According to SHRM, 86% of recruiters and 62% of employers have said that the labor market is entirely candidate driven. Finding the right talent is challenging cost-wise and time-wise too. Other than recruitment, internal HR teams also need to focus on HR and labor administration, employer branding, retention, benefits and compensation, compliance, and policies. In this context, the services of executive search and recruitment agencies are in high demand. They can take away the administrative burden, time, and effort involved in finding the right candidates for the job. With recruitment and executive searches streamlined, internal HR teams can allocate more time to other HR-related tasks.
Executive search is a specialized form of recruitment that is typically used to fill high-level executive positions. Executive search agencies, also known as headhunting firms are third-party companies, supporting their clients in finding the best talents for their openings. They employ senior experts, consultants, and headhunters to find these candidates. Their knowledge exceeds headhunting, they are also well-aware of the current industry directions, leadership and HR trends and they can help with succession or executive career decisions too.
Recruitment is a more general term that refers to the process of finding and hiring new employees. Recruitment agencies support their clients’ long-term hiring goals and fill their short-term vacancies. Other than sourcing and recruitment expertise, they can also support the decision making during the selection process.
| Executive Search | Recruitment | |
| Candidates | • Seniors • Executives • Highly specialized experts • Top-level talents • C-level leaders • Managers |
• Entry-level positions • Intermediate-level positions • Skilled workers • Professionals with specific expertise • Non-executive positions |
| Openness | Mostly passive job seekers | Active and passive job seekers |
| Consultants | Senior consultants with many years of experience and industry-specific knowledge | Proactive consultants with knowledge of cutting-edge recruitment techniques and platforms. |
| Consultant-client relation | High level of commitment with exclusivity | Exclusivity is not a must, multiple agencies can work on the same project |
| Discretion | Complete discretion, including client's name, industry, and location | Some discretion, where details are given at the 1st or 2nd interview |
| Focus | Quality | Time |
| Methods | Direct contacts, proactive methods, networking, market research, digital and analog techniques | Mostly reactive techniques, including advertising, sourcing, databases, job fairs, etc. |
| Time until the first candidates | 3-4 weeks | 1-2 weeks |
| Prices | Higher costs, retained searches | Lower costs, contingent searches |
| Guarantee | Long-term guarantee | Short-term guarantee |
Let’s dive into the details!
Executive search companies are often looking for the following employees or contractors:
Unlike executive search, recruitment is generally used to fill a variety of positions at different levels within an organization. Recruitment agencies may specialize in certain industries or job types, but they do not typically focus on executive-level hires.
Here are some of the positions white-collar recruitment agencies like JobGroup can help you fill:
C-level experts are usually not active job seekers and they build their careers through networking and rarely use job portals to apply to jobs directly. As an effect, the typical candidates approached by headhunters are usually passive job seekers, so there is a strong emphasis on convincing them and highlighting the benefits of the new job, as well as motivating them.
Recruitment agencies looking for candidates with entry-level to intermediate-level experiences usually use a pool of active and passive job seekers. Motivation and persuasion are less emphasized but still an important part of their daily work in today’s candidate-driven labor market.
Executive search firms have a team of headhunters who specialize in identifying and recruiting high-level executives for their clients. They are highly specialized senior consultants, with many years of recruitment experience behind them. They learn from the best headhunters in their area and have broad industry-specific market knowledge. Their expertise exceeds recruitment and taps into headhunting and analog methods. They understand the market they operate in, the business, and the strategy. They can align executive search with long-term business goals. Their human-centric mindset can help to recognize the most important leadership styles and competencies of the prospecting executives.
The consultants are typically experts in the fields of HR, recruitment, and hiring, and are responsible for working with clients to identify their recruitment needs and develop a suitable recruitment process. It is also their responsibility to fill the openings quickly to minimize business risk and loss of profit. They use many different, cutting-edge recruitment techniques and platforms.
