Why Headhunting Is Expensive

By Mehreen Shah

The recruitment process has become complex. The old age strategy of Post and Pray is no more effective. Posting a job and expecting the desired potential candidate to apply is not a smart move. This is where the role of headhunters steps in. Headhunters are specialized recruiters who hunt most powerful profiles like CEO, Executives, Managers and Vice Presidents to fill the positions of the hiring company. The process Involves researching the High Profiles, competitor’s market analysis, reach to potential and passive candidates, convincing power and hunting the potential candidate.

Specialization:
Headhunters are usually specialized in certain industries. They move in a small circle but with targeted people with the concerned industry. Headhunters are usually hired for the senior specialized roles. Recruiting agencies to have headhunters who are specialized in a certain field (marketing, Technical). They have a huge database of candidates and can easily filter the required candidate. Their specialized hunting for candidates is one of the reasons of their high fees. They can be a better matchmaker between a Job seeker and a hiring company. So the probability to find the right candidate increases.

Industry Knowledge and Exclusive Reach:
Unlike internal recruiter, headhunters may not have enough knowledge about the internal structure and workflow of the hiring company but they have a clear picture of the industry and hidden talents. Some headhunters being a part of the recruiting agency may work for different firms. They can have a better idea about the competitors current and future business status. They are directly reaching out to competitor’s star employees, High profiles executives. Headhunters can have genuine relations to a huge database of candidates and exclusive approach to top executives. Headhunters identify right opportunities for potential executives which otherwise wouldn’t be that easy to convince and explain the opportunity. They have knowledge even of those passive job seekers who are not openly looking to move on.

Research and High Profile Database
Headhunters high fees reflect the time and research they invest to collect the gems out of talent pool. They do market research through various mechanisms including their personal resources, professional and social networks and their huge database of potential candidates. Utilizing these resources they match the candidate’s specifications versus the opportunities available. After filtering the candidates, only the most appropriate and competitive ones are presented to the companies. Prior to presenting the final candidates to the hiring company, headhunters do verification of the professional and personal details given by the candidates. Headhunters research process is inclusive of the verification too. This is why they are expensive. From candidate search to presenting the final ones to the company the process involves a huge responsibility, time consumption, energy, resources, communication skills and convincing power.

Worth the Cost
The consequences of not recruiting the right candidate can be of great loss in productivity. The bottom line is not to compromise the company standards, the performance of employees and customer’s satisfaction. Lowering the standard is not the ultimate solution. Headhunters claim to be less expensive than the possible loss of hiring a wrong candidate. Recruiting a wrong candidate may give a loss of 10 times of headhunters fee. While headhunters only get paid on successful hiring which is certainly cannot be fruitful without the research, resources, dedication of the headhunters. There is a misconception among many job seekers that it’s a paid service for job seekers too which is why many job seekers avoid approaching them. The fact is getting listed with headhunters can get you to all possible opportunities at no cost. The cost is paid by the company.