When Does It Make Sense To Hire A Headhunter?
Not every hire needs a headhunter. If you’re filling an entry-level role and you’ve got a stack of applications, you can probably handle that on your own. But there are situations where going it alone ends up costing more than getting help. We see it all the time. Niche Roles Some jobs don’t get filled from a job board. Senior sales positions, attorneys, C-suite executives. The best people for these roles are already employed. They’re not browsing job postings on their lunch break. Finding them takes a different approach. You have to know where to look and how to start a conversation that gets their attention. That’s what our team spends most of the day doing. Stuck Searches We get a lot of calls from companies that have had a role open for two or three months with nothing to show for it. The posting is up, they’ve done some interviews, but nothing clicked. At that point, something in the process is off. Maybe the job post isn’t reaching the right people. Maybe the comp is wrong. Maybe the screening needs to be tighter. Whatever the reason, every week that seat stays empty is costing you money. We’ve taken searches that were stalled for months and closed them in a few weeks. No Time This is probably the most common reason people call us. Running a business and running the hiring process at the same time is a lot to handle. Every resume you review, every phone screen you schedule, every reference call you make is time away from the actual business. If your plate is already full, hand the search off. You’ll get better candidates and your business won’t suffer while you’re distracted. High-stakes Hires There’s a difference between hiring someone for a support role and hiring the salesperson who’s going to carry your revenue next quarter. When a role has a direct line to money, the cost of getting it wrong goes up fast. We wrote about what bad hires actually cost, and the number is always worse than people expect. When the stakes are high, having someone screen candidates before they ever get to your desk is worth the investment. Quiet Searches Sometimes you need to replace someone and they don’t know it yet. Or you’re expanding into a new market and you’d prefer your competitors not find out by seeing your job posting on LinkedIn. We handle confidential searches regularly. Our team knows how to run a search without making it public. Reaching Passive Candidates This is really the core of what a headhunter does. Job postings reach people who are looking. Headhunting reaches people who aren’t looking but would consider the right opportunity. In our experience, those tend to be the strongest candidates. They’re employed, performing well, and selective about where they go next. They’re not going to come to you. Someone has to go to them. How it Works The process is straightforward. You tell us what you need. The role, the skills, the personality, the budget. We go find the people who match. We talk to them, screen them, and bring you the ones worth meeting. You do the final interviews and make the call. That’s how we’ve always done it at SalesBountyHunter. If any of this sounds familiar, we’d love to have a conversation. And if you’re reading this as someone looking for work rather than someone hiring, check out our Find Your Dream Job page.
What To Look For When Hiring A Salesperson
We talk to business owners every week who are frustrated with their sales hires. They posted the job, picked the person with the most experience, and it didn’t work out. Now they’re starting over. After years of placing sales professionals, we’ve learned that the things most people look for in a salesperson are not the things that actually matter. Ignore Resumes This sounds strange coming from a recruiting firm. But a resume tells you where someone worked and for how long. It does not tell you if they can sell. Some of the best reps we’ve placed had resumes that wouldn’t impress anyone. Some of the worst had polished ones with big company names all over them. What we do instead is ask candidates to walk us through a deal they closed. Start to finish. How they got the lead, what they said, where it stalled, how they got it across the finish line. If they can’t tell that story clearly, that’s a red flag. Ask for Numbers A good salesperson knows their numbers. Making quota, close rate, average deal size. They know because they live by them. When we ask a candidate what they closed last quarter, we’re not just checking the number. We’re checking if they know it without looking it up. If someone hesitates, they probably weren’t tracking it. And if they weren’t tracking it, they probably weren’t hitting it. For junior candidates who don’t have a sales track record yet, we look for competition. Former athletes, restaurant workers, anyone who’s had to perform under pressure and came back for more. Watch for Coachability This is one of the biggest things we screen for. You can teach someone your product, your process, your CRM. You cannot teach someone to take feedback well. We ask candidates about a time their manager corrected them. The answer itself matters less than how they talk about it. If they get defensive in the interview, they’ll get defensive on your sales floor. Test for Grit Sales is a grind. The person you hire needs to be comfortable hearing no all day and still making the next call. We’ve found that the best way to test this is to ask about the hardest stretch they’ve had in their career. What happened? How long did it last? What did they do? The good ones get specific. The ones who give you a vague answer about staying positive are usually the ones who quit when it got difficult. Don’t Skip Culture We’ve seen great closers get hired and then make the entire office miserable. They hit their numbers, but nobody wants to work with them. That creates a different kind of problem. Before you bring someone on, think about your team. How do they communicate? What’s the energy like? Will this person add to it or disrupt it? Final Thoughts Hiring takes time. Doing it well takes even more time. If you’re running a business and trying to recruit at the same time, one of those things is going to suffer. That’s what we do at SalesBountyHunter. We find the right people so you can focus on running your company. If you’re looking to fill a sales role, reach out to us. We’d be happy to talk through what you need.