Curious About Headhunting? Seeking Insights and Advice from Fellow Recruiters

Hi! My name is Priyanka, and I'm a recruitment consultant. I would like to know more about headhunting. Please suggest.

Regards, Priyanka

Hi Priyanka, Welcome to our citehr.com, and I hope this helps you immensely.

Head Hunting

Can you be more specific about what exactly you want to know? For instance, do's and don'ts of headhunting or tips for the same. Clarity in the question would help the members to answer your queries.

Let me share some of my thoughts on this:

1. Headhunting is a proactive approach to finding talented professionals and networking with them to place them for your clients.

2. The best way to find top professionals is to check the market and references. If you are looking for a top-notch sales professional in the FMCG sector for your client, then people in the market, distributors, retailers, and stockists, etc., would provide information on that. Yes, it's a bit of legwork, but that's the best way to hunt for professionals.

3. Once done, plan the way to approach them in a subtle manner. Meet them if possible; don't limit your approach to phone calls. Assess them and keep their profiles with you.

4. It's highly relationship-based, and trust is very essential.

5. If you find something lacking in them, tell them subtly as you want them to rise in the corporate world. Frankly, not many consultants do that, and the professionals feel they are just products in the hands of headhunters/consultants.

6. Network and network, make a potential list, keep track of their performances, and read everything about the industry.

7. Present them to your clients if you feel that it would be a cultural fit and meet the client's future plans and the potential of the candidates.

Well, that's what I can think of at the moment.

Hope this helps you.

Cheerio,

Rajat Joshi

What is headhunting?

Headhunting, in a very simple way, is the art and science of locating potential resources through various sources (friends, colleagues, references, etc.) and then making contact (via email, phone, or face-to-face) to gauge if there is an interest in the offer you have to make.

Hi Priyanka,

Headhunting is a very challenging part of the recruitment process. Generally, consultants find candidates using portals like Naukri.com, Jobsahead.com, etc., or through advertisements or their databank. When consultants don't find a suitable profile from these sources, they start looking for people in the market.

Here are some tips for headhunting:

- Find details of similar industries where your required candidates might possibly be found.
- Try to identify individuals working in companies in the same position.
- Obtain references from candidates you speak with regarding the requirement.

This is what I typically do to find candidates for headhunting. I hope you find this information beneficial.

Take care.

Bye,
Dinesh

Dear Madam,

I read about headhunting. It was useful. But I have a doubt: I want to know about the effective ways of sourcing candidates and screening the candidates?

Monisha

Hi Priyanka,

I think the concept of headhunting is not being viewed in the right frame of mind, though it has been thoroughly practiced. It's really embarrassing that even the top corporates do the same thing. It is actually about placing employees in the right roles or distributing them according to organizational requirements. However, this concept is often viewed as downsizing. I, as an HR professional, lament this and hope that this practice will change in the years to come.

Sashi
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Rajat and Sashidar both touch on the most important aspect of headhunting - it is about matching the skills and knowledge of an individual with the needs of the organization. All recruitment should be focused on getting the best person for the job. The needs of organizations and individuals change, so headhunting needs to take into account the context at the time.

From an individual point of view, there is a certain amount of pride and satisfaction when you can say you were "headhunted" for a role. However, the point is not to create a "celebrity" in the workplace; it is to ensure that the business of the organization is carried out in the most effective way possible.

One of the ugly sides to headhunting, especially with large national and multinational corporations, is the obscenely large salaries paid to top executives. I always find this hard to reconcile with the basic concept of fairness.

It is used when the talent is not easily available and needs to be picked up from its current place. It is one of the most basic methods of recruiting and is highly used by companies for higher posts as well as technical roles where the combination of skill sets is difficult to find.

Headhunting can be done directly or through consultants. You can find many consultants specializing in headhunting. For a headhunted candidate, the salary they demand is normally higher than the industry standards. Here, you are the buyer of a scarce commodity, so the basic law of economics applies: "lesser the supply = higher the price; more the demand = higher the price."

Hi all!

I am also going through the same situation. It seems to be very difficult in the IT field when you don't have access to any database, and one has to start from scratch.

Take my case, I am absolutely new in the IT field, don't have any such contacts. Can anybody suggest to me how to extract direct names from the competitors' firms? It can be risky at times.

Regards,
Shweta

Hi Sweta,

Headhunting is an art. You have to be extra careful while at it because the original employer might come to know about your intentions, and the entire effort may backfire.

For finding leads in IT companies in Ahmedabad, try some of these tricks. It takes lots of effort, but it works:

1. Try the competitor's website. Many times, the employees' names might be given on the website.

2. Try googling. Many of the employees are members of some forum or might have been featured in some event with their names published in newspapers.

3. Try placement consultants; they are experts at it, but they charge.

4. A slightly slower but one of the most effective ways is to send somebody to the nearby cigarette stall of the company and ask them to make friends with anybody from the company who might come for a cigarette. Even small talks lead to a lot of information.

5. Once you get one candidate, ask them during the interview about the entire organizational structure, and you will have the information you need.

I have done this for my company some years back and was quite successful in picking up some key employees. Try it; it will work.

Hi,

Another way of headhunting is from the office numbers. You can dial some extensions blindly. For example, if the number is 51302000, you can assume that the last 4 digits are the extension numbers.

Regards,
Monisha

Hi Jagadeesh,

I read your answer on headhunting, i.e., dialing the extension number. That's looking good, but how can we know the name of the person we are going to talk to before he says it? I opine that it will be awkward to ask for his name and then proceed with our openings.

Regards,
Monisha

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Hi Monisha,

Another way of headhunting is by dialing office numbers and trying different extension numbers blankly. For example, if the number is 51302000, you can assume that the last 4 digits are extension numbers.

Regards,
Marita

Hi Shweta, welcome to citeHR.com. Below are a few things which may help you:

1. Try to establish new contacts through friends, colleagues, parents, etc.
2. After some time, this works as a network growing and growing. For example, direct salespeople work hard for 1-2 years in the field, and then they start getting references from previous customers, i.e., they start recommending the products to their neighbors. Then the life of the sales executive becomes easier, but initially, they worked hard for those references.
3. Probe into the candidate's needs, i.e., their willingness to change jobs.
4. Last but not least, you can learn through experience.

Best wishes!

Hi,

I am a new entry to this site. Thanks for the details that I found above. I usually implement all the above-mentioned practices, yet I find that headhunting is not as fruitful as I would like it to be. Can anybody provide me with information on various ways to connect with employees in a company where there are no direct extensions, and communication is typically done through the main phone line?

Warm Regards,
Bhanu.

Dear All,

This is Deepa. I am working as a recruiter. Can any of you provide me with a mock presentation on headhunting, as this concept is still not very clear to me?

Cheers!
Deepa

Hi all,

This is Sai, and I am new to this site. The above postings on headhunting are useful, but there is still some confusion in my mind as I'm not clear on that. Can anyone please give a mock presentation?

Thanks,
Sai Kumar.

Thank you, Alex, but at this particular time, I can't move out of this place. If you could help me out with any link, online information, or a PDF file template, it will certainly clear my doubts on headhunting.

Regards,
Deepa

Hi all,

I agree with Mr. Mirza that "it" is used when the talent is not easily available and needs to be picked up from its current place. It is a method of recruitment only if you are recruiting anyone in your organization; that is called headhunting. It's old wine in a new bottle only.

How can you tell the detailed process of headhunting? I am totally new to that! Please explain how to start and how to approach!