Why So Tough to Hire a Good Singapore Headhunter?

Hiring a good headhunter in Singapore is not easy, oops…correction, it should be very tough, with so many agencies whether they are a real headhunting company or a recruitment agency wanting to have a pie in the headhunting industry, the task to recruit a very good Singapore headhunter is super challenging…

From Not Easy – Tough – Challenging….. if you read between my lines, it means SUPER TOUGH!

Anyhow, when you are recruiting a headhunter, you much remember this basic theory, the 80/20 theory, that is to say that for every 10 headhunters you have interviewed, 8 of them are bull-shitting, and every 10 person that you hire as a headhunter for your firm, 8 of them will not make it.

Always remember this:

If you are hiring the headhunter from another firm and bringing the clients over, at least 50% of the clients will not come to your firm. The reason is pretty simple, they clients do not trust the company and will not entrust the job to a new company that they do not know.

So what happen when a potential candidate applying for the headhunter post in your firm and indicate that he or she can bring all his 50 clients which is worth 20 million to you and asking for S$15,000 salary per month? Sound like a good deal isn’t it? Any “logical” businessman will say it is a good move….hahahah, dream on, my friend...

After you hire this SUPER HEADHUNTER, of course for the next 3 months, it is “holiday period” where he will settle down, look for clients and work on new orders, as this is high level, will not expect any cases to be close in the next few months, which is normal for “new” headhunters who join the firm….

So after 4-6 months, you realised that this SUPER HEADHUNTER, although having a few pipelines, is still not able to close an single case, being anxious, you will have a meeting with him and will be informed by him that something interesting in coming…(Which is unlikely…)

So after the next few months, there are still no cases close at all! You have spent over $90,000 worth of salary to him and this bloody idiot is still not closing any case!  You will be seriously upset and end of the day, you will have to let him go and compensate him with some notice period, at the end of the day, you will have spend over $100,000 in salary and get ZERO in return, opportunity cost loss, money loss, time loss. This is what is really happening in the headhunting industry in Singapore.

So what really went wrong, in the next few articles, I will elaborate further WHY,HOW and WHAT had really happened and how you can avoid such nightmares…stay tuned!

Dougles Chan – The Recruitment Guru

Dougles Chan is The Recruitment Guru for the recruitment industry in Singapore, providing personal one-to-one coaching and mentoring to be successful in the recruitment agencies and headhunting industry. He can be contacted at (65) 93880851 or email at dc@dougleschan.com