Curious About Headhunting? Seeking Practical Insights and Real-World Understanding

Dear seniors,

Please provide me with some information about headhunting and how we can practically engage in the process. Could you also explain what headhunting actually entails?

Thank you.

Hello Suki,

I am hereby attaching the Headhunting presentation. I hope it will give you an idea about headhunting.

Regards,
Sudharshanan

Dear Sudarshan,

I want a practical approach for this. How can we manage headhunting effectively in practice?

Dear Suki,

Headhunting is a type of recruitment. We pick a person from a company by his name. We have a target person, and we need him in our organization. For that, we try to contact him through any of the sources - fake calls at reception, taking numbers from people in the organization, etc.

Let me know if you are understanding this, or if I need to be more specific.

Regards,
Neha

Hi,

I would like to share my knowledge on Headhunting. Only a consultancy can perform headhunting for its clients. Headhunting is all about fulfilling your client's employee requirement by offering them a good employee from a competitor's firm. Headhunting is basically used to reach those people who do not post their resume on job portals due to reasons like an employee being scared of being caught by their present employer, or an employee not wanting to go through the lengthy process of posting their resume on a job portal. There is also the possibility that the employee is satisfied with their current job.

To do headhunting, one requires a lot of presence of mind and good convincing power. To reach the particular employee or position your client requires, the headhunter has to use various tactics to avoid being caught by the competitor's firm. Nowadays, even firms are taking steps to prevent headhunter activity, as it results in a significant loss when employees leave to join another firm.

In my personal opinion, I believe headhunting is not ethical business practice. If you headhunt employees from another firm using excuses to lure them, it opens the possibility of your own employees being headhunted as well. This cycle could continue, leading to increased attrition in your firm.

Please share your thoughts on my perspective.

I am providing you with a link I came across on the web:
[link removed due to being outdated]

(Search On CiteHR | Google)

Thank you!

Headhunting is hunting for the right skills which a company requires for an individual and those people who are highly demanded in the market for their unique skill sets. For example, a person is good in chip technology or skilled in silk route testing specialization or for an HR manager in these days of settlement and retrenchment policy. These profiles can't be found easily on a portal or database; companies hire executive search firms to find such profiles. Hope this gives you a brief idea about it.

Regards,
Gauri Tomar

Headhunting is a type of hunt for the best candidates for a specific job vacancy to be able to perform these specific tasks effectively. Headhunters must understand the sector or industry in which such candidates work. They must also have a good network of contacts within the sector and knowledge of individuals' motivations or career interests.

Regards,
Nawas

Shab,

I understand your point on headhunting ethic. But in reality, for a business to succeed or fail, it all depends on their human resources & infrastructure. In the case of infrastructure, you can always buy but not human resources. So, the executive search firms/recruitment companies/corporate recruitment teams exist to help corporates get the right workforce. To avoid losing talented workforce, the Sr. HR folks of the company have a higher responsibility to retain the talented workforce.

So, as per me, let's accept the reality and compete in the business.

Suki,

Headhunting is one of the greatest skills a recruiter must have. In fact, companies depend on recruitment companies to provide headhunted profiles rather than the profiles available on job portals.

In my opinion, the channels to headhunt are as follows:

- Understand the requirement well and map the companies from where you can get such profiles.
- Go through job portals and find profiles from the mapped companies who are a little close to the requirement you may have or have contacts from that org.
- Talk to them for an assignment and continue to be in touch with them for some time and then start asking for any contacts in the specific group or skillset.
- Once you get a similar skillset person, then ask him to come to your office to discuss the assignment. With this, you can get maximum information about that company and the resources in that skillset.

- Another way to get contacts is to send a mail with a questionnaire to a lot of candidates who are close to the skillset you are looking for. At the end of the questionnaire, you can ask for 2 referrals in your area of expertise for reference (at least 60%+ candidates will give you names, contacts). This will be more effective if you send candidates with <=5 years of experience.

- If you don't find any on job portals or through your personal network, in such a case, get the company's number and dial saying you wanted to talk to Srinivas or someone. Once you get someone, start talking to him for an assignment and make a friendship to understand the company. After getting the right candidate contact, then you can follow the earlier method of meeting in person and getting as much detail as you can.

- You can approach people through open forums like LinkedIn.com.

