Differentiating Between Recruiters and Headhunters in Recruitment
Recruiter and Headhunter are two common concepts for people in the HR industry. While familiar to HR professionals, other departments are often completely unfamiliar with these concepts. Today, in episode 02 of the “Complete HRM” series, let’s join 1Office to explore what these two basic recruitment concepts are!
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Basic Concepts of Recruiter and Headhunter
Recruiter is understood as an individual hired by a company to find personnel for vacant positions within that company. They are usually people working in the company’s own HR department, or in some cases, the company will hire a third party.
Headhunter this concept is figuratively understood to mean people who specialize in finding suitable candidates, personnel with special skills that cannot be recruited through conventional channels for a company. Most of them come from third-party agencies, with a few being employees of the company itself.
Job and Work Environment of Recruiters and Headhunters
A Recruiter is usually an employee of the company’s HR department. The Recruiter is primarily responsible for sourcing candidates. Most Recruiters will use public recruitment channels to find candidates, such as job boards, social groups, and sometimes even traditional methods like newspaper ads or flyers.
A Headhunter usually comes from a third-party agency hired by the company to find suitable people. Companies turn to Headhunters not because they lack a team of Recruiters, but because they want to find candidates with specific characteristics that Recruiters cannot find. Headhunters often do not come from the recruitment industry; they come from the very industry the company is looking to hire from. They use non-public channels, personal relationships, etc., to find the most suitable candidates.
Quantity and Quality of Candidates from the Two Sources
Recruiters return candidates who share the common characteristic of being “job seekers,” so the quality of candidates is often lower than the company’s expectations. The general level of personnel from these sources is often average or below, and they are people actively looking for a job. The number of candidates from this source is very large, so they can be found in a short time, and candidates are often ready to start work immediately. Recruiters are suitable for filling junior to mid-level positions in a company, or for mass recruitment.
Headhunters bring in candidates who share the common characteristic of being “sought after by jobs,” so the quality of candidates usually meets all of the company’s requirements. The quality of these candidates is very high compared to the general pool. These types of candidates often have many years of experience, have held management positions, and some are currently employed by other companies. The number of candidates from this source is inversely proportional to the quality; for some senior positions, it can take several months just to find one candidate. Therefore, Headhunters are usually used to find senior management positions and to serve the company’s long-term strategies.
Operating Costs
When using a headhunter, a company will incur a service fee for the third party. This cost depends on the quality of the candidate you want to hire and is often very high for top management positions. However, the company will save time and avoid other hidden costs such as candidate management, screening costs, etc.
A Recruiter is an “in-house” resource, so the direct cost is minimal. However, other hidden costs such as time, management expenses, and candidate screening are difficult to calculate and depend heavily on the expertise of the HR staff. Additionally, when involved in recruitment, other tasks within the HR department can be significantly affected.
The Intersection Between the Two Concepts
Talent Acquisition can be considered an intersection between the concepts of Recruiter and Headhunter. Talent Acquisition is defined as the process of building a company’s image and creating relationships with candidates to ensure a long-term candidate pipeline. 1Office will provide a more detailed analysis of the Talent Acquisition concept in another article.
The second commonality is the need to screen candidates – a very arduous and tedious task. The recruitment process is similar to filtering through a funnel, and the filtering work simply shifts between the Recruiter and the Headhunter. For a Recruiter, it’s filtering incoming CVs, while for a Headhunter, it’s screening lists from LinkedIn, personal contacts, etc. However, with today’s technology, these tasks are now handled by an ATS.
ATS (Applicant Tracking System) – a form of AI that supports recruitment – handles previously manual tasks. For Recruiters, ATS helps filter applications, consolidate applications from various sources, send emails, schedule appointments, etc. – repetitive tasks that AI can completely handle. For Headhunters, ATS acts as a machine to screen candidates on social groups and LinkedIn to find suitable candidates. ATS in recruitment is a product of the Industry 4.0 revolution that businesses should adopt to save time and effort.
1Office currently provides a comprehensive business management software with ATS support for recruitment. Register to use it now!
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