When firms need to fill management positions, when experienced managers want a new challenge, or when MBA graduates are looking for their first senior management role, they often turn to headhunters or, more formally, executive search consultants. This guide provides a clear overview of the executive search market, with specific guidelines on using headhunters effectively, both for individuals looking for a job and organizations looking to fill a role. Headhunters offers advice on what’s important in the selection of an executive search firm and provides invaluable networking tips on getting the best search consultants interested in you as a candidate. With the global job market more uncertain than ever, the need for quality career guidance has grown considerably. This new addition to The Economist series helps fill the void for all those looking for a new job—or a new employee.

Headhunters are third-party agents paid a fee by companies for locating job candidates perform a unique sales role. The product they sell is people, matching candidates with jobs and companies with candidates. Headhunters affect the professional lives of thousands of employees every day, and their work has a profound, though hidden, effect on the employment picture in the United States. William Finlay and James E. Coverdill draw on interviews with and observations of headhunters and on analysis of headhunting training seminars, lectures, industry newsletters, and a mail survey of headhunting firms. The result is a frank and sometimes unsettling portrait of the aims, attitudes, and tactics of practitioners. The payment of fees has shifted from candidates to employers, and recruiters now find people to fit jobs rather than the other way around. Finlay and Coverdill address what they feel is a serious lack of research about the work headhunters do and how they do it. Their book is built around three major questions: What advantages do employers derive from using third-party agents to handle candidate search and recruitment? How are headhunters able to accomplish the double sale ('selling' candidates to employers and employers to candidates)? What criteria do headhunters use for selecting candidates? In the process, Finlay and Coverdill link their findings to larger issues of institutional and historical context, revealing the economic and political reasons clients use headhunters, demonstrating how headhunters manipulate clients and candidates, and assessing the impact of headhunters' actions on hiring decisions.

Tom Christian is on the trail of revenge and a fortune in gold. As square-jawed and rugged as Clark Gable in his prime, Tom is headed deep into the jungles of the Solomon Islands to find Punjo Charlie—the ruthless criminal who killed his partner. But these jungles are thick with danger . . . as greed, temptation and sudden violence threaten to draw Tom into the heart of darkness. There’s a pile of gold. . . . There’s a beautiful blonde. . . . And there’s a bloodthirsty tribe of headhunters who have fallen under the spell of Punjo Charlie. The trap has been set. The question is: will Tom fall into it? Will he lose his way and lose his head . . . or will he get his revenge, get the gold and get the girl? The answer lies buried in the rain forest . . . and in Tom’s heart. And as he’s about to discover, there’s only one way out of the jungle: all-out war. In 1927, L. Ron Hubbard sailed across the Pacific to Guam to meet his naval officer father. It was the beginning of an adventure that would take him from the Western Hills of China to the South Pacific islands. Along the way he met Cantonese pirates, Chamorro natives, British spies, and headhunters of the South Pacific. He was one of the few Westerners to come away from an encounter with a headhunter tribe not only unscathed, but bearing gifts as well. Those experiences and knowledge proved invaluable in the writing of such stories as The Headhunters.

In 1963, the former British colony of Malaya was lobbying for the formation of a new political entity, the Federation of Malaysia, Singapore, Sabeh (North Borneo), Brunei and Sarawak. Viewing this as a threat to his dreams of expansion, President Sukarno of Indonesia began infiltrating insurgents into Borneo. In response, the British organised a force of Malay, British and Commonwealth troops to contain the rebels. What was most desperately needed, however, was a specialist group who could perform highly dangerous and arduous military tasks in the inhospitable, perilous terrain. The only men suitable for such operations were the legendary Special Air Service the SAS! Soldier H SAS: The Headhunters of Borneo is the story of one of the least-known, most extraordinary wars in British history. The SAS braved jungle and swamp infested with snakes, lizards, leeches, wild pigs and all kinds of poisonous insects to live with the primitive, headhunting natives in their longhouses by the rivers, winning their hearts and minds with medical aid and other assistance, then training them as paramilitaries who would eventually become known as the Border Scouts. While some of the SAS remained for months with the headhunters, other moved even deeper into the unexplored jungle 'the Gap' to establish ambush sites and helicopter landing zones. They also conducted daring 'Claret' raids across the border when, as the renowned 'Tiptoe Boys' who hit hard and vanished fast, they set booby traps and ambushed enemy troops moving along the many jungle tracks and rivers. They fought a bloody, nightmarish war and won it.

Headhunters take on an enormous responsibility with the acceptance of a mandate to search for competent, qualified top executives. In living up to expectations and identifying eligible, appropriate, high-performing candidates of great personal integrity, numerous new and partly unknown tools are available to them thanks to the rapid expansion of social media platforms. In times when recruitment tasks are increasingly performed internally by personnel managers, it is particularly crucial for headhunters to adapt to such new trends. The present study examines whether social media are a suitable medium for the recruitment of executives by headhunters and identifies the new opportunities and challenges they present to recruitment experts. By means of a survey, the extent to which social media platforms are already being used by headhunters, in particular in their search for executives for the German fashion business, is investigated. Taking into account the results of this survey as well as the latest research concerning headhunters, social media and the fashion business, the study concludes by putting forward recommendations for the use of social media in headhunting executives.