3 Dec 2015

HOW HEADHUNTING HAS EVOLVED THROUGH THE YEARS



Headhunting as a recruitment method, or even more specifically related to the term 'executive search' started just after World War II in Europe when a soldier recommended collegues with special skills such as machinery and tactics to a high ranking general.

This method has been overtaken in the United Stated in the early 1950's when industry and industialization increased in order to repair the damaged economy. After a very short period of time, headhunting has vastly spread throughout Western Europe, Australia, Argentina and Chile.

In the year 2013, only in Germany alone, the anual turnover in terms of hunting for heads has witnessed an industry of 1.55 billion Euros (source: Quelle: BDU Studie „Personalberatung in Deutschland 2012/2013). In 2014 the worldwide revenue in terms of headhunting was 10 billion Euros (source: Financial Times, Emma Boyde, Nov 2014: "Boutique consultancies give headhunters a run for their money").

The reason for increasing these numbers in the last few years is the fact that numerous human resource agencies and recruiters alike are using online tools to help them with their search for executive staff. One of the leading worldwide sites with a database with of over 300 million registered members is LinkedIn.

"LinkedIn is improving its services on
a monthly basis, hence gaining
more and more members and
changing the statistics from
passive users to active ones."

Besides LinkedIn, other providers that are hitting the market are QUORA (www.quora.com) and PLAXO (plaxo.com) . Considerable amount of work and time has been put in these projects as also recruiting human resource agencies and their top employees who have been involved in order to facilitate the best service straight from the headhunters laptop.