywhere between around 10-20% of the new hire’s annual salary, headhunters’ commissions normally start at 20% and range from there upwards.

 

Of course, one of the main differences between recruitment agencies and headhunters is that the former tend to charge a contingency fee which is usually only payable if the agency actually finds a suitable candidate for the vacancy, whereas the latter are typically held on retainer so that they receive all or part of their commission irrespective of whether they find the right person for the job. Aside from this, however, the levels of service that you can reasonably expect from each of these different types of recruiters can vary considerable                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Although recruitment agencies do have to be extremely mindful of their reputations and of ensuring that they only refer candidates who would be a good match for the role, of course their businesses also rely on volume. Essentially, the more vacancies they help to fill, the more money they make. In some, although not all cases, this can mean that the quantity of candidates referred can take priority over their quality, which means that the fit between the employee and the hiring company doesn’t always turn out to be the best.

Headhunter

Headhunters, on the other hand, get paid something at least, regardless of whether the role is filled or not, and their reputations stand or fall on the quality of the people that they attract. This arrangement allows them the opportunity to really get to know the recruiting company, to understand its culture and its staffing requirements and to find the individual who is ideally suited to the role in every respect.

The higher fees and the retainer agreement with head hunter usually means that their services are reserved for executive and leadership positions right at the top of an organization, but as in some cases what they charge is only comparable with the upper end of the scale for recruitment agencies, it can be useful to consider them for positions which are lower down the hierarchy. After all, making a better hiring decision first time around can save the considerable costs of having to re-advertise and go through the recruitment and training processes all over again.

Go For the Top Headhunters

Before we move onto looking at the specific preparatory steps you need to take to prepare for that first job interview, a word or two on recruiters (or headhunters) are necessary. Notice the headline? “Top Headhunters“. It’s chosen on purpose. You may experience that you short-list several recruiters, you contact them, you pass your resume, and you register online with their typical “e-xxxx” service. And you hear nothing! Your contact them again, remind them (please don’t complain or scold) and still, you hear NOTHING! It can be frustrating, mind boggling, unfair etc., but do remember: THEY WORK FOR THEIR CLIENTS, not us. We are repeating ourselves A very common misconception is that the headhunters – and perhaps especially the top headhunter are there to service us – the job seekers. They are not! Simple question: who secures their pay-check? Well we don’t (except when they find us and their clients employ us). First and foremost, the client of the recruiter is the hiring company, your prospective employer. They work for them. They establish the job posting and zip though possibly thousands of database records (note, the really big top headhunters or recruiters in the world have millions of possible candidates on file; some even refuse to receive further resumes). So when you contact them, do you really expect them to respond to you and every other Tom, Dick and Sally that write in? They may do so if you are really unique, if you fit a current vacancy profile perfectly or if you just somehow managed to catch their attention.

Go For the Top Headhunter

It is said, that when the headhunters scan for candidates for a first interview (they may sip though thousands to shortlist e.g. 50 to talk to in a first round, with the intention to shortlist 5-8 for the client to interview, (sometimes even less), you get exactly 7 seconds of their time in that “sipping process”. If they don’t like your cover letter, or the front page of your resume (e.g. the summary section), you get tossed back in the database again, and they move on to the next resume in the pile.

In some countries it is possible to meet up with recruiters and even also the top headhunters for what some refer to as “coffee meetings”. The intension is an informal meeting where you have a chance to share your background, thoughts and objectives in more detail and the recruiter will have a chance to make a general evaluation of you and establish if you are “worthwhile working on at all” relative to what they currently have in their projects funnel. It’s not easy to get these coffee sessions and not all recruiters are open towards it. But some are and if you do manage to catch their attention, even for “just” such a cup of coffee, do take it – by all means.

So how do you get noticed? You need to be UNIQUE. You must stand out from the crowd. Think out of the box to captivate them, capture their attention – like what this gentleman did:

It pays to be unique when you want attention from top head hunter

So when the headhunters finally call (and they will, eventually – have faith), do appreciate them. You managed to catch their attention somehow and you should (even however difficult it may be) feel honored that you stand out from the crowd. Listen to them, respect them and show that you are genuinely pleased to have been shortlisted for a first interview. Also, even if in the meantime you changed your mind and do not want the job, take the interview. The more interviews you attend, the more experience you build, the more you learn to be top notch ready when THE JOB is on the board!