Executive search agencies operate with a high level of commitment between the client and the agency. Their mutual trust creates an environment where the headhunter can act like a member of the client's HR team and offer their broad experience and expertise. This is why their contract usually includes exclusivity.
When working with recruitment agencies, exclusivity is not always part of the contract between the agency and the client. While trust between the actors is still important, the client company often works with multiple agencies. As a result, the agencies also often work with many companies and openings on success fee bases.
C-level openings are often tightly connected to business plans and competition. This is why discretion is one of the up-most important factors in executive search. Almost all headhunting projects are discrete, with complete secrecy of the client, which often includes their sector and place of operation.
While recruitment agencies’ searches can also be discrete, they often introduce the client at the first or second contact with the potential candidates.
Top executive search agencies focus on the highest level of quality and the best fitting of the company and the candidate. This includes the company's specific needs, culture, and future business goals and also the candidate's experience, work style, and career goals.
Companies working with recruitment agencies are looking for quick and precise solutions. While the quality of the search is still important, recruiters have to balance time too.
Executive search agencies use a broad range of methods to identify potential candidates, including many proactive techniques to reach passive candidates. These typically involve extensive research and networking, direct search and contact, as well as interviews and assessments of potential candidates. It's their responsibility to motivate and persuade potential candidates. They also work closely with their clients to understand their needs and develop a tailored recruitment strategy to ensure they find the best candidate for the position.
Recruitment agencies’ method typically involves advertising job openings, sourcing in databases to find candidates, attending job fairs, reviewing resumes, pre-screening, and conducting interviews to find the best candidate for the job. These are usually reactive methods to find the best-fitting candidates, but recruiters nowadays use some proactive techniques too.
Executive search is challenging, and the headhunter has to prepare and research. As a result, the time until the first candidates can take up to 3-4 weeks.
Recruitment firms work quicker, as time is crucial for their clients, so they present candidates in 1-2 weeks.
Top executive search firms work with experienced headhunters and operate on a high level of expertise and quality, which creates higher costs. They operate with retained search business model when clients are required to an upfront partial or sum payment.
Recruitment firms often operate with success fees and at lower costs than executive search agencies. The searches operating with this kind of payment are also called contingent searches.
Hiring is always a high-risk business operation and the risk is multiple in the case of executive hiring. This is why executive search agencies operate with long-term guarantees.
Recruitment agencies also provide a guarantee, but it is shorter compared to executive search.
Executive search and recruitment serve the same purpose: finding great talent for an organization's vacancies to sustain an efficient workforce and support HR strategy. In recent years more similarities have surfaced between executive search and recruitment firms. With the emergence of new digital techniques, including social media recruitment, AI support, and new channels, recruitment and executive search agencies have started to use each other's methods to reach the best results.
Nowadays executive search and recruitment are methodologies used to fill openings at any level. They can complement each other and operate simultaneously. Recruiters can use headhunting techniques to find suitable candidates for lower-level positions, while headhunters can tap into cutting-edge digital techniques to reach executive candidates more affordably.
HR consulting agencies can offer both methodologies at the same quality and reliability. The executive consultant team of these companies offers solutions to executive openings and dilemmas. At the same time, their recruitment team can provide services at lower-level positions, including search and selection. Their real value is always their ability to tailor the recruitment process to the client's specific needs, industry, and environment. The combined expertise of headhunters and recruiters provides the best solutions. A great example of the united power of executive search and recruitment is JobGroup: their executive consultant team (Prime by JobGroup) provides C-level solutions, their recruitment team supports lower-level searches and both teams can tap into the company's 30 years of experience, cutting-edge tools, and collective expertise.
Executive search agencies and recruitment agencies both work for their clients to provide great talents for their openings but they differ on many levels, including the target candidates, the methods, the consultants, the time of the searches, and the prices. Executive search consultants are experts who fill high-level executive positions, while recruiters of recruitment agencies use a more general method used to fill a variety of positions at different levels within an organization. At the same time, their work can overlap in the digital age, where methods and approaches are more available, especially at 360-degree agencies where knowledge and expertise are shared.
