I want a live, breathing, credible headhunter

On September 16, 2019
I want a live, breathing, credible headhunter

In the September 17, 2019 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter a reader is looking for the good headhunter in hiding.

Question

How do you find a live, breathing, human and credible headhunter? Internationally? Nationally? Regionally? By State? The top “brands” of executive recruiters are as much of an abyss as job boards. Submit a resume, try to contact them directly — best of luck. Where are the “old school” professional headhunters that are proactive and follow up?

Nick’s Reply

headhunter

I’m afraid you’re dreaming of the good old days in your imagination, my friend. Good headhunters don’t do what you are looking for — and never have. They don’t find jobs for people. They don’t really want unsolicited resumes. They’re busy working on specific assignments to fill specific jobs. If you’re a good candidate for such an assignment, they will find you. That’s what they get paid for.

Headhunter =

Headhunter=“Head” + “hunter.” They hunt. They don’t gather resumes or candidates that come to them. That’s the good headhunters. You may be confusing them with the rest of people that call themselves headhunters. (See How to Judge A Headhunter.) The reason it might seem harder to find good headhunters today is that the explosion of online recruiting has spawned innumerable spammers calling themselves headhunters.

Like Human Resources (HR) people, 95% of today’s so-called “headhunters” aren’t worth spit. They’re keyword pushers dialing for dollars. They spam e-mail lists with “job opportunities,” pitching jobs to people they know nothing about. That’s not “searching” for the right candidates. That’s dumpster diving, and — as you suggest — it’s usually not done by humans anyway, but by spambots and algorithms. (See Suzanne Lucas’s excellent Inc. article, When a Headhunter Makes His Profession Look Bad.)

How to find a headhunter

The best way to find a good headhunter is to call the president, CEO, or manager you’d like to work for and ask what headhunter they use to fill key jobs. It’s the best way to get a credible referral — but even then, it’s no guarantee the headhunter will respond. I discuss this in depth in How to Work With Headhunters… and how to make headhunters work for you. This PDF book will tell you loads more about how to work with headhunters, how to vet them in detail – and how to avoid the charlatans.

The few good headhunters out there are worth their weight in gold. But one thing: The odds a headhunter will place you are tiny. Find your own job. That’s what the rest of this website is about.

The reader responds

I’m the President & CEO. Calling the manager is somewhat difficult.

Nick’s Reply

You didn’t say initially that you are a CEO or President. The odds are much higher that a headhunter would handle the search for such a role. But the idea is the same.

Where a headhunter looks for candidates

Headhunters are not likely to find you in their e-mail. That’s not where they look for good candidates, because there’s no more credibility in random incoming resumes than there is in the random e-mail solicitations people receive from spammers.

A good headhunter wants high-value referrals from business people he or she knows and trusts — the headhunter goes to them, not to the e-mail box. At your level, the searches they conduct are usually done quietly and confidentially. If you’re a good candidate, they will find you.

The board of directors

The suggestion I offered about how to find a good headhunter is still the same, but a C-suite executive would talk to members of boards of directors. This is actually more productive at your level, because board members often serve on multiple boards and have more and better connections — not to mention insights about opportunities. Ask them what headhunters they like when they need to fill a C-suite job. Their headhunter isn’t likely to help you directly, but might be a good conduit to a headhunter that’s working on a specific, relevant position.

What I’m really saying is that a good headhunter will find your name on the lips of other respected executives in your industry — because that’s who they’ll ask for candidate referrals. It’s better to invest your time being a respected and known member of your professional community than to chase headhunters. (See Shared Experiences: The key to good networking.)

How many good, credible headhunters do you know? Did you find them, or did they find you? How? What advice would you give to this CEO?

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Inside a counter-offer disaster

On June 17, 2019

In the June  18, 2019 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter a reader wonders whether it’s ever smart to make or accept a counter-offer.

Question

counter-offerAfter I accepted a new job at a better company, my employer brought me in for a high-level meeting with management and made a counter-offer to get me to stay. I politely turned them down, even though the money was higher, because as I said, the new company is a better place to work. As a manager myself, I’ve never made a counter-offer to a departing employee. My view is, if they want to go, they should go. Am I wrong?

Nick’s Reply

I think you’re right. It’s a very rare situation where a counter-offer is made and accepted and the outcome is good.

Counter-offers are almost always made and accepted out of fear. An employer fears an empty position. An employee fears the next unknown job. But counter-offers almost never resolve the underlying reasons for why the worker looked elsewhere for a job, simply because more money doesn’t satisfy other hungers — which linger until satisfied.

