Professional Headhunter vs Recruitment Consultant

A Recruitment Consultant utilises a database of candidates they contact for their ‘live’ jobs, as well as response from their advertised jobs. Many Recruitment Consultants supply individuals to their client companies who are ‘on the market’ i.e. currently looking for a job. These candidates have engaged the Recruitment Consultancy to source a new position for them. Here, the candidate seeks a job with a client company.

A Professional Headhunter does the opposite. Here, the candidate is sourced for the client company. This is often much more difficult and time consuming to achieve. The Professional Headhunter needs to follow a comprehensive series of proactive processes to ‘get their prey’.

These include:

• Heavily researching the marketplace for potential companies that may house a suitable candidate
• Identifying who best to target within these companies and deciding on the optimum tailored approach
• Organising interviews and assessments for candidates
• Negotiating salary, benefits and bonus packages
• Mitigating the ‘counter offer’ from the successful candidate’s existing Company
• Controlling the resignation process to ensure smooth transition

Not only does the Professional Headhunter need a very broad and high level skill set, they also need to fully comprehend the technicalities of the client’s job specification, notwithstanding the geographical knowledge of where the job will be based. This may even be international e.g. Australia, and therefore the Professional Headhunter needs to know that a potential candidate in Perth is not worth approaching as they cannot feasibly commute to Sydney every day!