Whether you’re hiring or angling to get noticed for your next great leap forward, you may well find yourself working with head hunters. If you’re looking for a quantum leap away from your current job and into one that’s more in line with your skills, experience and aspirations, getting noticed by an executive recruitment firm like Savannah Group is your best bet.
The inner workings of high end recruiters can be quite opaque to outsiders and as a result it’s hard to know how to work with them in the best way to get the most out of the relationship.
Today we’re pulling back the veil to help you know how to have a productive working relationship with a proactive, executive recruitment firm, whether looking to hire or get hired.
Employers
When you’re working with a high-end recruitment firm, the most important thing you can do is frame it as a collaborative relationship. If you see what you’re doing as simple paying for a service, you’re not going get full value for money out the recruiters and you’ll miss the chance to pick up a lot of vital knowledge and experience.
If it means shifting companies a few times till you find a recruiter you can work with, that’s better than settling for a substandard relationship. Find someone you trust to sit down with and talk through your best approach. Don’t forget, you’re hiring for one role at one company, while your recruiter does this for full time job! Listen to them: is this a good time to be looking for this particular role? Are you offering a fair wage that will attract the kind of candidate you’re looking for?
You can use a recruiter’s experience to refine and optimise your approach to make sure you’re looking for the perfect candidate, not attracting a host of imperfect ones.
Getting Head Hunted
If you’re looking at this from the other side of the interview panel, you need to know about how to attract head hunters. Going to them to offer your services and CV is less effective than with traditional recruitment agencies. When they have a role to fill, they go out looking for the right person, rather than consulting a ledger.
LinkedIn is your friend here. It’s a social network ideally set up for recruiters to work with: the whole point is for your to list your jobs, skills and qualifications, or to put it another way, shout about just how employable you are!
Do so research into the role or industry you’re interested in and foreground your relevant skills. Connect with people who are working for relevant firms already, keep an active profile and just wait to get noticed!