Bharat HeadHunters

Headhunting & Headhunters

Headhunting is a fun filled and thankful profession. This is one profession where your work is acknowledged by the candidates and the clients.

Headhunters are paid a lot of money to find the right people to fill jobs. They aren’t paid to run ads, post jobs, sit in front of a computer or sort applications. A good headhunter’s time is spent circulating and participating in the professional community in which he operates.

Headhunters don’t find jobs for people. They are paid to go find who their clients need. Those people usually are not looking for jobs. That’s why headhunters won’t take candidates calls or respond to unsolicited e-mails. They’re busy.

Headhunters are the one who hunts for the right candidates and not the job. Headhunters won’t sleep until they get the right candidates to fill the job assignment. A headhunter understands the requirement in depth and then they start their journey to locate the right candidate. Headhunters are technically so strong some time they get questions from the candidates like “are you really a headhunter or a technical person”.

Recruiters are often mistaken for headhunters. Like fishermen, recruiters bait a hook and wait for a bite to come along. (It’s rumored that sometimes they sit stare at computer screens so long that they grow wheels and morph into swivel chairs.)

Headhunters today are like the headhunters of legend. They go into the jungle in pursuit of a rare prize and they don’t come back until they have it.

This is a guide to help budding headhunters to reach right candidates. I want to help you profit from working as a good headhunter. That means learning how to operate as headhunter. It means distinguishing good headhunters from the not-so-good ones – and from recruiters. This guide shows you how to control your talk with candidates and become a successful headhunter.

Many years of headhunting have taught me this: Success at changing jobs requires deciding what you want, then going out and getting it. There is no set of steps or a prescribed process because everyone’s objective is different. So is the path to it.

One of the most common reasons people change jobs is because they took the wrong job to begin with. They didn’t pursue what they wanted. They took what came along. And that brings us to the crux of how headhunters operate.

Headhunters don’t take who comes along. When working on an assignment to fill a position for a client company, they decide who they want and they go out and get them.

Good headhunters can change candidate’s life profoundly for the better. A good headhunter pursues specific people who are exactly right for a job. If the headhunter does his homework, he has targeted right candidate.

The misconceptions most people have about headhunters often lead to resentment because “my headhunter hasn’t found me a job!”

There is no such animal as “your headhunter/Personal Headhunter.” Headhunter works only for employers.

Some time people seem to get extremely frustrated by headhunters. (‘They never call me back!” or “they don’t call me at all!” and “they send me to interview for the wrong jobs!”) This is where thoughtless reliance on headhunters creates trouble, because not every headhunter is a headhunter.

Many headhunters believe that the big problem with our business is that the cost of entry is minimal. When I first started headhunting in Bengaluru in 2001, the inside joke was that all you needed to be a headhunter was a handful of hunt sheet and a pencil to take notes. Even today there are great headhunters who rely on little more than that to do their work successfully. It’s not about big databases full of names. It’s about personal relationships and credibility. That rule hasn’t changed. But the low cost of entry attracts a rolling cast of unsavory characters looking for easy money who quickly destroy their reputations and exit the business to the detriment of the entire profession. In the meantime, they lay waste to the careers of wishful people who trust more than they verify. But a good headhunter is a rare. You need to decide whether you want to be a recruiter or a headhunter.

Good headhunters will make lots of money and success they don’t have much competition, and they know it.

The term headhunter remains controversial in the employment world. Some people find it objectionable or derogatory. I love it. It describes what I do. I hunt for heads – the best heads for the jobs I’m trying to fill. The alternative term is recruiter. I don’t care if headhunter calls themselves recruiters, but I object to recruiters who call themselves headhunters.

Recruiters are not headhunters. Here’s an example of the distinction that makes it clear. The army has recruiting offices around the country. Agents sit at desk and process applicants who respond to the Army’s advertising. That’s recruiting, and it works largely the same way in business. Human resources (HR) departments and recruiters run ads and meet people who come to them.

Contrast that to sports recruiting. A team will deploy talent scouts to go find and bring home the best talent. Even though these scouts are sometimes called recruiters, they’re really headhunters. They don’t take who comes along. (They certainly don’t run ads or post positions online.) They go after who they want and they ignore who they don’t want – even if the players they don’t want to pester them.

First ever exclusive HeadHunting Training in India by Bharat Headhunters CEO.


Bharat is one of India's foremost recruitment industry experts specializing in training for recruiters, coaching, consultancy, mentoring and advising both face-to-face and remotely. Know more

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Bharat Headhunters Pvt. Ltd.
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