Career path after having joined a head hunter agency

YS2003 said:

In the past, I changed jobs through the employment agencies (the match makers for the employers and job seekers). I have an opportunity to join the head hunting company (which seeks out the potential candidates who are not really in the job market and introduce them to the prospective employers who are looking for the experienced candidates from their competitors or the companies in the similar or related industries.

I am thinking like this. If I join a head hunting company, it would be awkward to me to look for a new career using other employment agencies or head hunters in several years or so when I decide to move on to the different challenges. My line of works has been in the different field; so, I want to be prepared for an exit strategy just in case.

What would be the typical career path for the people who are in the employment agency or head hunting companies?

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I was a head hunter for a few months in '95 and I was looking elsewhere the whole time.

I only got paid salary, with no commission.

well a guy who hired me for the company I work for in the past worked for a head hunter company for a while. He moved on to be a full time requiter for one company.

He tells me he likes it a lot more but his inroad was though the head hunter company. He got his contacts that way.

Use the head hunting company for a while to collect contacts so at least that way you can use them later on.

Something I have learned by watching my bosses is over the years they build up a long list of contacts they can call for a favor or to get good information. Hell I have already have a few contacts I have with friends that have helped me out to get a quick check on question and possibility if it was do able.

YS2003 said:

So, how did you like it? Or rather, how did you hate that job as you did that job for only a few months? Did you think that experience helped you move onto the next opportunity?

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I didn't like it, since it was a one semester internship for the US government, searching for jobs for 400,000 military personnel being transitioned into the civilian world. I had to cold call a lot of civilian businesses who wanted nothing to do with former military personnel wanting to get a job. At least my job paid me, as many college internships only give you college units, not pay. No matter how bad the job is, you have to stay out the whole semester to get the college units/credits.

And as for commission, heck no as they were the government. While I was with a student, I sat next to a man who was a private industry headhunter and his commission was amazing. Not that everything is about money, but his cold calls would result in more compensation for a week's work, at times, than all the poor souls who are college students who have to do it for free, getting only those 3 lousy units of credit.

Unless you are cut out for it, cold calling is very hard to do and dealing with rejection and hate calls. You can make a huge impact for others if you are good at it, and get paid well. My former classmate, an older student returning for college, made $40,000 commission on one client hookup as he placed a CEO with a company desperately looking for a very specific type of CEO. He gave them the match as was his sub-specialty within the headhunter field. Usually, he has to call many companies, many times to get such a decent match. In this case, he had the client on file, made one call, and secured a $40,000 dollar commission, all before class.

If you have this type of incredible skill to convince people over the phone, not only is your headhunter job a great training ground, it could set you up to make your own business, like my former classmate did. I don't know how many months, or years, it takes to learn how the industry works with headhunters in general, but my guess it that these are very closely held secrets. Manpower, America's biggest headhunter company dealing with more people than any fortune 500, gets a 70% percent commission. So if they place a person at $20 dollars an hour, Manpower gets an additional $14 dollars an hour from the employer. In some cases, it's cheaper for a company to hire a Manpower temp than it is to hire a person on their own, go through the lengthy screening process, and worry about medical benefits, dental benefits, death benefits, workman's compensation, etc.