The Death of the Headhunter

The truth is, the recruitment market has changed considerably in a number of ways over the past 5 years, specifically across the Middle East. Unfortunately for candidates and recruiters alike, the changes that have taken place have posed new and significant challenges for both parties in finding and being exposed to new roles as well as bridging the gap between client and candidate.

In recent years, the Middle East market, particularly within the multinationals, has adopted a much more westernised way of recruiting. More and more companies have gone through the process of bringing the entire recruitment function "in house" and hiring large, robust talent acquisition teams. This is happening for a number of perfectly valid reasons and in my own humble opinion, is certainly the right way forward for these organisations.

• Firstly, internal TA (Talent Acquisition) teams save the company a considerable sum of money when recruitment is done on any scale at all. If you consider the average recruitment fee of between 15-20% would equate to around AED 75K for a mid management role of circa AED 35,000 per month. If you are recruiting only 4 of these roles a year you are looking at the same cost of hiring a pretty strong TA specialist who could clearly recruit at much higher numbers than this and save the company a lot of cash!
• Secondly, internal TA teams are excellent advocates of any business and will be in a much better position to "sell" the company they are working for from a cultural perspective. After all, these are the guys that are living and breathing the company on a day to day basis and can certainly position the business in its best light to a potential candidate.
• Finally, by bringing the recruitment function in house, companies also allow themselves to build up huge talent pools of future candidates for potential positions within the business. This again has a hugely positive impact on cost saving (rather than using talent mapping consultancies) as well as from a time saving perspective.

All of the reasons above have encouraged many companies across the region to adopt this style of recruitment. However, it might have several key benefits to the companies themselves, but what about candidates and how this impacts them?

Well, unfortunately it is not always in a positive way, at least when it comes to finding a job.

Internal TA teams are the future there is little doubt about that. This however also means that the contingency based recruitment projects that were once so often outsourced to agencies, will become less and less frequent until eventually they stop entirely. So is this the end of an era and the death of the headhunter, well the most likely answer to this question is yes, most probably.

Now I know this sounds somewhat self destructive (being the MD of a recruitment firm), however the facts speak for themselves and the facts say that soon enough, contingency based recruitment will be a thing of the past.

Of course there will still be a limited number of highly confidential, C-Level and "hard to fill" type roles that will be outsourced to 3rd parties, however the vast majority of multinational companies across the region, particularly across the core corporate functions (Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR, Admin, IT etc) soon enough will be pretty much self sufficient.

So what does this mean to candidates when they are looking for a job?

Well, we have already established that at some point most of the larger companies across the region will support themselves when it comes to recruitment and this in turn means the once fruitful relationships candidates had with headhunters and recruitment consultants will become less and less rewarding for both parties. What this essentially means now is that the key focus for candidates should no longer be on spending time leveraging relationships with recruitment companies but making themselves highly visible and an attractive proposition to the clients directly, more specifically the TA consultants within those clients.

For that reason, it is now more important than ever for candidates to go about their job search strategically, in order to optimise their chances of landing a new position. Recruitment is now a digital world and for candidates to stand any chance of being found in this extremely competitive market, they must get on board with this way of thinking.

So my advice for anyone who is even toying with the idea of starting the search for a new role is to make yourself an extremely strong "passive" job seeker.

Spend some time creating an exceptionally strong digital profile in order to position yourself as an expert in your field and start driving the right traffic to your door. You can do this primarily by ensuring your LinkedIn profile is of an excellent quality and filled with rich content including search words and buzz words that are typically associated with your profile and sector. Including an embedded CV and ensuring your privacy settings are correct all help in bringing your profile up the rankings. This in turn will act as an SEO (search engine optimisation) project and should have an immediate and positive impact.

NTS Group is the leading Executive Search, HR Consulting & Career Transition firm across the EMEA and APAC markets, with more than 25 years of regional experience and a reputation for exceptional service and outstanding results for our clients and candidates alike.

With strategic offices located in Dubai, London and Singapore, we provide a range of services for both our clients and candidate that are delivered by industry experts, including Contingency & Executive Search Campaigns, Outplacement & Redundancy Support, RPO Projects, Talent Mapping, Women in Leadership & Leadership Development as well as our award winning Executive Career Transitioning Programs.

We offer a range of tailored and proactive services directly to our candidates to help them overcome the challenges I have mentioned above. Please take a look at our website Career Transitioning | NTS Group | Recruitment ( ntsrecruitment.com ) for more information on the services we offer. You can also reach out to me directly at [email protected] with any questions or comments you have about the challenges faced in today's market.

In a time where candidates face more challenges than ever finding jobs, NTS Group is here to help in whatever way we can.

Stay safe and well.

Peter Norwell | Managing Director NTS Group