Headhunters
Myths
surrounding employment abound. One of the biggest myths circulating is that if
you “sign up” with a nationally known or well-established recruiter,
headhunter, or employment service, you enhance your job-seeking odds. For those
who are unemployed, that is simply not true.
If
you are not the one shelling out the cash, headhunters—no matter what they bill
themselves as—are not working for you. They work solely for the company paying
the freight. Here is how that industry traditionally works.
Suppose
you are in charge of hiring for Ajax. Jones, who works for your competitor, is
a top-notch performer. You would like to hire this individual away from your
competitor, but cannot do it legally. That constitutes piracy. The fines,
penalties and court costs, not to mention the attorney fees, might impact your
bottom line.
One
way to solve this dilemma is to do an end-run around the piracy laws. To do
that, Ajax retains the services of a headhunter—also known in the trade as body snatchers and sharks. Now you (Ajax) have created a legal buffer. The
headhunter merely has to call Jones some evening at home, and invite Jones to
lunch to discuss a fabulous career opportunity.
When Jones takes the bait, voilà, problem solved.
Having
personally worked for a headhunter service, I know enough to be somewhat savvy about this industry. The first thing we learned was that animal sharks prefer eating dead things. Human sharks eat their prey alive. The next thing told was that any unemployed
individual who walked through our front-office door was to be given the fast shuffle, and not to wast our valuable time on them. They labeled all unemployed as losers, a lazy retards, and
other demeaning nomenclatures.
The
sole exception to this was when we called you. When that occurred, we had a
specific position in mind. Once we received a job order to fill, it came down
to finding an individual with a specific profile, or start zeroing in on the
client’s closest competitors. That is how the headhunting game is played in
Corporate America.
Successful
headhunters are by their nature—ruthless. Those that are not sufficiently
ruthless do not survive. My tenure lasted five weeks. The management called me
in to inform me that I was out of my league. I was told that, “You lack the
killer instinct. You will never make it in this industry, so either quit now,
or be fired. You have 10 minutes to make up your mind.”
Here
is my sage advice: Unless you know how to swim with sharks, stay out of
shark-infested waters. There is nothing headhunters do that you cannot do
yourself. It all boils down to how much time and mental energy you are willing
to exert. Oh, and if by chance you are employed, please keep in mind that headhunters know how to play their game better than you.