Headhunting: on the hunt for the best talent

They are the human resources wards. Headhunting professionals make sure that every company has the right people for the right jobs., However specific they may be. But what does their work really consist of?

What is headhunting?

Within human capital management, companies can nurture their ranks through conventional selection procedures or through the headhunting technique.

Unlike the former, headhunting is characterised by the fact that it is the company itself - directly or through a specialised consultancy - that surveys the market and looks for profiles that meet its needs, without the ‘candidates’ having been made aware of a job offer or having shown interest beforehand.

This method of personnel selection is not new and is as early as the 1920s, these personnel search services began to appear., The new style, particularly for senior executives, became popular in the 1950s and 1960s, with the economic resurgence after World War II.

In fact, its translation into Spanish as cazatalentos is defined by the Real Academia de la Lengua Española as the “.“a person dedicated to finding suitable individuals to be recruited by companies in need of them”.

When is this technique used?

Initially, headhunters focused on executive recruitment for large companies which, due to their profile requirements, were difficult to find.

However, Today, headhunting has become widespread in the field of Human Resources and is used to fill very specific positions, from a company's chief financial officer to a cybersecurity analyst. In fact, according to the Labour Market Guide 2017 prepared by Hays, 72% of organisations consider the lack of qualified staff for certain jobs to be their main concern. at the moment, a problem that headhunters are trying to solve.

Therefore, the aim of this technique is not to supplant traditional selection processes, but to complement them in order to avoiding mistakes during recruitment, This is a great way to achieve good results in those job vacancies where it is more difficult to attract the right candidates through external talent scouting.

How do headhunters work?

In order to find the right professionals for each position, headhunting carries out the following work process:

• Analysis of the profile in demand. The first step in finding the ideal employee is to find out what the company needs for the position. Therefore, headhunting starts with a study of the competencies, skills, knowledge and expectations of the vacancy.
• Identification of recruitment sources. How are you going to look for profiles? It is necessary to define the channels to be used, whether through the Internet and the social media, The main objective of the project is to develop the skills and knowledge of the employees, either through contacts or their own stock exchanges or by researching competitor's workforces.
• Contact with the applicant. Those professionals who match the demands of the position will be contacted by the headhunter, who will explain the offer and conditions and request further information to ensure their suitability to the profile.
• Interviews. To confirm who the ideal candidate is, the headhunting process will continue with a phase of personal interviews, in which both the technical competencies and the skills and personality of the professional will be assessed, in order to evaluate their alignment with the objectives and culture of the company.
• Creation of reports. It is not usual for the headhunter to have the final say in the hiring process, but rather for the company to decide between several candidates. It is therefore necessary to prepare a dossier for each profile to provide the company with the necessary information for decision-making.
• Choice by the company. With this documentation, the company's management will decide who will join the organisation.