The secret headhunters' skills

A headhunter is a professional whose essential labor is to look up the rare and unique talents around the labor market to fill up a position in a company. The process is simple: they are notified about a job that needs to be filled in some business, they research the particularities of the demanding company, and they go out to seek that exceptional talent who has the right profile for the position. In recent years, they have acquired relevance because they have become the builder of companies’ teams.

A headhunter could work independently for a Company’s HR department or a Recruitment Company.

Generally, headhunters develop a solid sensibility to detect if a talent will be good for a company or vice versa. Their labor goes far from reading resumes and doing interviews. Headhunters use their business knowledge to identify the company’s match with the candidates’ hard and soft abilities. Finding the perfect match means understanding the corporate culture and the right skills mix needed for the relationship to succeed. 

On the other hand, their social skills allow them to understand the candidate’s emotional situation. Furthermore, when a candidate it’s perfect for a position but has doubts about the new offer or wants to know more about the company, it’s part of their job to go along with the candidate until they are ready for the onboarding.

They need to be armed with specific skills that make their job easier and more effective in performing these tremendous tasks. Some essential characteristics of a headhunter are:

  • Leadership
  • Being a good listener
  • Having tremendous confidence in themselves
  • Being persistent
  • Initiative
  • Being ambitious
  • Having developed communication skills
  • Being a good time manager
  • A high frustration tolerance
  • Being empathetic
  • Networking
  • Being a great observer

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