Headhunters are third-party recruiters who are often retained when typical recruitment efforts have failed.
Headhunters are normally small operations that make great margins on candidate placements (in some cases more than 30% of the candidate’s annual return). Due to their higher expenses, headhunters are traditionally employed to fill senior management and executive level positions, or to find very specialized individuals.
Headhunters will both interest candidates and actively seek them out as well. To do so, they may use networks, cultivate relationships with different companies, maintain great databases, purchase company candidate lists, and cold call.