So you’re looking to hire a new employee and considering using a headhunter.
Maybe you’ve made terrible hiring decisions in the past. You need this one to stick.
We get it, it’s tough. In our 30 years of helping small businesses find the right talent, we’ve seen over and over again how a candidate can look perfect on their resume. You don’t realize they’re a bad fit until after they’re on board.
And although a lot of headhunters will claim to have a process that weeds out the bad candidates, it still often ends up not working out. Which means you’ve wasted time and money.
By the end of this article, you’ll understand what a headhunter is and what problems they usually bring to the hiring process, as well as have a proven alternative you can lean on to make your next amazing hire.
What is a headhunter?
In its most basic form, headhunters are known for finding candidates for their clients, i.e. companies looking to hire new employees.
Sometimes they’re also called search firms or recruitment agencies.
Headhunters actively seek out the right candidates, even if those people aren’t actively looking for a new job. They might use tools such as LinkedIn to find candidates, or they’ll leverage their own professional networks.
You probably wouldn’t use a headhunter for an entry-level position. But for upper-level positions, many companies turn to headhunters in an effort to ensure a perfect fit.
How much does a headhunter cost?
This is where the problem with headhunters starts to come in. Headhunters are typically paid up to 30% of the candidate’s total compensation. This includes bonuses and commissions.
Headhunters typically use one of these pay structures:
Contingency: The client doesn’t pay anything until after the hire is made
Retained: The client typically pays ⅓ up front, ⅓ after candidates have been presented, and ⅓ upon hire
Contingency sounds great, right? Who wants to pay money before the headhunter finds a superstar?
However, headhunters often focus on finding a candidate as soon as possible, and that candidate probably won’t be a superstar. But it’s a double-edged sword: if they take too long, their client could back out of a deal. After all, if they haven’t paid anything yet and the headhunter hasn’t found anyone, then why not engage another headhunter and see if they can speed up the process?
According to the Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants, this practice not only pits recruitment agencies against each other, but it’s also a confidentiality issue for your company. Additionally, if multiple agencies reach out to the same candidate, your company will appear disorganized.
With the retained structure, headhunters can ideally focus more efforts on finding the ideal candidate. The idea is that the headhunter is entering a partnership with the client, and quality will be prioritized over speed.
It doesn’t always work out this way, though. The headhunter is still waiting on ⅔ of their paycheck, so they’ll still want to get clients that candidate as fast as possible.
Either way, 30% of a new hire’s salary is a massive fee. Especially if it doesn’t work out.
What if you hire a C-suite employee at a total compensation of $200,000 and they quit in a year? Not only have you wasted $200,000 on that year’s salary – plus all the man hours you dedicated to getting them up to speed – but you’ve also spent $60,000 on the headhunter who didn’t bring you a superstar.
Problems with headhunters
We’ll admit it – $60,000 on that new hire would be worth it if you knew they’d stay at your company for decades, delivering a massive return on your investment.
But the problems with headhunters go further than high fees.
Problem 1: Headhunters typically struggle to write job descriptions
A job description is a detailed outline of the responsibilities, skills, and qualifications needed for a specific role within a company. It often describes the job tasks and the hard skills of the ideal candidate, and it might also give background information about the company that’s hiring.
A good job description excites the ideal candidate. It also allows other team members to understand how a new hire will contribute to the team.
A bad job description just confuses everyone. Or it sounds like every other generic job description out there.
Most headhunters only speak to the hiring manager when building the job description. And if they don’t push back on some of the hiring manager’s unrealistic expectations, it could double the time it takes to make a hire.
Some do make an effort to gather input from other stakeholders. They might speak with other members of the team independently of each other and then synthesize what they heard, or they might narrow it down to what they heard most frequently.
However, it takes a special skill and process to gather stakeholders, facilitate debate, and help them achieve consensus for the job description. It’s a process we at The Metiss have spent 30 years perfecting.
Pro Tip: A job description is the first thing a candidate sees about your new role. It should excite them and set expectations about the position. When you don’t invest in writing a proper job description, you attract the wrong candidates – and you may not even realize it until after they’re on board. |
Problem 2: Headhunters typically don’t use assessments
Anyone can read a resume and look at a candidate’s hard skills. But quite often, new hires don’t work out because of their soft skills. This can be revealed in assessments that look at behaviors, motivators, capacities, and critical thinking skills.
Most headhunters don’t have a process in place to assess candidates beyond their hard skills. And if they do assessments, it’s typically a single-science assessment. One example of this is the Predictive Index Behavioral Assessment, which looks at behaviors such as introversion vs. extroversion.
But in our experience, humans are multidimensional, and you need to combine multiple behavioral sciences to get a full picture of a candidate. Maybe you have two extroverted candidates, but one is motivated by learning while the other is motivated by power. One could be a horrible fit for your position. The other could be your superstar.
Problem 3: Headhunters don’t feel trustworthy
Disclaimer: Not all search firms are created equally, and there are plenty who are kind, ethical, and well-meaning. We often work with great headhunters to help our clients source candidates.
But because of the headhunter payment structure, many companies feel a sense of distrust, almost like talking to a used car salesman. For example, did the headhunter find a superstar candidate, or did they just want their commission as soon as possible?
Say the headhunter has a 90-day guarantee, and you let the new hire go within that timeframe. How can you trust the headhunter will put effort into finding your new superstar when they’re not getting paid?
Or say your headhunter is negotiating the candidate’s salary. Would you trust that they’re arguing for the role’s true value, or would you worry that they’re just trying to increase their commission?
If the service was a flat fee, maybe companies would feel more trust toward headhunters.
The bottom line about problems with headhunters
Hiring the right person is tough, and using headhunters often makes it even harder.
Too often, companies end up with candidates who look good on paper but don’t fit once they’re hired. This is a waste of time and money—sometimes tens of thousands of dollars—especially when the new hire doesn’t stick.
Now that you understand why headhunters are a waste of money in 2025, it’s time to try a different approach. The Metiss Group offers a flat fee service with The Hiring Process Coach™ for $15,000. It’s designed to help you master the hiring process and avoid the issues headhunters bring to the table.
If you’re ready to stop wasting money and improve your hiring process, read our article on Recruiting vs The Hiring Process Coach™.