A counter-offer delays the inevitable

Headhunters routinely advise candidates who receive counter-offers from their current employers to turn them down. Some keep a sheet with a list of reasons to reject counter-offers handy. It’s of course self-serving — why would you want a candidate you’re about to place for a hefty fee to stay at their old job?

See also: Should I take a big counter-offer?
But in almost all situations, counter-offers are a big mistake for both the employee and the employer. Here’s why:

At the point where a candidate accepts a job offer, the myriad factors that led them to consider a new job coalesce to reveal just how potent the desire for change really is. Relying on a counter-offer to squelch all those factors just spawns other problems, or delays the inevitable until it reaches crisis proportions.

Virtually every case I’ve seen where a counter-offer was accepted still resulted in a parting of ways — it was merely delayed. And that’s why in most cases employers should never make counter-offers. The cat is out of the bag. Let the employee go.

There is no better lesson about counter-offers than the very-high profile story of Robert Kelly, CEO of Bank of New York Mellon, that was reported by Fortune magazine in 2011. It’s a case study that everyone should read.

Wishful thinking breeds mistakes

A person can work happily at a job for years before feeling the urge to move on. But as soon as they realize “it’s no longer working out,” the job is a bad match because something’s changed. There may be no fault in that scenario, as long as the match is broken up before the misery begins.

I often counsel overly eager job seekers that they should be very careful what job they take next, because the reason they’re job hunting is probably because they took the wrong job last time. This goes double for employers.

In BNY’s case, it seems clear Kelly was a bad match from the start. The fault seems to rest clearly on BNY’s board of directors, whose wishful thinking led to a bad hire and to ongoing agonies.

The article describes BNY as “a highly conservative, old-line institution that specializes in mundane, grind-it-out businesses and prizes tradition, self-effacement, and loyalty.” In 2006 the board nonetheless hired Kelly, a CEO with a huge ego who craved publicity, courted controversy, and relentlessly pursued “the next new thing — a grander job, more money, and more excitement.”

Kelly lacked the conservative nature that marked BNY’s reputation, but the board “decided that Kelly was just the change agent it needed to revive the fabled institution.”

Right there the board blew it on the match: Change was the last thing the board really wanted. And his urge for change drove Kelly away from the board.

A counter-offer is a mistake

CEO Kelly secretly pursued a bigger job with the bigger Bank of America. When he finally disclosed his intentions, the board of BNY resigned itself to announcing his departure. But BofA soured on Kelly and never made an offer. The premature news about hiring him turned into a public relations disaster for all involved.

According to Fortune, burned and burned out from pursuing BofA, Kelly returned to the BNY board with his tail between his legs and begged to keep his job — just moments before the board was to announce his replacement. You’d think BNY would have sent him packing, but Kelly pleaded and BNY’s board rationalized.

The board should have considered all the reasons they were already dissatisfied with Kelly; all the disconnects between his style and their corporate mission. An overpaid spendthrift wasn’t the right leader for the bank Alexander Hamilton founded on frugality in 1784.

But they took Kelly back — “not wanting to disrupt the bank’s operations and management, and hoping to avoid a potentially messy succession.” Translation: BNY’s board was scared. They made him a lavish counter-offer even though the guy was on the street with nowhere to go. The board renewed its vows for a bad marriage.

Never take a counter-offer*

The BNY board members weren’t the only foolish party in this story. Kelly’s next two years were marked by the board’s growing suspicions, and by the dearth of loyalty between them. Kelly should have rejected the rich counter-offer the BNY board made, because the factors that drove him away lingered.

BNY feared change. Kelly was terrified of being left without a job. But the counter-offer deal did not resolve the underlying problems between them. The rapprochement didn’t last. In the end, the board gave Kelly such a boot that the story became an expose in Fortune magazine. Then the board replaced him with the kind of CEO that BNY should have promoted to begin with — a lifer whose style and values matched the company’s.

Even if you part on good terms, remember that the decision to part company probably stems from a complex tangle of factors that cannot be so easily cut with a counter-offer.

* I can think of only one case where a counter-offer turned out very well for both the employer and employee. Maybe you’ll get lucky!

Have you ever made a counter-offer to keep one of your employees who already had both feet out the door? Have you ever accepted a counter-offer yourself? Did the counter-offer change any factors that triggered the departure?

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Does your company have clean underwear?

On April 25, 2016

In the April 26, 2016 Ask The Headhunter Newsletter, a hiring manager lectures employers about the importance of no-thank-you notes — and about respecting job candidates.

