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Headhunters and How to Use Them

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Headhunters and How to Use Them

A Guide for Organisations and Individuals

Bloomberg Press,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

To find an executive, act like one and hire a headhunter. Here’s how to get your prey (and keep your scalp).

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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Overview
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

When you want to hire an executive, you need a specialized headhunter or recruiter. And if you are an executive job candidate, you may want one, too. Nancy Garrison Jenn’s book serves two distinct purposes. The first section, about one-quarter of the book, deals with recruiters. Jenn explains how they work, and what they do for both employers and candidates. The second section is an extensive list of top headhunters worldwide, and that may need updating. Jenn’s approach makes this manual very practical for corporations seeking executives and executives seeking corporations.

Summary

Finding the Right Person

If you want to hire a senior executive at the $150,000-a-year level or higher, how would you select the best search firm to find your ideal candidate? That’s a tough choice since the U.S. alone has more than 5,000 search firms.

Good headhunters have extensive networks of contacts that help them find top candidates for their clients. They often restrict their workloads to a certain number of searches annually, depending on the size of the firm, and on how much scouting and screening their current cases require. Headhunting firms range from specialized “boutiques” to large operations with multiple offices and a global reach.

Corporate contracts with headhunting firms are based either on “retainers” or contingency fees. In a retained search, the client pays the recruitment firm a fee, often as much as $50,000, for conducting a search, sometimes whether or not the headhunter finds a qualified candidate. On a retainer basis, fees are calculated as a percentage – generally in the range of 33% – of the candidate’s first-year salary. A firm that conducts a search on a contingency basis is paid only if it finds a qualified candidate. In the U....

About the Author

Nancy Garrison Jenn owns a consulting firm that tracks executive search activities for multinational firms. She lectures to M.B.A. students in Europe and the U.S., and has written about the executive search industry for the Economist’s intelligence unit.

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