Headhunters Headhunt. Why Search Firms Don’t Run Ads!

Looking to hire for your graduate entry scheme? You get to fish in a huge pool of keen applicants, all with similar skills and experiences. Run an ad, and you’ll be inundated.

Looking for a new CEO? Far fewer people will have the necessary skills and experiences to make a success of such a role and, of those that do, many will not be job hunting. Running an ad is unlikely to deliver satisfaction – this is where the retained executive search consultant comes into her own.
 

Executive Search is all about finding the best candidates, be they passive or active. It involves mapping the market and identifying the entire talent pool – identifying potential hires in competitors or in organizations with similar challenges. For some searches, literally hundreds of names will be identified – although, in many cases, the long list will be far shorter.

The aim is to find the best. The long list is likely to have candidates with extensive – but different – experience. Different strengths and different weaknesses. The search consultant is tasked with discovering and evaluating them all.

But – it’s not as easy as that.

In some cases, it’s easy to define the candidate pool so an accurate market map is plausible – “Experienced CFOs currently working for a Fortune 500 Retailer” is far less of a challenge than “An experienced CFO with experience in turnaround and cross border M&A for a Private Equity backed manufacturing business”. In other cases, the target company list may be huge “Find me a Product leader for a Fintech Company” could lead to thousands of potential targets.

Identifying 10 possible executives may be relatively easy. Persuading them to leave a position in which they are, presumably, performing well and compensated as such, maybe easier said than done. Some companies are higher up the food chain than others – selling your role may be tough – even making contact may be a challenge.

But the point is this; an executive search process, done right, identifies the entire candidate pool. OK, not all of them will be open to a move, but it will spread the widest net.

So, in that context, why run ads? If a search process is exhaustive it will, pretty much by definition, identify the candidates that might be prepared to apply for the role. Why pay extra for ads to deliver the candidates you’ve already identified?

Well; the upside is that there are bound to be some candidates you’ve missed. Under the radar candidates with no social footprint or who are employed by organizations that are not obvious hunting grounds. A job ad has the potential to attract these. But it’s around the edges.

The logical conclusion, therefore, is that running an expensive advertising campaign is unlikely to be cost-effective if the recruiter has already completed an exhaustive search process. However, there’s little obvious downside (assuming no confidentiality issues) if the cost is not significant.

As a result, executive recruiters are increasingly turning to GatedTalent opportunities as a way of posting jobs for potential candidates. It’s an entirely free service for qualifying executive search firms (and in-house strategic talent acquisition teams), and is delivered smoothly from industry leading executive search software and CRM products such as Talentis and FileFinder. The combination of a fully integrated CRM with candidate sourcing and advertising functionality allows search firms to benefit from “the best of all worlds” – building a targeted longlist quickly and efficiently, while also attracting active job seekers in a cost-free manner.

The platform currently lists thousands of executive-level positions from across the Globe and is driving hundreds of candidate applications on a daily basis. If your executive hiring team wants to reconsider how it attracts potential candidates, please contact us to learn more!

Author Bio

Jason Starr is the Chief Executive Officer of Ikiru People. Jason joined Dillistone Group in 1994, becoming Marketing Manager in 1996 and Managing Director of the UK business in 1998. Following an MBO, Jason became the Chief Executive of the Group. Jason was appointed a Non-Executive Director of AIM-listed PCIPAL PLC on January 1, 2015.