- If the skillset is highly niche, then send emails to 1000 people who have 20% and above similarity to the skillset you are looking for. With this method, word will spread, and people will start reaching out to you directly. Internet works for you.

The above are a few ways as per me. If you start doing them, you'll innovate your ways to hunt the right talent for your client's needs.

One thing you should remember, while doing this job, you should feel like a salesperson and do your best to sell, so you'll face lots of situations where candidates will shout, etc. You have to be positive until you achieve your goal.

In my view, the toughest job for a recruiter is to "Headhunt." If you are a smart talker with business awareness, it'll become easy to deal with senior positions.

Good Luck!

KK

Headhunting is zeroing in on a passive job seeker for the job opening. One should have in-depth knowledge about the market to be successful in headhunting. Normally, it may take time to pull out passive job seekers as they will be well settled in their job. Here, the brand name, compensation package, and the profile come into the picture, making these three things crucial.

Headhunting comes into play when resources are scarce. I don't think headhunting is unethical because everyone will move out if they find greener pastures elsewhere. Therefore, it is the job of HR to ensure that employees are satisfied in their jobs instead of claiming that headhunting is unethical.

Regards,
Nidhin Elanjickal Jacob

Hi Suki....

HEAD-HUNTING....!!!! It sounds like a self-explanatory term; however, it has a lot of recruitment sense in it.

You will find a lot of people in the industry who are passive job seekers. Meaning that they are not actively looking out for a change; however, given a chance/a better opportunity, they might take an interest to look into the new job. Those candidates are basically head-hunted. As they are not active job seekers, they will not post their profiles in any portals, or they might just leave a very old profile, or they might not update their profile on a regular basis.

Now the key factor is... who is a head-hunter? A good head-hunter thinks like a detective. Name gathering along with contact details is their forte. They know how to pass the gatekeepers and reach the right person to present the new job to them. It is absolutely ethical unless there is any kind of agreement signed between the companies. And I disagree with the statement that "only consultants can do the headhunting."

It is based on recruiting principle... that is "Find out the perfect DNA to do the job"...

Best regards,
PP

Hi Suki,

Headhunting means to recruit candidates from a competitor's company and to target candidates who have not uploaded their CVs on job portals. Many consultants operate without relying on job portals.

Regards,
Viren Doshi

Hi Suki,

Headhunting is a kind of recruitment process for which one can approach different sources, like consultants, job portal sites such as TimesJobs, Naukri, Monster, friends, and referrals.

In a Google search, you can find some free sites where you can hunt for candidates according to your requirements. However, before hunting, you should know the exact requirements such as the field you are looking for, years of experience, pay range, etc. These details will make your hunting more easy and effective.

Thanks & cheers:-P

Rama Laxhmi

Good replies there. Reaching out to passive job seekers and convincing them to take up a job is not an easy task. Most headhunters consider proactive networking as the best strategy. Approaching them through a reference or mutual contact generally results in a positive response.

Dear Mr. Suki,

As an HR professional or a part of HR recruitment, you should know the definition of Headhunting. It is a simple term in English that refers to the practice of recruiting a person aggressively from a competitor by offering them a better position or benefits.

Nowadays, many companies, both small and large, are utilizing these techniques to acquire talented individuals or top officials from their competitors. It is not an easy task to accomplish this successfully.

To excel in headhunting, one must enhance their communication, negotiation skills, and develop strong persuasive abilities and presence of mind. Only with these qualities can you effectively serve your organization and attract capable individuals from around the world.

I hope this clarifies the concept for you.

Best regards, [Your Name]

Hi,

I agree with the details that you shared on headhunting. To add my opinion to this, whether it's headhunting, cold calling, poaching, or any consultancy, or in case HR directly contacts candidates for openings in the parent or client company, we are tapping into the headhunting resources of other companies. In fact, this is how the market operates.

That's the way we run our business.

Dear All,

Very Good Evening from Anish. All the points that were discussed are worthy. Headhunting, in my opinion, is simply acquiring specific personnel from the open market or from a specific competitor. It becomes unethical when we target personnel from a direct competitor in the same industry.

As Ms. Shabz explained, it is not always beneficial for the organization. Such practices create unethical behaviors in hunting each other's talents and also increase costs.

Kindly comment on my opinion.

Regards,
Anish
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