What is a Headhunter? And What’s the Difference Between a Headhunter, a Recruiter and a Sourcer?
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Before we even discuss how to find and work with a headhunter, an understanding needs to be reached about who exactly this person is and what role he or she plays in the greater landscape of the employment world. Some distinguishment also needs to be made between a headhunter and a recruiter, two roles that are oftentimes mistaken as the same.



So, what is a headhunter and what do they do? Well, the common definition is that a headhunter is an individual who operates as an independent contractor and who is hired by a company to find a suitable candidate to fill a particular position within that company. As opposed to other members of the employment world, a headhunter takes an active role in their search for candidates. What that means is that instead of waiting for job seekers and other potential candidates to approach them, headhunters use networking resources like LinkedIn and job fairs to go out and contact potential candidates for the positions they are representing.



Traditionally, a headhunter is only involved in the initial phase of the hiring process. Meaning that once a headhunter finds a candidate or, more likely, candidates, who may be suitable for their client’s open position, a headhunter will only be involved with introducing the candidate to the hiring company and perhaps scheduling a first interview. All the hiring steps that follow, such as salary negotiations, second interviews, etc., will not include the headhunter.



Understanding how a headhunter works with their client, i.e. the hiring company they are representing, is incredibly important since it will help you as a job seeker better manage your expectations of what the headhunter can and will be willing to do for you in your search for a new opportunity. Furthermore, it will help you understand where the headhunter’s motivation lies in relation to you getting a new job, which is something that is also extremely important.



So, if we now know a little more about who headhunters are and what they do, who then are recruiters? And how do they function in the employment world in comparison?



Well, the common distinction between headhunters and recruiters is that, whereas headhunters act as independent contractors for the company that is looking to hire, recruiters are usually part of the company itself – more specifically, they are usually part of the company’s human resources team.



This distinction is pretty important. After all, if you have one person working on commission, i.e. a headhunter, and another person working on direct salary from the company itself, i.e. the recruiter, this makes an enormous difference in how the individuals function in their respective roles, and makes a difference too in their order of priorities and in the kind of pressure they face.



There are recruiters out there who are active in finding candidates for their company; but, generally, if a recruiter is part of the company’s staff, they are more passive in searching for candidates than headhunters.



However, once a recruiter does a find a candidate (or candidates) who they would like to interview with their company, the recruiter is far more involved in the interviewing and hiring process than their headhunter counterparts. They typically will be involved in some shape or form from the first interview all the way to the candidate’s first day on the job, if the candidate is fortunate enough to be hired on.



Okay, so now that you understand who recruiters and headhunters are and how they function in the hiring world, who in the world are sourcers then? Well, sourcers are people solely tasked by companies to locate or “source” particular individuals. As a group, sourcers are much more marginal in the recruiting and headhunting world and, typically, the individuals they are tasked to find are only very in-demand, high-income executives.