As a headhunt search company we are in business to help clients find the high calibre people they need to be successful.
We find people by identifying and then headhunting target individuals who we believe have the right skills and attributes that we are looking for. That’s great – but when a headhunter calls you, what is it really like?
As a rule of thumb, we will firstly call the individual and identify that it is in fact them speaking (and not their manager who’s answered their line); then we will make them aware that we are a headhunting organisation and that we would like to have a conversation with them about an career opportunity. We’ll ask “is it a convenient time to talk?”
Ever since I started working in search recruitment back in 1997, a common objection I hear from clients is “What do your services offer us that we can’t do ourselves”? This is a great question – and one an employer should always ask any prospective recruiter.
As an employer, if you are in the fortunate position of being able to hire good people through your own advertising and word of mouth; then realistically a recruiter cannot offer you much.
For the vast majority of jobs, whether blue-collar, white collar or management – it’s hard to find good people and most companies struggle to recruit. This is where recruiters come into play.
As a market leading recruitment organisation we are in a somewhat unique position at the “cutting edge” of dealing with people leaving organisations on a day-to-day basis. A common misconception is that as a headhunt search company we somehow have mystical power to “spirit” people away from blissfully happy jobs. The reality is completely different. On average over 60% of individuals we pro-actively approach will rebuff our advances as they are happy with their present situation. Unless there is an underlying issue there we are unable to persuade that person to talk about moving.
If you resign your job, and your existing employer offers you a better package or a different job to stay; this is called a Counter-Offer. If you are thinking about accepting a counter offer to stay in a job when you’ve already resigned, or you’re thinking of using a potential employer’s job offer to get your current company to pay you more money read on.
We have over 400 cumulative years of experience at Wynne Consulting and we are regularly faced with these situations.
In the vast majority of situations, using another job offer as a bargaining chip to get more money may be tempting, but it usually ends badly. If you want a salary increase/promotion, then negotiate it on your own merits; or prepare to move jobs.
Whenever we broach this subject, we always get feedback along the lines of “You’re a recruiter, it’s in your personal interests to dissuade candidates from accepting counter-offers as you will lose your fee”. This maybe the case with other recruiters, but for us this is not the case and is missing the point.
I was chatting to my father over the weekend about his experiences of job “interviews” in the 1960’s when he first left college. Morose interviewers firing open questions over an imposing oak desk whilst portraying the demeanor of a disinterested headmaster thinking “why on earth should I bother giving you a job?”.
This kind of arrogant interview style was commonplace where there is a rich choice of candidates to employ; where jobs are few and interviewees are plentiful.
Fast-forward to 2014 and the vast majority of the market sectors we operate in genuinely struggle to identify and recruit the top talent in their sector. A shortage of highly skilled people coupled with an improving economy and falling unemployment makes the battle for talent even more intense.
One of the biggest decisions many professionals take in their career is not just whether to take that great job opportunity, but is it the right thing to do to move lock, stock & barrel to the other part of the country (or continent!) that the new job demands. Here’s the view of top UK headhunter Wynne Consulting.
“On one side – limiting career progression to the commuting distance from your home can be very restrictive to your career in the long-term; whereas a full job relocation often means leaving behind your friends, family and the standard of living you’re accustomed to (whether that’s a good thing or not!). Relocation is a massive step to take but for the brave it significantly increases the scope and volume of job opportunities available.
As autumn begins in earnest, for many of us the amazing summer of 2018 has faded into a distant memory. Now is a good time to reflect on how 2018 has played out upto now. Most of us spend more time at work than with their immediate family; so now’s a good time to reflect on where you are at with your career. This can be looking for new opportunities within your company, changing your location of work or even more dramatic changes such as changing the industry in which you work. You may be on the search for your dream job, or maybe just a “stepping stone” to get you out of university and onto the job market to enable you to work your way up.
Either way, your CV is the first thing that potential employers see, so it has to represent you in the best possible way. The average amount of time an employer spends initially looking at your CV is 30 seconds. Capture their attention in that short time window and they will delve deeper; miss the boat and they will likely move on.
At Wynne Consulting we see hundreds of CV’s every day. The biggest mistake we see is people filling their CV’s with every single activity, skill or job they have ever had onto one page instead of focusing on creating a logical and compelling story of their career. Just recently I was reviewing a 12-page CV that started out with the following:
“My skills include marketing, social media, project management, accounting, tax law, labor law, financial management, sales strategy, 6 Sigma, operational effectiveness, ad operations and software sales. I’ve also published two novels and took a few months off to write a poetry book last spring.”
As a specialist recruitment business we are continually asked by clients to recruit highly skilled people with specialist skill-sets throughout the UK and Europe.
The nature of the high technology marketplace is that individual expertise and a collective capability of your people to deliver top quality solutions are the fundamental strengths of all successful businesses.
The critical part of that process is a companies’ ability to hire and retain top quality talent from a competitive marketplace. The other companies that you compete with are all looking to hire the same people so your ability to identify and hire the people you need often is the key difference between success and failure.
