The pandemic hit hard the world of employment, however many companies are still in need of hiring key new profiles in their organizations. In case your company is looking to hire a profile to work remotely or in the office, you might want to understand a bit better the differences among these two, quite different professions.

Headhunters vs. Recruiters 

A headhunter is general an individual or a company that finds potential candidates for a firm that is looking hire certain specialists or higher executive to their firm. So they are not part of the organization in which the candidate is going to work for.

A recruiter is generally part of the actual hiring process as it is generally a member of the human resources (HR) department of the company.


The two hiring methodologies also differ quite a bit. Let’s see them together.

Generally a company always starts off trying to attract that specific talent they are looking for by themselves. They either use their social medias (generally LinkedIn), their blog and especially their internal network of current employees to try to attract the right profile to the company. So in a way, the put the word out and then wait to see which CVs are coming back and then start to filter them. Obviously they can also create a job post on some platforms and that way they are likely to receive too many, sometimes not totally adequate, candidates for a role. This is why often job seekers don’t receive an anwer quickly, it takes time to go through thousands of CVs.

A headhunter, generally uses a different approach. He first deeply understands the needs of the company and the skills required for the position and then goes either to their own database of candidates, that perhaps applied for previous searches or goes directly online to find the right profile for that job. As you can see this is an entirely different angle, that is also why they are called Head Hunters, as they literally go out there to hunt for the right person. 

In a way, by publishing job offers online recruiters might also be targeting more people that are currently without a job or actively looking for a  job whereas head hunters might be contacting professionals that might be looking for new challenges, but that are currently employed.

Given the Covid-19 situation, the entire hiring landscape has changed. Of course most interviews are now held remotely with online tools, but not just this, now more and more people are now available for many positions as the world work industry is shifting towards an entirely remote working mode. Forecasts say that working from home will probably be the strongest Covid-19 legacy and that many of the jobs that have moved away from the office are very likely to stay that way. This means that one no longer needs to live relatively close to a train to the center of London to get a decently-paid salary, you can rent a cheaper and more comfortable cottage in the middle of the countryside and work from there. For employers this also means being able to recruit talents abroad or generally accessing a pool of candidates ten times larger. 

This new situation makes it more complicated for a HR department to manage an even larger load of potential candidates and narrowing down thousands of potential interested future employees down to 4 or 5 best ones can take months.


Hiring a head hunter could solve many of your headaches, and you might want to start to get in touch with one whenever you start to see that you are struggling to find the right person, so by the time you give up and really start to need some help, at least you already know who to go to.

Some factors that you should take in consideration before you contact a Head Hunter are:

-They usually specilize in a certain industry, but many also can help in a variety of sectors

-They contact directly the candidates

-They generally focus more on high-level candidates

-They will find you the final candidates but will not do the hiring part for you


But if what you need is to hire various employees in a variety of different departments in the upcoming months, perhaps a recruiter or staffing agency could be a wiser choice.

How much do they cost?

It really depends on the quality and the size of the company you decide to work with. And there are many different ways of working with them, for example contract, retained or contingency-based. Some charge you with a success fee once you actually hire the candidate (this is the least suggested as they are likely to do a fast job to see if it works and otherwise move quickly to an easier case), other charge a retainer fee at the beginning and the rest at the end of the process and contingecy-based is a special type of contract that is established in cases of emergencies, let’s say in case something happens to a CEO or quits the position suddenly and the company needs a quick and decisive solution. A recruiter might charge you around 70€ per hour whereas head hunters charge anywhere in between 30 and 25% of the annual salary of the person you will hire.

Does it actually work?

Yes, generally hiring a head hunter or a recruiter significantly highers the chances of you not needing to look for a replacement too quickly, as they are skilled to find the right match for you.
Prices as you will see can vary drastically, you might find a younger headhunter that is willing to find you someone for half of what a senior and well established executive search firm might charge you. So be very careful of not deciding according to which price is lower as when it gets to dealing with humans and soft skills, the differences can be gigantic.

Instead search for them online and see what type of references or success stories they display publicly, look them up on LinkedIn and if you have any contact in common, ask for some referrals, or ask them directly to give you a few numbers that you can call. Make sure you have some sort of quality guarantee in case the employee ends up leaving their company too quickly in case they are not the best fit, or vice versa in case the company really does not match with the final candidate, sometimes it happens.

InHunt World is an international network of professional Head Hunting companies with at least 15 years of experience in the field. We are all over the world and we have only local agencies that speak the language of the candidates.


If you are looking to hire someone and you are struggling with it, let us tell you more about our simple 3 step process and send you a free quote. We are sure we can find your best candidate in no time, simple write us at info@inhuntworld.com or contact us by using this form and we will get back to you in 24h!

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