DO HEADHUNTERS CHARGE CANDIDATES · HEADHUNTERS INTERNATIONAL
Headhunters Have Always Been Free to You. Why Would Anyone Pay One?
For twenty years the headhunter cost you nothing because the employer was paying, and in every one of those conversations you were the person being assessed in somebody else's process. A search consultant is paid to find the right candidate for a client's role, and that is the job they do. When an executive pays, he sets the brief, and the honest read of his record that used to go to a client comes to him instead. Mark Ross spent thirty years running searches for employers, and Headhunters International now works for the executive.
Most senior people have a version of the same habit. A headhunter rings, you take the call, you have a pleasant half hour and you say you are happy where you are but always open to a conversation. Then something changes. The business is sold, or you realise after eight years in the role that the next step is not going to appear inside the company. So you ring the three consultants whose numbers you kept and ask the question you have heard others ask for years: "Have you got anything on your books?"
Each of them is friendly and asks for an updated CV. You send it that evening, expecting to be matched to a live brief within a fortnight, and then very little happens. One rings back about a role two levels below you, and months later an email arrives from another about a search in a sector you left a decade ago. You start to wonder whether you have slipped somehow, and whether the people who used to ring you have stopped rating you.
Why the headhunter was free
The headhunter was free because the employer paid. Every search you were ever approached for started with a client, usually a chair or a chief executive, agreeing terms with a firm to fill a particular role. The consultant then went looking for people who matched that client's brief, and you were one of them. You were treated well, often very well, because good candidates are what a search firm sells, and throughout it the client was the customer.
That arrangement explains most of what happens when you ring a headhunter and ask what they have. A search consultant does not hold a list of jobs waiting for the right person to call. They hold a small number of live mandates, each with a brief written by somebody else. If your record fits one of those briefs this month, you will hear. Otherwise there is nothing for them to do with your CV, and no one is paying them to think about where you should go next.
None of this is a criticism. Mark Ross ran searches on exactly those terms for three decades. A consultant who spent time steering candidates towards roles no client had asked them to fill would soon have no clients.
What you have actually been receiving
Look back over the approaches you have had and the pattern is consistent.
- The calls came when a client needed someone like you. The timing was set by their vacancy, and the conversation was about whether you matched it.
- The read of your record went to the client. When a consultant wrote you up, the report was for the board. You rarely saw it, and it was written to help them decide.
- Feedback stopped when the search did. Once the client chose, the consultant's work was finished, which is why a final round so often ends with one word.
- Your CV sat in a database. Sending it in did not start a search for you. It meant you could be found if a future brief matched.
Nobody in that process was paid to be on your side, and that is why the phone went quiet at the moment you needed it. Your record stopped matching the briefs that happened to be live, and looking further was nobody's job.
The stakes: waiting to be matched
An illustrative managing director of a distribution business, made redundant after a sale. He sent his CV to five search firms and waited for a brief to fit. The person and every figure are fictional.
| Illustrative figures | £ |
|---|---|
| Previous total package | 150,000 |
| Months spent waiting for a live brief to fit | 8 |
| Package forgone over those eight months | (100,000) |
| Approaches received from search firms in that period | 3 |
| Approaches at his previous level | 1 |
| Role accepted: general manager, division of a larger group | 125,000 |
| Shortfall against previous package, per year | (25,000) |
| Shortfall over four years | (100,000) |
| Cost against the previous package over four years and eight months | (200,000) |
Most of that never felt like a decision. He waited because waiting had always worked before. In month seven a former colleague mentioned a general manager role, and by then a step down felt like relief. The one approach at his level had come for a business that was being bought, where the buyer appointed its own man.
What changes when the executive pays
When you are the client, the work is organised around you from the first meeting, in ways a free search was never set up to offer.
Whose brief
The work starts from your brief. Where do you want to be in five years, at what level, in which kind of business, with what you will and will not accept. That is settled before anyone outside is approached, so the first offer to arrive does not settle it for you. From it comes a list of the companies you should be in front of.
The report and its reader
In a search, the candidate report goes to the board. When you are the client, the same kind of document is written for you to take to market: the Career Memorandum, an executive CV and a one-page biography, built from your record and written the way a chair reads. Mark Ross spent thirty years writing candidate reports for boards, and the documents use the same discipline.
The honest read
A search consultant forms a clear view of your strengths and weak points in the first meeting. That view goes into a report for the client, or into a decision not to put you forward. You rarely hear it. When you pay, you hear it directly and early, while there is still time to deal with the title that puts you in the wrong column or the achievement buried on page two.
What a candidate-paid adviser should never do
Once you start looking, you will find people selling help to executives on very different terms. Some of those terms should end the conversation.
- Promise you a placement. Nobody acting for a candidate controls an employer's decision. An adviser who promises a role or a salary is promising something they cannot deliver.
