Head Hunting - Tips

I mentioned in one of my previous posts that with the advent of recruitment process outsourcing the need to differentiate the offerings of the Recruitment consultant becomes even more imperative.

One of such differentiated service would be head hunting and poaching.

So head hunting or poaching - which ever way one looks at it is a skill which has high demand.

In high end search firms Head Hunting is a specialisation itself with a handful possessing the capability to dig out names and numbers and poach the specific person.

The reason that head hunting is a skill possessed by a handful is because of the high entry barriers in acquiring this skill.

After all it requires tremendous guts to be able to manage the myriad uncertain situations which could come up when one embarks on a head hunting call

Such obstacles include being accused of phishing, to plain rebuttals (even threats) or no response at all.

one of the requests that have come my way during training programmes is to provide tips on how to tackle head hunting .

The aim of this post is provide some that .......................

1. Head hunting is an art. It requires practice and this means learning the hard way......

2. Practice your story line before hand ......plan your identity and have enough back up stories to justify your story so that you are never caught speechless. Some answers you should have
i. Why are you calling?
ii. Who are you? What does your organisation do?
iii. Why can't you give me the information or request (presuming this is a secy/receptionist)
iv. Give me a number that i can call back on (secy/receptionist/
v. Give me a website link of your organisation


3. Completely avoid phishing(impersonation - that is pretending to be someone or some organisation which really exists - for e.g saying that you are calling from NASSCOM -when you are not- . Phishing is a violation under the law of the land can lead to punishment of the individual

4. Have standard replies for potential bottlenecks -
i. If the person you want to reach is not available on his seat/is on leave - (no hanging up is not a good idea - it will lead to suspicion - you won't be able to call later)
ii If the person you want to reach says that he does not have the time to take the call
iii. If the person you want to reach puts you in touch with his secretary
iv. If the call is transferred to his secretary before you could say anything (again donot hang up!)

5. Do reasonable amount of research on the company from which you wish to head hunt ...for e.g i. what does it do? ii. where all does it have offices, sales and plant locations iii. which are the divisions? iv. the organisational structure v. the leadership team vi. names of some of the senior individuals (job site databases zindabad), vii. what kind of products does it sell - names of its brands etc
This will see to that you are not caught unawares about most organisational info

Also it is useful to pretend to be a person that you can easily identify with ...e.g if you have an understanding of sales and marketing - posing as a marketing executive would be comparatively easy.

Practice your lines ....saying it out will assure you that it sounds genuine!

Happy Head Hunting .....