How to Work with the Best Headhunter Agency

The recent economic downturn may have cooled expansion plans that were in place, but headhunter agency services are still very much in demand.  

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported that the ongoing competition for talent (despite the economic downturn) had sent the demand for effective headhunter agency services on an upward trajectory.  Who knew...?

Whether or not a company has an internal HR staff to handle its hiring, there will likely come a time when they finally discover the benefits of working with a headhunter agency.  However, many will also discover that this comes with a few challenges, especially when working with a headhunter for the first time.  

Below we’ll discuss the characteristics that can make a headhunter agency look particularly more attractive than the others and show you the questions that a company ought to be asking when working with one for the first time.

Ultimately, the process of attracting and hiring talent has evolved significantly over the past 2.5 years, but any company interested in working with a headhunter needs to understand the vital role that technology now plays.   

As HR tech stacks have evolved, applicant tracking systems (ATS) have become a must-have for any headhunter agency that is serious about finding good talent.  Also, recruitment CRM (customer relationship management) technologies are rapidly becoming a necessary technical investment for headhunting agencies because of how effective the technology can be for coordinating and amplifying communications with clients and potential leads.

We will examine technology a bit more later, but there is no denying that headhunter agencies are going to be very busy.  

Here’s how you can identify which is best.

Types of Headhunter Agencies

Let’s cover the basics first. A headhunter is another term for “executive recruiter.”  As the name would imply, an executive recruiter has the expertise and connections to help you locate and hire high-level professionals that are often appointed to leadership posts.  

There are essentially two different types of headhunter agencies.  

Staffing Agency

Smaller companies often partner with staffing agencies because it means less time and effort reviewing applications and scheduling interviews, but they often only provide temporary or contract-workers for a certain period of time.  

Headhunter Agency

Headhunter agencies work with companies that are trying to locate and hire candidates to fill very specific leadership posts, and they often search amongst passive job seekers who need to have a very specialized set of skills.  Every hire is a project or a campaign within itself.

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The Ever Increasingly Important Role of HR Tech

To have success in finding such precise talent, headhunting agencies often rely on a highly streamlined and technical process. And oftentimes, a powerful applicant tracking system (ATS) is at the heart of their efforts.  

It’s impossible to talk about recruiting today without talking about technology at the same time.  With the advent of social networks, the internet has become a wealth of information.  What’s the connection to technology?  

Modern ATS systems give headhunters the tools they need to expand their reach into these online networks to locate and entice the job market’s best talent.  But headhunting agencies rely on their ATS to do much more than simply source talent.   

Today’s ATS systems are designed to emulate our thought process and can be used to accelerate and automate the process of matching the best candidates to the right roles using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.  The fact is that the best headhunter agencies often have a robust ATS system that’s fueling their efforts, making them one of the most sought-after technical systems in the HR tech stack. 

Another highly successful strategy used by the best headhunting agencies is marrying an ATS system with a recruitment CRM (customer relationship management) module giving them the tools to achieve two desired and codependent outcomes: sourcing the best talent using the ATS and then managing both their clients and job candidates with the recruitment CRM.  

Within a single interface, headhunting professionals can generate reports and insights from the two sides, allowing them to develop sound recruitment strategies for themselves and their clients. 

If you’re a smaller headhunting agency interested in adopting a powerful ATS system, there are platforms offered as a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution.  These affordable, subscription-based solutions eliminate the need for significant investments in IT infrastructure.  

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Why Work with a Headhunter Agency

The most important determinant of an organization’s success is the talent of its workforce.  The stakes go even higher when a leadership post needs to be filled.  

According to one source, making the wrong hire at the executive level can cost a company an average of over 200% of its annual salary.  To minimize the risk of selecting the wrong candidate, many companies are choosing to trust the expertise of a headhunter agency.

Here's what they can offer:

Industry Expertise

While many organizations still have an internal HR staff, they’re not always the best option for filling every position.  This is especially true when you need to locate talent with a very specific skill set. 

