What does Headhunting mean? Its role in employee selection

Definition and a little bit of history.

A term ‘headhunting’ occurred in 1950th in the USA. It has been a part of management consulting. Sharp economic development pushed to the emergence of a new type of personnel business.

‘Headhunting’ literally means a hunt for heads. This term defines a technology of purposeful enticement of a high-class specialist from one company to another through an intermediary.

When to apply for a Headhunting service?

Our practical experience shows that this method is commonly used in cases when specialists who are able to accurately define the business development strategy and ensure its implementation are needed.

If a business owner, a board of directors or managers of a management company know the exact person they want to see on a top position of their firm, they order a headhunting service.

Implementation strategy of Headhunting

The success of the method directly depends on the quality of a negotiation process. A high level of responsibility prompts to entrust this stage to professionals.
For headhunters the main task is to work out contact and organize a meeting between a client and a welcome, warmed up, disgruntled targeted top manager.

A good and reliable headhunter needs to be patient, detached and have endurance.

The biggest threat to receive unequivocally rejection occurs at the beginning of negotiations. The reasons can be various.

Steps of a headhunter:

• To determine habits and a range of interests of the targeted top-manager.
• To find out common acquaintances.
• To choose the best way to meet with the targeted specialist to successfully gain trust.
• To feel the ground for starting negotiations (each specialist has his/her own favorite techniques to do this).
• To find out unrealized desires and dreams of the top manager during the conversation.
• To show opportunities in the client’s firm. To reason together about pros and cons of the offer. To give enough time to the manager to consider the proposal, gently maintaining communication at the same time.
• Parallelly, communicate with the client, enabling them to prepare for final negotiations.
• To organize a meeting between the client and the manager.

Advantages and disadvantages.

The pros of headhunting are:

• a high confidentiality of recruiting process;
• a high probability of achieving a business goal by hiring the right top manager.

The cons are:

• a high cost of service and financial risk in case of refusal by the manager;
• an error with the choice of a specialist: the manager does not fit the company's tasks or does not have enough resources to successfully complete them;
• time-consuming, as a result of lengthy negotiations and dismissal process.

How to prevent headhunters’ attacks?

The best way to protect your personal from professional headhunters is to create favorable conditions for work within your organization. Also, remember to monitor wages in your industry and improve corporate culture. However, it is impossible to retain all employees. Often, if an employer can no longer offer career growth, a good specialist goes in search of new career opportunities in case he/she grew out of his/her position.

Do I need to apply for a Headhunting service in Ukraine?

Despite periodic economic crises and high level of unemployment in the country, Ukraine faces a continuous lack of highly qualified personnel. Majority of the industries have a deficit of key managers with deep knowledge of professional activities and foreign languages, capable to perform business tasks.

Headhunting is an effective tool to increase competitiveness of a business, ensure its success and prosperity.

Currently, only headhunting can fill the shortage of qualified staff. We consider luring specialists from internal, as well as, external labor markets.