Headhunter Industry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Headhunter Industry - Essay Example "A headhunter could be described as an independent employment service that seeks out personnel for high - level executive positions; formally known as executive search company (or consultant)" (source: http://www.answers.com/topic/headhunter-2004'cat=biz-fin). The software industry emerged in the U.S. in the mid - 1970's, during the personal computer revolution. It encompasses within its domain, such services as the development, maintenance as well as publication of computer softwares. The industry has seen rapid growth since then and is developing at an amazing speed. The size of the industry could be gauged by its revenues, which totaled to an astonishing figure of $381 billion. The total world wide revenues in the year 2006 amounted to $394 billion representing a growth of 3.5% since the past one year (source: John Desmond, October 2006). With such increase in the size of the industry, the organizations today are increasingly resorting to availing the services of specialized recruitment agencies in order to tap the desired talents in the industry and hire the most desirable candidate for the jobs. However, prior to the emergence of such specialized talent hiring services, who have expertise in hiring talents from their particular field of knowledge; the recruitment process was highly traditional in its operation, consisting of employment agencies who were mostly approached by the prospective job seeker, whose application was then, to be forwarded to the respective organizations, thereby leading to a highly asymmetrical recruiting process. While yet others depended on their in - house recruiting firms, for hiring the right candidate for the job. However, the emergence of the headhunters brought about a revolutionary change in the way these organizations hired, recruited and managed their employable workforce, by introducing the concept of specialized services of niche recruiting, where the headhunters displayed exceptionally high skill levels in their knowledge about a particular occupation / job and helped the companies to hire the right candidate for the positions advertised with minimum effort, and through cost reduction and minimum amount of time by collaborating with the companies or organizations desiring to avail such specialized services (William Finlay, James Coverdill,2002) . The headhunters have a good standing in the society, whereby they are well linked to almost all the trade associations and groups in the industry. Their services are thus, mostly used for hiring talents, in terms of high managerial positions / senior management level positions, which is largely due to the fact that they hold specialized knowledge and expertise in their chosen field. Rationale The right mix of talented human resources coupled with dedication and efficient leadership leads to attainment of the predefined business goals and hence is a key to resolving any business issue. Thus the human resource management groups are increasingly turning towards the special recruitment service providers such as the headhunters, for hiring the best talent available amongst the workable population at their disposal, thereby availing the benefits such as lower recruitment costs, reduced time to close hiring requisitions, and freeing up resources to focus on strategic HR