People who work as headhunters for job agencies are sometimes called recruiters but usually a recruiter is employed by one company and they work on finding and interviewing talent for open roles within that company. Remember, recruiters often work within the HR departments of a company and in some cases, an HR manager might double as the recruiter for the company.
Since recruiters usually work internally, they often have more information about what a specific job role will entail within that company as opposed to a headhunter who might only receive a basic overview of the role that a company is looking for.
Recruiters are often employees of the company that they are hiring for and as such they are most likely paid a fixed salary by that company.
Due to this, some job seekers may feel more comfortable working with recruiters than with headhunters.
Since a recruiter’s pay is not tied to hiring commissions, they may have more flexibility to take the time to find the perfect person for the job, versus a headhunter who may just want to place a candidate as quickly as possible.
This is also due to the nature of the jobs that recruiters and headhunters are trying to fill. Oftentimes, headhunters will be given temporary or part-time positions to find candidates for, while recruiters are more likely to be looking for full-time, long term employees.
If there is a certain company that you would really like to work for, you could try searching LinkedIn for an internal recruiter of that company and then reach out to them. Usually recruiters are pretty open to connecting with people online as anyone could be a potential hire.
If you just need a job as quickly as possible, it might be a good idea to reach out to a temp agency and work with a headhunter there. Learn more about temp agencies on the final slide.
By Admin –