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Personnel Consulting, Head Hunters, Executive Management Search

Definition, Explanation

Head Hunters or personnel consulting or executive management searchers are hired by medium and large companies to look for and to recruit special professionals or executives. However, the line between those and private employment placement agencies is blurred, since both increasingly operate in the range of the other. Also, the demand for engineers and IT staff is no longer covered satisfactorily by the traditional recruiting methods of job adverts in print media and on the web. Therefore, some companies employ head hunters.

The strategy of personnel consulting agencies:

• Preparatory measures:
  • Build a data base of potential candidates that might be of interest to the employing companies
    Potential candidates can be speakers on events, authors of articles in professional magazines. Also individual contacts and networks, e.g. Xing, are used
  • Select from the candidate list
  • Retrieve the business telephone number of the candidate
• Head hunter calls the candidate, trying to
  • Get information about qualifications, curriculum vitae, current activity, area of responsibility, personal situation
  • Decision whether to put forth the job offer
• Head hunter makes up a list of top candidates which is presented to the employer

The head hunter makes contacts and places recruitees. Sometimes he also sorts contacts in advance with respect to people’s application documents or by employing an assessment center. Normally, personnel consulting companies are interested in a long-term relationship to the employing companies. If such is established, the employing companies’ demands will be easier to fulfil and the head hunters will specialize accordingly.

The employing company pays the employed personnel consulting agency. The usual commission paid is a third of the annual income of the recruited person.

Besides head-hunters, today there are also online recruiters, respective recommendation websites and career centers which take premium payments for successfully recruited, qualified personnel (e.g. JobLeads).

Tips, Checklist

A head hunter calls you:

• Do not appear surprised about the call. If the calling person starts with “Can you speak freely?” shut the office door. Do not ask how they got to calling just you. That shows inexperience
• Have the offer in question be explained to you, and ask at the end of the talk whether they are still interested in you as a candidate
• Communicate it clearly if you do not wish a change of job
• Ask questions, yourself. Note down the head hunter’s contact data, name and the consulting company and log the talk
• Have them send the job description to you, best to your private email address
• Sort out details (tasks, area of responsibility, location, income) in a second talk that is done outside of the office and of your working hours. Do not urge them to tell you the name of the employing company
• In the second talk, if the head hunter requests for it, you should openly depict your so-far occupational activities and achievements. By no means talk badly about a former employer or activity
• As long as negotiation is going for nothing binding, you should only tell confidential people about the head hunter contact. An important issue to consider of course, is informing your partner and your family if the change of job requires moving houses
• In case mutual interest proves, you should first check your possibilities of development in your current company, without though mentioning the offer you got. Compare the alternatives and make a decision
• Report your decision to your personnel department
• Pay attention whether there really exists an open position or the head hunter is only updating complementing his data. In that case he might first try to find out if you are willing to change, and then starts looking for a matching position
• Consider head hunting networking

You contact a head hunter:

• You can drop off an unsolicited application at a consulting company. For reasons of increasing demand, head hunters are interested in having suitable candidates in their “portfolio”
• Prerequisites for applying unsolicited should be some years of working experience and professional specialization that are currently demanded. As a starter in your field, your chances are the highest if you apply with smaller consulting companies, provided that you have a special curriculum vitae or special skills
• Find yourself a personnel consulting agent that meets your needs. Professionalism, relations with the branch of interest and mutual trust are important. Therefore, before you send your application dossier, you should make contact by phone
• The personnel consulting company should be a member of the BDU (Bundesverband Deutscher Unternehmensberater, German Consulting Association). This obliges them to work in compliance with the BDU directives, essentially for the handling of confidential data
• Mind that a head hunter’s suggestions of matching open positions will be limited to those which he is actually paid to fill. Companies who work with other consulters or recruit on their own, will automatically be out of the menu
• Therefore, besides working with a head hunter to place you, you should as well use any other means of jobseeking
• Be careful with online head hunter platforms. They cost, for jobseekers. Listed head hunters’ addresses give no information about their quality
• For your application dossier, consider that it should be quickly readable, stressing the essential specialties of the applicant. So, keep the main letter and curriculum vitae brief and down to the basics. Also, communicate clearly in the subject heading what kind of job you are striving for. Address the dossier to the head hunter, whom you have previously found out by phone. Also state your salary requirement and your desired dismissal period
• Many changes of jobs and a bad English are likely to be reasons to kick you out
• Be patient and do not call back permanently. Not always has a company ordered their personnel consulting to look for a profile matching you

Literatures

• Search and Placement! by Larry Nobles and Steven M. Finkel
• Highly Effective Job Search by Orville Pierson
• The Recruiters Guide Book by Dakotta Alex
• Ask the Headhunter by Nick A. Corcodilos

Last update: 01/09/2010