Headhunting is like Fine Arts and Rocket Science, Mass Recruiting is the modern job slavery and like fast-food
Yes, there was a blog post about this 1 year ago by BREADHUNTER, but I think during these times, you can't talk enough about this topic to open people's mind and attitude about it.
If HR departments and companies understand the difference of this topic, I am sure the quality of the right, fitting candidates will rise and you have in the end engaged and happy employees, instead of just another filled position with a bread-and-butter-worker.
In times where professions are diluted by adventurers, executive search and headhunting came to a professional level like a real-estate-agents. Everybody does it, from housewives to financial-services sales freaks or ex-car salesmen.
Because you have no seal of quality our industry was flooded by everyone who had no idea, which job he can do, so let's became a recruiter.
Ok, now to the difference of the fine arts of real headhunting, which is also like cooking with a lot of spices and high-quality ingredients vs. fast food.
In traditional jobs like law or medicine, you have to learn a lot and go trough a lot of exams until you are a graduated doctor of medicine or lawyer and this ensures a high quality level in what you are doing.
This would be also relevant for our emotional HR business to ensure the best candidate search and selection process to have in the end an DNA match of the best candidates for your company and not just a match by keyword screening.
Headhunting is not about calling 300 companies and candidates until 1 candidate says YES to your job offer, accepting the salary and relocation package, but in mass-recruiting companies, it goes exactly this way. Twentysomthings call and call candidates like rowing-slaves on a galore (you all know the movie: Ben-Hur) and yes you are absolutely right, that this is not rocket science. So recruiting is not a rocket science, but headhunting and executive search is.
In headhunting and executive search we handle all processes like a painter of fine arts or like a Michelin chief and, this not only from the pricing aspect, but rather by our ingredients and processes.
Yes, we also do a lot of research, phone calls and interviews, but in a more structures way, with clear timelines, processes, knowledge and a lot of empathy, because we understand our candidates as human beings and the next employee, than just as a position who has to be filled.
Yes, it's also about attitude, respect and analyzing people and not about keyword-matching in resumes or with algorithms. We use this tools in the beginning of our research, but this is just maybe 20% of our business process.
For the rest you need creativity, empathy, life experience to understand the working history of the candidate, joined-up thinking across mental borders to see the human being behind the resume.
Then you think about the client, the company, the team he / she should fit in not only by hard skills. You think about the next steps in development of the candidate, where he / she can be in 2, 3 years in the company and you talk and talk to people instead of clicking ATS buttons and trusting algorithms and AI.
Yes, I know, at the moment we are all in the algorithm and AI fever, but after this stage, maybe in 20 years, we will see, that they are not absolutely right and maybe then there will be a renaissance of human 2 human business in HR as well as in agriculture, the time after Monsanto, hybrid seeds and fast-food.
Ok, this was from headhunter aspect view and why it's difficult also as a headhunter to find same the minded people in business, but I knew by experience you always get the clients, you deserve. :-p !
In the BREADHUNTER network, you find the Mojo-People who matter. People, who understand the unwritten laws of business, quality and attitude by their education and nursery. (If you know things like this picture above from childhood, you know, what I mean. ;-))
Building a network of these people is a challenging life-task, but delivers in the end sustainable business relations with the best partners around the globe and makes the big difference, the difference of fine-arts in headhunting and executive search.
PS: And how about the candidates ?
This topic, which came to my mind after many, many talks to top qualified candidates, who can't find a new job after month, because they are overqualified, to old and do not fit into the system of robots and work-slavery, because they are individuals with a strong mind and ethics.
This is an other big topic I think about since years and will focus on my next blog post, so stay tuned!
Greetings from Vienna, Mr. Breadhunter