Reasons When You Need to Turn to IT Headhunters

When it comes to hiring top-tier experts or professionals with specific skill sets and experience, many companies turn to IT headhunters, and that’s for a reason. Learn here how an IT headhunter can help your business find the right specialist shortly and how to choose a reliable headhunter to work with.

So, Who Is an IT Head Hunter?

According to the Washington Post article, around 4.3 million workers dropped their jobs within August 2021, while 1 out of 4 employees is open to switching to a new employer post-pandemic, as shown by Prudential Financial’s Pulse of the American Worker survey. Such a tendency sends an alarm to employers and recruiters who strive to hire and retain the best specialists to their companies. 

In contrast to general recruiters, headhunters usually deal with filling in the most significant vacancies in the company – editorial and top management posts, senior developers, etc. An experienced headhunter knows how to win over the picky seniors and find the right candidates for the business shortly. Having a headhunter in-house is a rare case, however, most businesses prefer to have a seasoned headhunter at their service per request. 

An IT headhunter is a specialist who sources and assesses high-professional specialists for a client. These experts search for valuable IT talents and persuade them to accept an attractive offer, even if it means switching to a new workplace. An IT headhunter is a valuable asset of any recruitment agency or a large company, as they are ‘sharks’ in their sphere with a rare talent of persuasion and a rich talent network on hand. 

The latest Statista report states that the 2017-2020 period showed a global tendency to skill shortage in various IT fields, from cyber security to project management. It means the enlarging gap in the IT talent market, where the number of Junior specialists rises while the number of top specialists gradually declines. Thus, if the company requires a top manager or is interested in a specific IT expert who currently works for a rival company, the software engineer headhunter is a person that can bring the contract with them on a silver plate.

Since the number of talent in the labor market is depleting, headhunters are becoming an indispensable tool for hiring them. A headhunter can work in two ways: the client can provide the name of a specific candidate who needs to be lured away or specify the requirements for a new employee that the headhunter has to find. Both scenarios require a subtle art of persuasion and applying ingenious strategies from the headhunter to win the specialist over.

5 Reasons Why IT Headhunters Are Valuable Asset for the Company

Here are some strong reasons to hire IT head hunter and get:

• Help build a strong team.  Now, the IT industry struggles with fierce competition for specialists. Gathering an experienced development team is getting more time-consuming and tackling, as more companies are ready to satisfy any expert’s desire to win them over. Headhunter specializes in studying and researching current trends and finding a point that can become a final tick to make an expert sign the contract with your company.

• Lure the best candidate for the top position.  A headhunter rarely works with a large pool of applicants: in most cases, they already have the matching candidate in mind. A headhunter is a specialist who can deliver a hard-to-decline counter-offer for those workers who seem to be fully satisfied with their position in a rival company.

• Get flexible temporary cooperation.  No need to keep a full-time headhunter in-house, especially when the company rarely requires new staff members. Turn to the IT headhunter for advice or find a recruitment partner to close the urgent vacancy when the need comes. Such cooperation essentially saves time and is beneficial in the long run.

• Create a profile for a future specialist.  If the company does not have the desired specialist they would like to hire, the headhunter can build a profile of the ideal specialist and find candidates from their list. Headhunter learns the company’s values and needs in-depth and compares them to a potential candidate’s profile to find the perfect match and ensure the most balanced cooperation between them.

• Save time searching for a top specialist. Growing the specialists within the organization is a slow, laborious, and expensive process, not every company can allow. In most cases, the firm needs experienced workers with technical skills and leaders right now. A headhunter can quickly find a suitable high-rank specialist and convince them to work for the client’s company. 

What Type of IT HeadHunter Services Suit Your Business Best?

In some cases, in-house HR recruitment forces are sufficient for the business, but attracting external recruitment services helps quickly resolve tough cases, such as hiring seasoned senior IT specialists, rare experts, or top managers. 

By recruitment process outsourcing definition, an IT headhunter can be beneficial both in terms of budget and time economy. Such specialists hold the expertise and can quickly provide the solution, allowing the company to stay concentrated on the business goals. 

When selecting an IT headhunter to work with, one must pick between two distinct types of specialists that provide headhunting services:

• Traditional staffing/recruitment agency

In general, a recruitment agency provides both full-time and temporary workers. Thus, the company can obtain a specialist on more flexible terms from temp-to-hire to direct-hire that imply permanent positions.

Besides, partnering with a recruitment agency usually goes on a contingency basis: the company can be sure that they have a 100% guarantee of vacancy closure without any financial risk, paying the fee only for successfully hired candidates.

• A temporary employment agency (temp agency)

A temp agency usually provides experts for short-term projects or other temporary services, such as consultation, quality checks, or seasonal work. Temp agencies can come to a rescue when a company urgently needs entry-level specialists to deal with the seasonal overload. 

How to Hire a Headhunter for the Company?

It’s worth noting that an IT headhunter’s expertise, as of any other specialist, depends on their experience, successful cases, quality of network connections, and more. To be completely sure that the headhunter you hire is worth every penny, it’s better to check them twice or thrice. Here are some points that can help to detect the best headhunter services to go with:

1. Find a specialist with proven experience. It’s worth checking the background of the potential headhunter, their success log, and reputation. The headhunter services with impeccable reputations and success stories are more likely to bring the best candidates to the company. Besides, you can check if the service provider works in similar fields to your business needs. 
2. Don’t neglect using your network. What can be more trustworthy than a referral from a partner or colleague? Use your connections to find people who have experience hiring a headhunter. It can help you reach the candidate with expertise in a niche market and get a verified review on their job.
3. Just google it. Searching online and checking reviews will not take a lot of time but will help to filter out unqualified variants. After you seek out the staffing agencies and professionals that seem trustworthy, you can get in touch with them to check their accountability or reach their clients to get an honest review.
4. Join membership. Not all online resources are free. Some require to pay a fee for access to the information and contacts. Don’t neglect this step if you want a wider choice. 
5. Narrow down to your specialty. Headhunters can have access to a wide pool of talents, but it’s all worthless if they are not in the field of the expertise the company needs. That is why it’s crucial to focus on experts that have hefty experience in providing seasoned specialists within the required job field.

