Finally, you should be realistic about whether your career is far enough along for a top-level executive recruiter to be contacting you. If you're basically still in middle management, it's wise to be leery of anyone who calls you and has dynamite, very high-level position to offer you. Elite headhunters don't usually deal with middle managers. There are, however, some good middle-management executive recruiters around. They are a stepping stone to the more elite executive recruiters. While the names of the top recruiting firms are well-known to most people who read the business press, many of the middle-level recruiters are independents or are less well-known. There is no reason not to work with these people once you have carefully checked out their references.
HOW RECRUITERS OPERATE
Once you decide to work with a recruiter, your relations will go more smoothly if you understand how recruiters operate.
A recruiter conducts a complete search for every assignment. Sometimes, they can pull someone from the data bank his firm maintains, and quite often, the client will provide the recruiter with a list of "target" companies to raid, if possible, for talent.
The typical recruiter handles very few assignments at any one time. Six to eight appears to be the average load. Executive recruiters can afford to be this selective for two reasons: first, they are well paid by their clients, and second, executive recruiters generally handle only people in middle and top management. (Middle-management searches are those in the $35,000 to $80,000 total compensation range, and top-management searches are those in the $80,000-plus total compensation range. The average range of placement the last few years has been the $90,000 to $100,000 total compensation package.)
What all this basically means is that you won't find it very helpful to go to a recruiter when you want to change jobs. The chances that he or she will be working on an assignment that can use your specific talents at the time you want to change are slim.
Another important thing you must understand is the absolute care with which executive recruiters operate with regard to their clients. Recruiters sometimes court a client for months or even years before receiving an assignment. Some recruiters were unanimous in saying that the worst thing they could do on a search is to send the wrong candidate to the client. One recruiter's statement only echoed that of other recruiters when he said, "Sending out the wrong job candidate means we haven't done our job. We haven't understood our client's needs."
To avoid sending out the wrong person for the job, a recruiter takes several precautions.
A recruiter is sometimes tougher about choosing a job candidate than a client would be. One experienced job hunter who had risen through the ranks and in doing so had also worked her way up through the ranks of executive recruiters, said, "The interviewing only gets tougher the higher up you go, when you would think your credentials and experience would speak for themselves. A lot of recruiters will grill you, go through your entire life with you step-by-step, attempt to find out whether you adored your father and what other heroes you had, ask you a lot about how you spend your leisure time, and, in general, spend a lot of time going over irrelevant things that have little to do with your qualifications for the job. They do this just to make sure they've got the right person, to make sure that they know everything about the person."
You should keep in mind, however, that although executive recruiters err on the side of the overly cautious, they are also among the toughest and best interviewers around, and you must know how to handle them to get past them.
A recruiter will also check your references--and anything else you say--very carefully. Lots of employers still don't bother to check references, but a headhunted will do some scouting around to find out if you really did everything you said you did, and if you did it, he'll find out whether you did it alone, as you claim, or whether your role was actually smaller than you have admitted.
A recruiter will also check out your compensation package carefully, although they usually know whether you are leveling with them without even checking. Unlike prospective employers, who rarely interview and may have only a vague impression of what the competition pays its management employees, the recruiter talks to executives and managers all the time. They typically know what the typical range of pay is at various levels, what different industries pay, and have finely tuned antennae that help them sense when an interviewee is not leveling with them about compensation--or anything else, for that matter.
See the following articles for more information:
- How to Start on the Right Foot in Your New Job
- What Are the Sources to Find the Information You Need
- The Background of Application Process
- How to Network and Take an Information Interview
