Compare the differences between Headhunter, Recruiter and Executive Search services

In the field of human resource management, there are three familiar phrases: Recruiter, Executive Search and Headhunter to refer to the person doing the recruitment job. However, Recruiter, Executive Search and Headhunter are different skill sets serving different purposes and different market segments. In general, there are 4 main differences between Recruiter, Executive Search and Headhunter, including: Human resources; Work and working environment; Work results; Operating costs.

1.Recruiter, Executive Search and Headhunter – Who are they?

Recruiters (recruiters) are usually people hired by businesses to find personnel for vacant positions in that business. They are mostly people working in the business's own human resources department, or maybe a third party. Also because they work for a business, Recruiters can answer candidates' questions about work, salary and company culture better than Headhunters.

Headhunters are understood as people who specialize in finding suitable candidates, especially senior personnel, and personnel with special skills that businesses cannot recruit through normal channels. Okay. Most Headhunters will come from third parties hired by the business, the remaining few are employees of the business itself.

What is Executive Search? If you are looking for strategically important positions, specifically C-Suite or middle management, then a recruitment agency (or “Executive Search services”) is definitely your go-to person. Executive recruitment consultants focus on attracting experienced professionals who are not only competent but also need to fit your company's culture and goals.
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The Right Talent Partner: Headhunter, Recruiter and Executive Search

2.Recruiter, Executive Search and Headhunter – What do they do?

Usually the Recruiter is an employee of the enterprise's human resources department, so they are the main person responsible for finding candidates.

A clear difference that can be seen immediately is that although both Headhunter and Recruiter find suitable candidates for vacant positions, Recruiter will directly participate in the entire recruitment process, from posting job advertisements, Read candidate's profile and interview directly. Most Recruiters will use public recruitment channels to find candidates: business websites, recruitment posting sites, social networks, newspapers,...

Headhunters often come from the industry where the business wants to find employees. Simply put, they are experts in recruiting human resources in a certain field, such as Administration, IT, finance - banking, engineering. They use non-public channels, personal relationships, etc. to find the most suitable candidates.

Instead of waiting for job applications from everywhere and posting frantically, Headhunters will proactively search, approach suitable people and contact the best candidates. Because candidates may not be actively looking for a job, the recruitment process for Headhunters will have to involve a lot of communication, negotiation, and persuasion activities.

After that, they will directly discuss and advise that candidate. If everything goes well, the candidate will be invited for an interview by the company and the headhunter's job is only to wait for a response from the client company.
 

What's the difference between a recruiter and a headhunter?

3. Recruiter and Headhunter – What is the difference between work results?

Recruiter returns candidates with the common characteristics of "job seekers", so the quality of candidates will often be lower than the business's expectations.

The number of candidates from this source is very large, so you only need to search for a short time and the candidates are usually ready to work. Although they can quickly grasp a large number of employees looking for a job, recruiters often have to spend a lot of time screening CVs and initial interviews to be able to "shortlist" profiles that are considered suitable. with recruitment conditions. In fact, Recruiter is suitable for recruiting middle and low-level positions in businesses, or recruiting in large quantities.

Quite the contrary, Headhunter and Executive Search bring candidates with the common characteristic that "finding people" is usually a position with specific requirements, a secret position or a high-level position. So the quality of candidates often satisfies all the requirements of the business.

The number of candidates from this source will be inversely proportional to the quality. For high positions, it often takes months or even years to find just one candidate. These types of candidates often have many years of experience, have held management positions, and some candidates are working for other businesses, so convincing them to change jobs takes a lot of time and effort. Therefore, Headhunters are often only used to find senior management positions and to serve long-term business campaigns.

4.What are the costs of operating Recruiter and Headhunter?

Recruiter is "homegrown" so costs will definitely be minimal. But other hidden costs such as time, management costs, candidate screening, etc. will be very difficult to calculate and depend a lot on the expertise of the personnel. In addition, when participating in recruitment, other jobs in the Human Resources department will be affected quite a lot.

When businesses use Headhunter, they will lose service costs to third parties. This cost depends on the quality of candidates you want to recruit, and will often be very high for positions from management level or higher. But businesses will not waste time and other hidden costs such as candidate management, screening costs, etc.

In short, before looking for an HR consultant, the company needs to determine its needs and costs. From there, you can consider choosing which HR service is most suitable.

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