To sum up, it’s worth sparing some extra time on research before partnering with a recruitment agency or outsourcing headhunter services. It can help save time, effort and result in a fruitful outcome.

How to Choose a Headhunter and Evaluate Potential Providers

One of the most critical questions is finding an appropriate headhunter to do the work at the highest level. Before one starts writing “tech headhunter IT” in the search engine, it is necessary to understand how to choose one of the thousands of experts. Several tips can help to find the right headhunter.

Analyze your goals

Firstly, you need to understand who you want to find. If your project is based on cybersecurity, it is logical to look for a headhunter that works in this field. In another case, you need to look after another kind of headhunter who is experienced in finding candidates in another field. 

Check the experience

It is important to find out if the candidate has appropriate experience in a particular field. For example, if you are looking for an IT headhunter, then you need to know if they have already worked with searching developers. Otherwise, with no needed experience headhunter’s work will bring no desired result.

Communicative skills

It is one of the most essential factors of successful work. It is necessary to evaluate the headhunter’s manner of speech, openness to communication, and ability to present the information correctly. This is necessary so that the candidate with whom the headhunter communicates will have a positive perception of your company.

Additional skills

It would also be a good idea to check one’s extra skills – knowing foreign languages or having experience working in development. It lets one not only find developers from other countries but also a brighter understanding of who they need to find. 

Guarantee of the work

Any good headhunter will give you some guarantees of their work. No one is immune to failure in the task, especially when it is needed to find a developer for a very narrow field. That is why giving some guarantees that the money was not paid for nothing. For example, if a headhunter worked hard and talked to lots of experts but did not find you the right one, they will give you your money back.

Payment

The hourly rate is as important as any other factor. Depending on the cost of payment you can save some funds that can be used later for another purpose. One also needs to remember that the high hourly rate is not always a guarantee of providing them with a good result. It is often possible to find a talented headhunter for an affordable price.

Contact agencies

In case you have no time to do it yourself, you can always contact some agencies that will provide you with one of IT executive headhunters. It is one of the best recruitment solutions. They will count on your needs and wishes and find you the person who will do the job at the highest level.

Talk about the pros and cons

Every person has strong and weak sides, and even the best IT headhunters are no exception. It is strongly important to talk with your chosen candidate about what they can and can not do. It may be the level of English, communicating on specific topics and so on. For example, it will not be the right decision to work with a headhunter IT-security, who can not talk on the topic from this field.

Discuss working conditions

As a client, you may have the list of conditions of collaborative work. And before the work begins, it is necessary to talk with a headhunter about these terms. For instance, one should talk about deadlines or the possibility to take back money in case the developer works only a few months and then gets fired.

Analyze databases

Every headhunter or provider has a database that consists of experts of a different type. Some of them are focused on particular developers, services, or countries. You need to talk about it in time in case you want or do not want them to find developers overseas.

Steps of Hiring a Candidate through a Recruitment Agency

To make a successful partnership with a recruitment agency, it’s crucial to find a partner that can meet your company’s expectations. Here are some steps that any reliable agency will go through to hire a perfect candidate for the company:

Only readiness to cooperate with a recruitment agency can accelerate the hiring process and ensure hunting the top specialists. That is the reason why the more extensive information regarding the company, its projects, and prospects is provided, the higher the chances to attract the experts for long cooperation. 

A good recruitment agency will ask businesses to provide more details regarding their corporate culture, vision, and job descriptions to estimate possible hiring challenges within the talent pool and build a successful hiring strategy. Besides, the recruitment agency can also cover additional tasks, such as accounting, legal compliance, and talent relocation if needed. 

Where to Find a Headhunter, and How Much Does It Cost? 

One of the vital questions for any business that plans to partner with an IT headhunter is how much does it cost to hire a headhunter. An average cost for IT headhunter services depends on the type of cooperation (contingency or retained), the negotiated fee of the candidate’s salary, and the seniority level the company needs.

If talking about a contingency basis, the IT headhunter’s fee may be around 20-30% of the annual salary of the hired employee, meaning sums may vary a lot. IT headhunters that work on a retained basis earn the following annually in different countries:

• The US – $4,415
• The UK – $3,391
• Germany – $5,197
• The Netherlands – $5,876
• Ukraine – 3,100*

*Ukrainian salaries are provided based on Mobilunity’s Recruitment Team research on the local job markets. All salaries are net and do not include the service fee (in the case of hiring on a dedicated team model). The salaries are provided for comparison purposes and could not be entirely accurate. Contact us to know the exact cost of hiring a developer corresponding to the required parameters.

As you can see, if you hire a headhunter in Ukraine, you can save costs and get access to a wide IT talent pool of 200,000+ specialists, as noted on TechUkraine. Thus, hiring dedicated IT headhunters in Ukraine may be a beneficial and cost-effective option for your business as well.

FAQ on IT Headhunters

Written by:

Anastasia Stefanuk

Market Researcher

Disclaimer: All salaries and prices mentioned within the article are approximate NET numbers based on the research done by our in-house Recruitment Team. Please use these numbers as a guide for comparison purposes only and feel free to use the contact form to inquire on the specific cost of the talent according to your vacancy requirements and chosen model of engagement.