Ok, I’m sure this title has been used 100 times on here already, but being a headhunter myself, I’d like to make a few points.
1. Only about 20% of the positions in companies are actually posted, whether it’s on the web, newspaper, forums, newsgroups, or what-have-you. The other 80% includes things such as exclusive job orders for certain recruiters, inner-office job orders, not currently funded job orders, and not currently brought to the attention of HR.
The exclusive job orders are given to headhunters that have built up a solid career of finding the kind of people that the hiring manager wants and are not shared with the public.
Inner-office should be self explanatory.
Not currently funded orders are just that, the budget hasnt been set yet, but HR has shared this job with recruiters as something that may happen in the future, thus the recruiter will try to find someone that fits to tempt the company into allocating money for that person.
Not currently brought to the attention job orders are such things as someone in the company is sitting there thinking “hmmm, if only I had such and such, I’d goto HR and request this position to be filled.” Many times recruiters will present someone to a company and Bing! that person will be like “Hey!, I was just thinking I could use someone like that.”–Instant fill of a job that didnt exist yet.
2. Recruiters can always call and talk directly to hiring managers. There’s none of this submit to the company and hope your resume doesnt get lost or tossed because your cover letter didnt impress someone, and there’s none of that “Login in to submit your resume here” (What? I have to create an account and fill out 16 pages of questions just to submit my resume?)
3. Any recruiter that doesnt spend at least 30 minutes to an hour exploring opportunities with you, finding out exactly what you do, what you want, and how the recruiter can make this happen, is worthless and do not work with them. Numerous IT recruiters [the ones I’ve had experience with at least, but not all of them] are just in it to quickly find a fit or to try to force a position on to a candidate.
So anyone that wants to continue to speak out against headhunters and say that there is no use for them, you’re only selling yourself short.