- Take a percentage of your salary. That is how employers pay search firms. An adviser who takes a cut of your future pay has an interest in the size of the number, which can sit badly with your interest in the right role.
- Apply to adverts at volume. Sending your CV to a hundred advertised roles is the slowest channel at senior level, because by the time a senior role is advertised the decision has usually begun. Headhunters International does not sell application volume.
Search firms still matter
Keep the relationships. Search consultants fill many senior roles, and the good ones know their sectors very well. When a client brief fits you, a consultant who already knows your record is valuable, and Mark Ross would always advise an executive to stay on good terms with the people who have called them over the years.
A search firm has no mandate to run a search for you, and no one is paying it to, which is where Headhunters International comes in.
A search that started from the executive, illustrated
This example was written for this page to show the kind of finding the work produces. It is not a record of a real client. Headhunters International never publishes client names or details.
Managing director who had always been approached
Starting point. Twenty-two years of senior roles, every move after the first made through a headhunter's call. Redundant after a sale, with his CV with five firms and three months of silence.
What the work found. Every previous move had been a version of the last role in a slightly larger business, so every search firm had filed him as a distribution managing director. He wanted to run a business with a manufacturing arm, and his best result, a turnaround of a loss-making assembly site, sat in the fourth bullet of his second role.
What changed. The record was rebuilt around the turnaround, and the target list went to manufacturing groups with a new private equity owner or a founder preparing to step back. Approaches went by printed letter to the chair or chief executive, with a LinkedIn message to a second contact.
Outcome. Approaches went to twelve businesses. Three chairs replied, and two conversations were about a role that had not yet been defined.
How the work runs
The work goes through four stages before anyone outside is approached.
- Value. Your achievements, excavated and quantified with a base, a period and a source.
- Direction. A five-year position and the level you are aiming at.
- Criteria. A scoring framework built from your own priorities, so every option is measured the same way.
- Positioning. The Career Memorandum, an executive CV and a one-page biography.
Those four stages are the Foundation Programme. The Private Office then takes the search to market through Reverse Headhunting: a target list of companies with something changing right now, such as a new owner or an acquisition, and direct approaches to the person who owns the problem before a role is advertised.
Who does the work
Mark Ross Roberts, founder of Headhunters International, does the work himself. He has spent thirty years in senior executive search, putting together shortlists and writing the candidate reports a board reads, and in M&A, where he sees a change of owner or strategy months before a role appears. His qualifications include the FMVA and CBCA from the Corporate Finance Institute and Wharton Executive Education programmes in executive presence and in neuroscience in leadership, and he is the author of four books including STAR Success.
How to start
Email Mark Ross at ross@headhunters-international.com with a line on where you are and how your last two moves came about. If you have sent your CV to search firms recently, say how long ago. He replies himself, and the first conversation establishes whether paying for representation makes sense for you now, which stage the work would start at and what it would cost. Nothing is payable until you decide to go ahead.
Questions executives ask about paying a headhunter
Do headhunters charge candidates?
Search firms working for employers do not charge candidates. The employer pays them to fill a role, and you are assessed as a candidate in that search. Candidate-paid advisers such as Headhunters International charge the executive, and work to the executive's brief.
Why are headhunters free for candidates?
Because the employer is the client. A search firm is paid by the company that wants to hire, so the candidate pays nothing and the consultant's obligation runs to that company.
Should I pay a headhunter to find me a job?
Paying someone to find you a job is the wrong thing to buy, and anyone who sells it on those terms should be treated with caution. What can be worth paying for is representation: an honest read of your record from the hiring side, documents written for the market you want, and direct approaches to the right companies. Whether that makes sense depends on where you are, which is what the first conversation with Mark Ross is for.
Is it a bad sign that headhunters have stopped calling me?
Usually not. Headhunters call when a live client brief matches your record. If your sector is quiet, or your profile reads as the role you have recently left, fewer briefs will match. Silence from search firms usually reflects which mandates happen to be open.
What should I do with my CV if I send it to a search firm?
Send it, and keep the relationship warm. Expect it to sit in their database until a client brief fits. It will not start a search on your behalf, so plan the rest of your search on the assumption that it may not produce a call.
Will Headhunters International take a percentage of my next salary?
Not in The Private Office. There, Headhunters International is paid by the executive and by nobody else, and takes no share of the salary you go on to earn. The first conversation covers what the work would cost before you commit to anything.
Read next
Related guides from Headhunters International
- Reverse Headhunting and The Private Office: approaches to the person who owns the problem, before a role is advertised.
- Career coach, headhunter or representation: who is paid by whom, and why final-round feedback is one word.
- How to check a career adviser: the questions to ask and the red flags before you pay anyone.
One email, principal to principal
Write to Mark Ross at ross@headhunters-international.com. He replies himself.
Email Mark Ross