ARE HEADHUNTER YEARS THE SAME AS DOG YEARS? The question that is asked most often of me by job hunters and companies is, "how long have you been doing recruiting"? Maybe they are just making small talk or, and I think this is the case, they believe years of experience as a third party recruiter is a significant indicator of ability. I don't believe the number of years an individual has been in recruiting is a good indication of how success the recruiter will be in finding you a position for several reasons:
- A third party recruiter may have come to recruiting via being an Human Resources Manager in a large company and has many years of recruiting experience already.
- Being a headhunter is a very tedious job at times and some third party recruiters burn out or lose touch with reality, so years of experience can work against you.
- Young and eager recruiters are often very good at placing individuals because they do not realize how difficult recuiting can be.
- Even though an individual may have been a third party recruiter for a long time, they may only work with a relatively small number of client companies and if you do not fit the profile, you will not be placed.
- Training can overcome lack of experience. There are many third party recuiting organizations and franchises that offer excellent training and can bring the newbie recruiter up to speed very quickly.
- As in any profession, there are individuals who are very good at what they do and some that are not, and never will be very good, no matter how many years they being working in the profession. A better question might be "how many recessions have you been able to survive as a headhunter.?" This latest recession has probably eliminated between 25 and 40 percent of recuiters. Unfortunately, some of the recruiters were very good but decided to begin their retirement instead of beating their heads against a wall.
I have been doing headhunting for about 8 years and in recuiter years, I am not very old. I know some recuriters who have been at this for over 40 years. I spent about 25 years in engineering and manufacturing management before becoming a recuiter and I believe this helped me a great deal when I became a headhunter. Fortunately, the companies I worked for invested a great deal of money in training me how to hire good people without getting sued. In my career, I hired or was involved in the hiring process of over 300 engineers, supervisors, managers, and technicians.
Based on my experience of working with and being a recruiter, I give headhunter experience a rating of 0 to 4.
9:19:00 PM 
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