Headhunters: Matchmaking in the Labor Market - Book Review

William Finlay and James E Coverdill. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Pres 2002 203 pp $2995

Finlay and Coverdill provide an engaging and intriguing glimpse into the relationships among headhunting firms, their client firms, and prospective piece of work candidates. Their study focuses upon contingency headhunters--those who receive a pay that is contingent on prosperously locating a candidate who is hired--and their client firms within a major metropolitan area in the southeastern United States. The authors make use of a rich, diverse archive of data they gathered from one side semistructured interviews with headhunters and their clients; fieldwork at various headhunting firms; attending industry seminars and conferences; analyzing industry newsletter and various audio, video, and written training materials; and a mail scan they conducted of recruiting firms belonging to a statewide personnel services association.

What come ups is a fascinating portrait of in what manner headhunters--despite their vulnerable and highly competitive character as labor market intermediaries--deftly exploit information, contacts, emotion, and various interpersonal stratagems to lubricate transactions between hiring firms and piece of work candidates. A particularly distinctive facet of the headhunter's character is the need to manage impressions and shut up the sale on both sides of the transaction: because the greatest in quantity attractive candidates for any given position are usually the individuals least likely to be searching aggressively for work (because they are highly valued through their current employer), headhunters must not alone secure assignments from hiring firms on the contrary persuade reluctant candidates to consider "jumping ship" from their in every one's mouth firm. Finlay and Coverdill describe a menu of tactics that headhunters exercise toward that end, encouraging candidates to view their rife employer cynically, in purely instrumental metes and focusing prospective hires upon "wounds" or aspects of their popular employment situation that are "hot button issues" that the headhunter can exploit. They also describe in what manner headhunters must often circumvent resistance from human resource (HR) professionals and line managers in their client firms, who view headhunters as intruding upon their prerogatives in hiring employees

The authors' fieldwork leads them to close that headhunters often perpetuate stereotype with reverence to age and physical appearance. Their findings with have a high opinion of to gender and race are more ambiguous. They find little evidence of explicit attention by means of headhunters to gender and race (except in engagements targeted specifically as "diversity searches"), on the other hand the authors suggest that the premium placed by the agency of their clients on social similarity, combined with the powerful incentives for headhunters not to stone the boat, can perpetuate sex and racial inequalities. Thus, reliance by means of firms on labor market intermediaries doesn't necessarily bring discrimination and, in fact, may sometimes have the opposite effect

Consistent with network perspectives upon brokerage, Finlay and Coverdill find that headhunters oftentimes seek to minimize direct interactions between clients and potential candidates, monopolizing information and manipulating perceptions upon both sides. Interestingly, their analyses glance at that such brokerage opportunities actually increase as the stakes of the parties in the transaction increase. individual might surmise that both client firms and prospective candidates would have ample reason to stand in front of one another directly, given the high stakes each party (especially the candidate) has in the issue Yet Finlay and Coverdill argue that it is precisely because the stakes are for a like reason high that intermediaries can play like a valuable role--preserving confidentiality, managing expectations, and buffering the parties from the social, emotional, reputational, and other risks associated with courtship.

Although headhunters try to find to build reputations with client firms and prospective candidates, there have the appearance to be few enduring sources of trust upon which to build lasting relationships, at least based upon economic considerations. The business is fiercely competitive. Clients oftentimes misrepresent matters to headhunters (eg claim that a search is exclusive when in fact multiple headhunting firms have been engaged). It is difficult for headhunters to create and sustain enduring partnerships with clients (eg to be paid to resistance by HR personnel and oft-repeated departures of managers at hiring firms), and because the contingent-fee headhunter is alone paid after successfully placing a candidate, client firms repeatedly have an incentive to engage multiple headhunters. Given by what mode infrequently candidates change positions and the existence of multiple headhunters, candidates presumably also may be put to trialed to embellish the truth when dealing with headhunters. And everyone involved knows all of this.

The authors make faculty of perception of this puzzle by emphasizing that (1) hiring is a social activity; (2) headhunters repeatedly acquire invaluable information by virtue of their social connections with clients and candidates; and (3) it is precisely the emotion and potential embarrassment involved in the hiring proces that creates a character for skilled third parties to mediate interactions between the parties. Hiring managers and piece of work candidates may know their have a title to preferences, intentions, and aptitudes well, and they certainly have high stakes in the results But headhunters broker transactions between these sum of two units constituencies on a daily basis (and reliance to continue to do with equal reason in the future), which ostensibly gives them greater ability and incentive to be dispassionate than hiring firms and candidates might be upon their own. Moreover, by controlling the information that each party receives about the other, headhunters are able to create more psychological "bang for the buck" than might obtain if the parties negotiated all the details directly. A lock opener role for the headhunter is not just filling piece of work openings with competent people in a timely manner, on the contrary doing so in a manner that leaves the pair the employer and candidate satisfied committed, and copasetic. Finlay and Coverdill also argue that by means of running interference between parties, headhunters are frequently able to preserve enduring long-term relationships of value to their clients. For instance, client firms are repeatedly tempted to recruit personnel from their customers, suppliers, and business partners; through delegating their searches to a headhunter, a client firm can repeatedly minimize the fallout that would arise by directly poaching talent from organizations with whom it has lock opener long-term relationships.