Are Headhunters An Endangered Species?

Many service oriented industries are said to be at risk of being replaced since the advent of the Internet. In the human resources field a threat comes from the corporate push to cut, or some argue, eliminate the relatively high costs of recruiting through third party agents. Today thousands of recruitment web sites offer everything from enterprise level solutions to single purpose recruiting tools that promise to streamline one's recruiting process by lowering costs, eliminating tasks and/or saving time without compromising the quality of a hire.

Third party recruiting is valuable to the corporate world because it provides the opportunity to source and hire top-notch talent that is not present in the active job seeking market. Networking is the process third party recruiters rely on to connect and meet with people that can become potential employees and/or future referral contacts. In other words, third party recruiters have been successful at finding people that corporations cannot because corporations traditionally rely heavily on reactive recruitment strategies such as job advertising and coveted top caliber employees don't read them.

The threat that e-Cruiting poses to the third party recruiting industry is explained in one of the commonly used e-Cruiting buzzwords, the "passive job seeker". Similar to the "headhunted" individual, aside from being found through the Internet, this is a person who is open to entertaining a new career opportunity but not actively searching for one. If corporations now have the ability to locate people on the Internet who are not actively looking for jobs how long will it be before third party recruiters become obsolete?

Let's look at some recent trends in the third party recruiting industry. The tremendous growth that the industry has experienced over the past few decades has not slowed or ceased since the introduction of e-Cruiting. The industry continues to employ more people each year and continues to report double-digit growth in revenue across most of the industry and professional sectors it serves. Distress is not yet apparent.

Passive job seekers are not searching job boards or placing resumes in databases. They are listed deep in company web sites, participating in discussion groups, chat rooms, subscribing to e-zines, news services, have site links to associations and other professional related sites, etc. The passive job seeker will not find you or your job ad, you will have to find him or her. It's your task to learn the tools and resources available online to find out where and who they are. Sounds a bit like headhunting, doesn't it?

Both third party and corporate recruiters are better off since the vast majority of professionals are accessible online to some capacity. One would think that the corporate recruiter is now much closer to being as effective as the third party recruiter at headhunting since e-Cruiting tools and resources are equally available to both these parties. On the other hand, the relationship building aspect of headhunting that makes good recruiters exceptional recruiters has yet to be challenged by electronic means and its unlikely that this human ability can be replicated. Third party recruiters that are quickest to become proficient at leveraging the tools on the Internet that enhance their capacity to collect information, communicate, automate tasks and network will thrive and distance themselves from the rest. e-Cruiting tools and the vast amount of online resources can only strengthen one's recruiting practice.

The Internet has allowed corporate recruiters to become better headhunters and this may in fact replace a portion of the third party recruiting industry such as those that rely on file searches and fail to properly screen candidates (a.k.a. resume houses) before sending resumes to clients. e-Cruiting will continue to impact the third party recruiting industry but whether or not the impact is a negative one depends on if and how one chooses to use it. Nelson Abreu