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Originally Posted by Unregistered
Yes I am actually trying to find out the difference between a head hunting firm and a recruitment company. I understand that for recruitment firm you have to telemart to get clients but isn't it the same as headhunting firm? What I understand is that for headhunting, its more for mid entry or high end positions but for recruitment firms, it can be for temp and contract position.
Technically for both recruitment firm and headhunting, you co call for clients and look for candidate Just that the level is different? Correct me if I am wrong cause I am still quite fresh.
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For those who are new to the industry, a bit of history is in order here.
In the past before the late 1990s, headhunter was a term used exclusively for niche specialists who are experts in recruitment of senior executives. These people build up their networks to get to know business leaders in various industries through trade functions, executive get together, social and country clubs as well as in their day to day business dealings. When an executive needs to be placed, they will actively contact their wide networks to meet up with a host of executives and put up a business case to try and convince them to consider a move, hence the term “hunters”. They generally know their client’s businesses, the candidate’s businesses and the industry they are in inside out.
During the late 1990s, some recruitment agencies started to falsely brand themselves as “headhunters”. Ever since then we have an endless parade of staffing agencies who go about selling themselves as headhunters, but their jobs and clientele remain largely the same, that of a staffing agent. Real headhunters do not do silly things like surfing linkedin, putting up job ads in various places, scrawling on job portals, calling up people like an operator, running mass market job fairs or meeting people at Starbucks for coffee.
Currently in Singapore the only real active headhunting firms of reasonable size are Henderick & Struggles, Korn Ferry, Egon Zender and Wills. They generally target C level executives with annual pay >500k although sometimes with clients they have a long standing relationship, they will help out at lower level positions as well.
You can see the difference between headhunting and recruitment agency somewhat analogous to that of Private Banking and Consumer Banking. The key difference lies in the sort of clients and the dynamics of selling.
If you are interested in developing a career in headhunting, much more needs to be done on your end then just depositing CVs. But if you are looking at normal staffing agents, they are a dime in a dozen and most operate on somewhat similar commission plans, just join one that meets your basic expectations and go on from there. The good thing about recruitment world is that turnover is so bad that nobody will treat your leaving in a few months as a black mark. Most of your colleagues have probably had a few stints in a few competitors in the past few years. It's a musical chair business.