Question

I like your suggestions about thank-you notes. However, I want to talk about no-thank-you notes.

clean-underwearI recently got a very nice thank-you note from an applicant to whom I had sent a no-thank-you — that is, a rejection letter. She seemed surprised to hear from me. As a manager, it has always been my practice to reply to every applicant either by letter or e-mail. I’ve been criticized for the time it takes. However, I believe that if someone takes the time to express interest in your company, the least you can do is tell them “no, thank you” if you don’t want them.

The convenience of job boards and e-mail applications has led us to forget there are real humans with feelings at the other end. Since we are not likely to run into one of them at the check-out counter, we don’t acknowledge that every resume sent out to us carries this person’s real hopes for a job along with it.

I would encourage you to write a bit about etiquette for the hiring manager and about the proper approach regarding the communication to applicants after receiving their resumes.

Nick’s Reply

Hallelujah! I hope everyone who reads your statement tacks it to a couple of doors: the boss’s and the human resources (HR) department’s. But don’t forget the board of directors. It ought to be tacked to their agenda.

Who has time to be nice?

You’ve given me a chance to hold forth on a subject that’s always too easily dismissed. The story today is that companies receive so many resumes and applications that there is simply no way to respond to them all. HR  departments scoff at the suggestion that they’re responsible for such niceties. Who can reply to 5,000 job applicants and still have time to hire anybody? The trouble is, HR sets this standard for all managers in a company.

Somewhere along the way, maybe after getting intoxicated by the millionth resume she downloaded from LinkedIn, an HR manager lost sight of the thousands of job applicants she had lined up outside her door (actually and virtually). She forgot that if you invite them, you have to feed them. She forgot that when you post jobs on websites that encourage thousands of people to send you resumes, you get thousands of resumes. However, you don’t hire thousands of people. So, why solicit them? (See Employment In America: WTF is going on?)

When we create situations that make it impossible for us to respect basic social conventions (like saying “thank you” and “no, thank you”), that should be a signal that we’re doing something fundamentally wrong.

Stop behaving like wild dogs

Why solicit thousands of applicants, when you need just a handful of good ones? When you get sick from overloading your plate at the cheap buffet table, nature is telling you something. When we let the dogs go wild at feeding time — HR rabidly devouring heaps of non-nutritive resumes — it’s time to re-train the dogs. But I’m not lashing out only at HR managers. Nope. I’m lashing out at their trainers: departmental managers, corporate CEO’s, and boards of directors.

Are you on a board? Are you a CEO? Do you have any idea how your HR department and your managers are treating the professional community you so desperately need to recruit from? Make no mistake. Even in today’s “employer’s market,” top-notch workers continue to be few and far between. Finding those few precious souls who can both do the work and bring profit to your bottom line is a daunting, challenging task. To get the attention of the best, the brightest… you’ve got to be nice to everyone.

Your company is under the spotlight every time you recruit to fill a position. The behavior of your HR department, your managers, and your employees reflects your company’s values. And your values affect your success at hiring. Yah, that’s right. Don’t proclaim to your shareholders that “people are our most important asset” while your underlings shove job applicants through keyword algorithms like meat through a grinder. (See Reductionist Recruiting: A short history of why you can’t get hired.)

Be Nice: Say thank you

This is a wake-up call about behavior. Every company’s reputation hinges on it. Ask your mother; she’ll tell you. Always say thank you. Always wear clean underwear. Always take time to be polite to people.

  • If you have no time to write thank-you notes, then you’re soliciting too many resumes.
  • If you have no time to get out of your office and meet the movers and shakers in your professional community, you’re not recruiting; you’re pushing paper. (See Ten Stupid Hiring Mistakes.)
  • If you have no time to be nice, I’ll bet it’s because you spend too much time with resumes and not enough with people.

thank-youIt’s easy to be rude to a resume; but you can’t hire resumes. Top-notch workers in your field will not stand for rudeness. Talk to all the people you pissed off when you ignored their applications, and you will learn what rude is. Rude is awakening to find your company’s professional reputation has been trashed by good applicants who found out you’re not as good as they are. (See Death by Lethal Reputation.)

Learn to be nice. Make it your policy.

If you don’t inspire good people to say nice things about your company, you can’t hire good people. It starts with that thank-you note; even with a no-thank-you note. Where it really starts is with your hand writing a personal note; with that hand attached to an arm attached to a warm body that gives a damn. Because if you don’t give a damn about people who apply to your jobs, pretty soon everybody will know, including your shareholders.

And that, Mr. CEO and Ms. Member of the Board of Directors, is why you need to make sure your HR department and your managers are polite, wear clean underwear, and write thank-you notes.

Does your company respect job applicants? Does it walk the talk — and send thank-you notes? Does your HR department insist on proper behavior from job applicants, and then diss them when the interviews are done?

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