Headhunter FAQ’s & Musings

I was asked a few days ago by one of my client companies, “how does Discovery Personnel find its candidates”? At first I was worried that the company might be trying to learn my hard learned secrets and then circumvent our services (just remember even paraniod people have enemies). After thinking about the question and realizing that the individual asking me the question was not the sinister type, I realized this was a very good question so I quickly sent her an email with an outline of how we go about finding candidates. Most recruiters use many of the methods Discovery Personnel uses so I thought writing a brief summary of how we recruit candidates might be worthwhile for companies considering using the services of a third party or executive recruiting firm.

Discovery Personnel usually starts the job search process by posting new jobs (but not all) on our web site at www.discoverypersonnel.com. We also post the position with the Top Echelon Network of independent recruiters, which is the largest network of independent recruiters in the United States. Discovery Personnel is a Preferred Member of the Top Echelon Network. Then the job is listed on approximately 400 job boards nationally and some internationally.

After posting the positions on all these sites we run a database search on our own database, which has over 17,000 qualified job seeker resumes, most having experience in the Plastics Industry. The candidates have responded to previous job openings, to our advertisements in plastic industry related magazines, are found by our spider that scours the internet for candidates, or from job seeker resume services such as ExecutiveResumes, ResumeRabbit, etc. After searching our database we search the Top Echelon Network Database which contains approximately 50,000 current and qualified candidate resumes. Recently we have started working with a large and rather well known outplacement service, McKenzie Scott Partners helping to place executives that are being outplaced.

In addition to all of these methods, we contact other recruiters who specialize in placing people in the plastics industry and request their help. Last but not least, Discovery Personnel utilizes the traditional method of calling into companies that our not our client companies to find those hard to find candidates who may not be looking at all.

Needless to say, we look at a lot of resumes and talk to a lot of job seekers before sending a half dozen, or so, targeted resumes to our client company. And then the fun begins…………….