Executive Search Consultants
Executive search consultants, otherwise known in the colloquial vernacular as “headhunters” are individuals working in the human resources field with a goal of matching candidates with employers. This may sound similar to the job description of an executive search consultant, and in many ways the two professions are the same, at least when one considers the projected end result of their dealings. There is, however, one very crucial difference between executive search consultants and executive search recruiters: while executive search recruiters can be thought of as jacks of all trades (finding a variety of candidates for a vast variety of executive employers), executive search recruiters are seen of as more specialized and careful when it comes to the business of matching a client with an appropriate job seeker. Executive search consultants have a close understanding of the businesses their clients engage in, and would therefor have a better understanding of what their client requires in a particular or even a set of candidates. In this way, executive search consultants may very well be more efficient in matching the perfect candidate with the open executive position within a specific field of business.
Executive search consultants tend to more likely be the type of people with whom a particular client forges a long-term relationship. This is because of the nature of the job description of the executive search consultants: it is for the benefit of both parties that the nature of the client’s business is understood well not only through the experience of the executive search consultants, but also through the familiar relationship the two parties have with each other. This being the case, it is only practical that executive search consultants only have a handful of clients (at most) at one time, as too many clients may not only create conflict, but also exhausted confusion.
Again, an executive search consultant’s understanding of his or her client’s business can come from two sources – the close relationship between the client-businesses and the executive search consultants, and the prior experience of the executive search consultants. The second case often suggests that the executive search consultants working with a particular client has expertise in that particular field because they either worked in that field before, or they have in the past worked with clients in the same field. In either case, executive search consultants are expected to have a clearly defined an specialized network of contacts that would allow them to make the right recommendations to their clients. The primary screening under executive search consultants are typically more stringent than that of the executive search recruiters’, and it is because of this that executive search consultants are often preferred by the clients, and compensated despite the occasional failure to match.
Despite usually working for a particular executive search firm, specific executive search consultants are matched to clients based on their area of expertise, and are sometimes mistaken to be independent agents.