​This statement will divide opinion but let me walk you through the argument from different perspectives.

You are a hiring manager, looking for the best person for the job. Team morale, client delivery and your own reputation are at stake when choosing who to bring into your team. Where do you start?

Your internal recruitment team. They will advertise your positions, gathering applications from people actively seeking work. They will use LinkedIn to send messages to people with relevant looking profiles.

In addition, they will speak to their preferred suppliers who may or may not have a specialist network – but more likely are set up to deliver broadly, not to specialist teams in Cloud, ServiceNow, Salesforce, Atlassian, Data & AI.

Recruiters. Modern day recruiters have built a range of tools to attract candidates, from value adding e-campaigns, personal branding to good old keeping in touch and networking.

While all the above are essential, there will be limits to how far that reach will extend, and most importantly will lead to mass saturation for top talent who are being bombarded with messages in a highly competitive market. Will your message be read? Will it stand out? Or is it just inbox clutter?

This presents a great opportunity for targeted headhunting. Target like-for-like talent at companies with the closest of synergy means that you really are covering all your bases and most likely to recruit people with relevant skills, industry experience, and cultural awareness. It also keeps your recruitment campaign on a proactive trail, vs waiting for candidates to apply or reply.

You’re a potential candidate. Working in markets such as Cloud, ServiceNow, Salesforce, Atlassian, Data & AI, you are probably busier than ever. Thinking about creating a CV is enough to give you a headache, let alone the finding the time to do it.

You’ll be receiving dozens of messages on LinkedIn and e-mail from employers and recruiters, none of whom know you or what would interest you. Then you get a call regarding an opportunity for a direct competitor, and for a role that is closely aligned to your skill set. Not everyone will appreciate this approach or be interested in a conversation, however for those that are, the relevancy of the opportunity is likely to be very strong.

87% of the placements that we made in 2023 were not openly seeking work. They were either interested but had no time to start the process of applying or hadn’t considered changing until they were headhunted.

Yes the modern day recruiter has many more tools to use when attracting talent and not every process requires every tool. That being said, if you want to give yourself the best chance of achieving your goals, a blended approach to hiring is vital … especially if it means pulling out one of the older tools from the tool box (headhunting)!

In addition, if you receive a headhunted call – remember that this is no longer the norm and very likely to be targeted. It might be worth hearing about the opportunity that is being presented to you.