Executive Search Firms

Executive search (informally headhunting) is the process of recruiting individuals to fill executive positions in organizations. Executive search may be performed by an organization's board of directors, by executives in the organization, or by an outside executive search organization

The executive search industry has two distinct fields, retained executive search and contingency search. Retained search firms are paid a retainer fee regardless of whether a successful placement is made. Contingency search firms are usually associated with slightly lower level executive and specialist roles.

Search consultancies are often entrenched in particular market sectors. Their market sector networks are used along with various methods to seek candidates for a particular job. Normally the individuals are not actively seeking a new job. It is the job of the search consultant to approach these individuals with a view to taking them out of their current company and placing them in another, often a competitor.

Executive search is an extremely lucrative industry and successful search consultants can earn large sums. For this reason there is fierce competition to work in this sector. New recruits will normally start as a researcher to gain exceptional market knowledge and experience before progressing to consultant.

The service is paid for by the client company or organization, not by the hired job candidate. Potential job candidates are identified, qualified and presented to the client by the executive search firm based upon fit with a written or verbal Job Specification developed in conjunction with the client. Assessing degree of potential fit of the candidate with the job specification is a key activity for the search firm, since the most common reason a search consultant is engaged by a client company is to save time and effort involved with identifying, qualifying and reviewing potential candidates for specific leadership positions.

It is common for a potential candidate to be identified by the search firm via a telephone call. Often the phone call is the result of a recommendation from someone inside the existing network of the search firm. Quality oriented search firms work hard at cultivating and continually updating their network of contacts so that when a search assignment is awarded they will be ready to start qualifying potential candidates. Another way to identify potential candidates involves search firm "research", which is contacting targeted people in specific companies who appear to fit the job profile in some logical manner. Some of the best candidate referrals come from people who could be candidates for the job themselves but for any number of reasons are not interested at that particular time.


EXECUTIVE SEARCH - HEAD HUNTERS - EXECUTIVE SEARCH FIRMS