An experienced headhunter can often provide organizations with insider knowledge of many different verticals or sectors to help fill those challenging technical or executive-level positions.  There are also headhunter agencies that cater exclusively to the engineering and IT sectors.

What makes working with this type of headhunter agency so appealing is the fact that they often have an established talent pool that they can immediately access, which brings us to our next advantage.

Accelerating Hiring Timelines

We’ve discovered that the best headhunter agency is often the one that’s adopted the market’s latest HR technology.  It’s important to understand that their adoption of these technologies becomes your competitive advantage.  We mentioned earlier how HR technologies like SaaS-based ATS systems and recruitment CRM could help accelerate a headhunter agency’s sourcing success and communications, and that can mean a much more fluid and expedient recruitment process to help you find the right candidates on a faster timeline.

Higher Quality Candidates

Simply stated, a headhunter agency can give you access to a global workforce.  There is an expansive pool of talented candidates on the market right now, and an organization’s internal HR staff may not have the technical resources or “know-how” to go after candidates at this scale.  This is a crucial component of the hiring process where a headhunter agency can really make a difference.  Understand that recruiting specialized talent is a full-time job for a headhunter, and they often have the experience, skills, and technology to give you access to a global pool of talent.

LEARN MORE: Discover Manatal’s top-notch ATS and CRM 

How To Choose the Best Headhunter Agency

For companies who are working with a headhunter agency for the first time, there’s a bit more to it than simply typing in “headhunter agency near me” and hoping for the best.  There are crucial steps a company should take in advance.  

Properly Research the Agencies 

Review the headhunter agency’s online presence.  Are there testimonials?  Reviews?  If not, that’s saying something… and it’s not an endorsement.  Also, it’s perfectly acceptable for companies to call the headhunter agency to ask these important questions: 

• Ask how they go about finding the best candidates
• Ask how long they’ve been in operation
• Ask how many full-time recruiters work for the agency
• Ask how often they achieve their timelines

Lastly, companies should feel at liberty to explore the role that technology plays in the headhunter agency’s processes.  Above we’ve given you a sense of what the best HR technologies are to get the best results, and the best headhunter agency will be the one that’s embraced them.  Ask the agency what ATS system they use and whether it’s complimented by a recruitment CRM module that helps them keep in touch with their candidates and clients.  This will demonstrate that you’re operating from an educated position.

Of course, companies will want to clearly determine what their own hiring needs are prior to reaching out to a headhunter agency.

Identify your Skills Requirements

Before reaching out to a headhunting agency, it’s prudent to clearly define what skills are needed in the new hire - both soft and hard skills.  The employees who will be working for the new hire, as well as those to whom the new hire will be reporting to, should all be involved in this part of the process.  It’s equally important to document the hiring requirements so that you and the headhunter agency are both using the same playbook.    

Perhaps most important of all, identify what problems the new hire will be expected to resolve as well as what results the incumbent will be expected to achieve within certain timelines.  

Conclusion

For organizations looking for the best headhunter agency, research is going to be the key to success.  Earlier this year, Forbes published an article titled “Meet America’s Top Recruiting And Staffing Firms 2022.”  It’s loaded with excellent information for headhunting agencies and the companies that need them.  Remember that recruitment today looks very different than it did prior to the pandemic.  For our part, it’s the technology that a headhunter agency uses that will be the difference between being the best and merely being just good.

Manatal – The Best ATS Platform used by the Best Headhunter Agencies

A closer look at the SaaS-based applicant tracking systems on the market today reveals one clear winner – industry leader Manatal.  Manatal’s recruitment ATS is the solution for companies of all sizes due to its affordability, ease of use, and technical capabilities.  

Our platform also comes with a powerful recruitment CRM module that helps headhunters manage their recruitment campaigns, from developing leads all the way to placement.  

Headhunter agencies and organizations can discover just how well Manatal’s ATS platform can solve their modern recruiting challenges by taking advantage of the 14- day free trial that Manatal is offering now.