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A headhunters is a recruiter that is pay commission which is usually around 20%-25% of your annual salary. This is paid by the employer to the headhunter for placement. When people mention "recruiter" this means the recruiter that works in HR for the company, not the paid commission one.
Headhunters usually waste your time because they are contacting you to pump you for sales leads for their headhunting firm, not so much to find you a job.
A friend of mine told me he got an unsolicited email from a headhunter that wasn't even addressed to his name. It was the typical bulk email blasted out to everyone in their database. My friend is an excellent employee, but there was a layoff and his department was closed. He's been out of work going on 9 months and has wasted a lot of time with headhunters who string him along. In many situations, he would reply to their email with a resume, they would talk to him on the phone for 10 minutes and then ghost on him completely. He said he had a sneaking suspicion most of the time they didn't even present his resume to the hiring company as expected.
This time, he decided to find out who the company was for this unsolicited and unaddressed email on his own. What he did was take unique phrases from the job description, put them in quotes and pasted it into Google search. Immediately the job description word for word came up on the company's career web page. So now he had access to the full job description, the real location of the job, and knew the company's name so he could research them further. Plus he was able to look at other jobs they had open which allowed him to get a better sense of what kind of technology the company was using.
He applied directly on the company's career website and a week later a recruiter from HR contacted him for a phone interview. The interview went very well and the HR recruiter said she would setup an interview with the hiring manager who is a VP. A week later he had the video interview with the hiring managers and a couple others from HR. He told me he felt good about the interview.
He called me this afternoon all excited. He got a job offer and it was $10K more a year than what the unsolicited headhunter claimed in email what the salary was. He accepted the offer and has a start date in a couple of weeks. He called me from the grocery store parking lot and said he was going shopping and will fill his fridge now with food that he's been putting off enjoying the last 9 months because he was trying to conserve funds.
I had no idea he was limiting his food, it broke my heart to hear him say that. He's a proud guy and didn't ask for help from anyone. I congratulated him for getting the new job and for thinking outside the box to get it.
There can be gatekeepers along the way, make sure you find a way around them when you can. For those of you unemployed, I wish you the same happy ending as my friend.
Glad things ended well for your friend and I certainly don't deny there are some bad headhunters out there, but there are also many good headhunters. A headhunter is the only reason I'm in my particular industry now. The trick is treat them like an agent. A agent shouldn't waste your time, should be responsive, and put your interest first.
Headhunters usually waste your time because they are contacting you to pump you for sales leads for their headhunting firm, not so much to find you a job.
Disagree. I got several good jobs over the years via headhunters. Last placement was in the past few months.
I have had a ton of my time.wasted by staffing agencies and some by headhunters to the point I won't even allow staffing agency recruiters to connect with me on LinkedIn I ignore them completely. I am cordial with regular recruiters but if they try to drag me into their office or demand references before an interview I tell them no and usually won't work with them after that.
There are run of the mill recruiters, working for firms such as Cyberc**ers (as an example.) Then, there are specialty recruiting firms specializing to fill hard to find, high skill positions, such as cloud architects or software developers (as an example.)
These second type of recruiters are “hunters”, they have a database of client firms that they recruit for and a database of skilled candidates that may be able to fill those positions, or have contacts in that industry, that they can refer a recruiter to. In my experiences, these recruiters do not send out email blasts to random candidates. They selectively target candidates that have the right qualifications so that they have a solid chance of filling the open position, then contact them, and try to pursue them. I think these are called “boutique recruiting firms.” They recruit in a niche industry.
I’ve been successfully placed in a few unadvertised positions (unadvertised by the hiring firm, that is) by these types of boutique recruiting firms. In one case, I didn’t even know that the firm existed in my industry. At least in my experiences, I’ve had good success with specialized boutique recruiting firms. With the average run of the mill type firms, not so much.
A headhunters is a recruiter that is pay commission which is usually around 20%-25% of your annual salary. This is paid by the employer to the headhunter for placement. When people mention "recruiter" this means the recruiter that works in HR for the company, not the paid commission one.
Headhunters usually waste your time because they are contacting you to pump you for sales leads for their headhunting firm, not so much to find you a job.
A friend of mine told me he got an unsolicited email from a headhunter that wasn't even addressed to his name. It was the typical bulk email blasted out to everyone in their database. My friend is an excellent employee, but there was a layoff and his department was closed. He's been out of work going on 9 months and has wasted a lot of time with headhunters who string him along. In many situations, he would reply to their email with a resume, they would talk to him on the phone for 10 minutes and then ghost on him completely. He said he had a sneaking suspicion most of the time they didn't even present his resume to the hiring company as expected.
This time, he decided to find out who the company was for this unsolicited and unaddressed email on his own. What he did was take unique phrases from the job description, put them in quotes and pasted it into Google search. Immediately the job description word for word came up on the company's career web page. So now he had access to the full job description, the real location of the job, and knew the company's name so he could research them further. Plus he was able to look at other jobs they had open which allowed him to get a better sense of what kind of technology the company was using.
He applied directly on the company's career website and a week later a recruiter from HR contacted him for a phone interview. The interview went very well and the HR recruiter said she would setup an interview with the hiring manager who is a VP. A week later he had the video interview with the hiring managers and a couple others from HR. He told me he felt good about the interview.
He called me this afternoon all excited. He got a job offer and it was $10K more a year than what the unsolicited headhunter claimed in email what the salary was. He accepted the offer and has a start date in a couple of weeks. He called me from the grocery store parking lot and said he was going shopping and will fill his fridge now with food that he's been putting off enjoying the last 9 months because he was trying to conserve funds.
I had no idea he was limiting his food, it broke my heart to hear him say that. He's a proud guy and didn't ask for help from anyone. I congratulated him for getting the new job and for thinking outside the box to get it.
There can be gatekeepers along the way, make sure you find a way around them when you can. For those of you unemployed, I wish you the same happy ending as my friend.
It is a head hunter's fault that you do not realize your friend is in a dire situation? People have to ask so their 'friend' post on a forum?
The key to finding a good headhunter is to go to meetups, happy hours and industry events where you can meet them in person. I've stopped accepting friend requests from recruiters on LinkedIn because so many send roles that aren't anywhere near what I'd be looking for.
Many staffing firms have events on premises related to whatever you field you're in with talks by people in the field. I have good relationships with at least five headhunters/recruiters I've met in the last five years who routinely check up on me and can get me in front of hiring managers faster than I could by going through the corporate website. If the role is a 6- to 1-year contract role, many times it's the only way to get the job because the internal HR department won't be involved in much of the process.
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