What’s The Secret To Getting Headhunters To Call Me?

There’s a small chance the headhunter you just met might place you. But a headhunter who has known you for several years—now, that’s another story altogether.

Question: What’s the secret to getting on a good headhunter’s list? How can I get headhunters to call me?

Nick Corcodilos: I get this question so often that I wrote a chapter about it in my PDF book, “How To Work With Headhunters … and how to make headhunters work for you.” There’s no secret. You just have to understand the headhunter’s business in order to get his or her attention.

This advice is from page 54. (All I’d add is, make sure the headhunter you’re investing time in is worth it. Not all are.)

Read on:

Headhunters return again and again to people who help them complete their assignments. For example, a year later a headhunter might call a candidate she placed with a client company. She might call again on a prospect she did not place—but who nonetheless shared sources of other candidates or introduced the headhunter to the right person for the job. Or the headhunter might call someone who in the past has shared useful insights about the industry in which the headhunter operates. Good headhunters crave insider information and good introductions, and they love having good sounding boards. That’s who they call.

The best thing you can do when you meet a headhunter is to establish a sound relationship, regardless of how your first interaction turns out. Face it—the headhunter is not likely to place you. So make sure you get something else from the encounter: a valuable new contact. Or better yet, a new friend. In the long run, that’s more likely to pay off than a single job interview will today.

There’s a small chance the headhunter you just met might place you. But a headhunter who has known you for several years—now, that’s another story altogether.

A fan of my Ask The Headhunter website started an e-mail correspondence with me early on. We traded insights and I got to know her as a reliable source of industry information. She was so helpful that I was glad to share advice when she faced a crisis at work. (We had never met in person.)

Four years later, when I got a relevant assignment from a new client, I called her immediately, flew her in from out of state, and met her for the first time. She was the only candidate I recommended to my client. I knew her so well that the deal was a slam dunk. She is the only person I met through my Ask The Headhunter website that I ever placed, and the experience was a total surprise to me.

The odds of your getting placed grow with time and with the quality of your relationship. That’s why it pays to know what to do when a headhunter calls. Help the headhunter complete her assignment and you will make it onto her list. Then be patient and use all the other means available to you to find a job. Meanwhile, the headhunter may come back around to you. That may seem like small recompense for the help you gave, but like a chance at the lottery, it’s worth having.