Headhunters in the UK & Europe: What is a Headhunter?

The first point to understand is that headhunters do not work in the same way as a recruitment agency. There are significant differences in the way that they engage with both the client and candidate.

Contingency vs Retained Recruitment

There have been questions in the past as to the difference between contingency and retained recruitment. Put simply, contingency is more traditional recruitment, where a consultant might try to source a candidate from an internal or external database of candidates and with salaries ranging up to mid-management level.

Retained recruitment, however, is more involved. Salary ranges are from senior management and above and the roles are usually more difficult to fill. This is where the Headhunters come in. Their role is now to try and find a candidate who probably has not registered on a CV bank of any sort. This, as you can imagine, is much more time consuming and as such, can take many months to find the right person.

Phil Sharp, MD at Executive Headhunters, explained that whilst there are difference in both types of recruitment, both need to exist in order to find the right candidates for the job.

I have been headhunting for many years now and one thing that I see over and over is an overlap of ‘does it fall within retained or contingency recruitment’. If it is not something we can handle, we will explain why to the client straight away and pass on the details of other agencies who would be able to help.

Interestingly, we see a large number of clients coming to us from all over the world. Clients are happy to accept that a new CEO or company director might not be sat right on their doorstep, so broaden their search. This is where come into our own. With a huge network spanning the globe, we have access to the quality of candidates or customers require.

Executive Headhunters can be contacted on +44 (0)161 926 8686 or by visiting their website at www.executiveheadhunters.co.uk

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