GF
Hang on, are you really a headhunter?
4 April 2008
It might be wise not to be too rude to a financial headhunter scoping you out for a job in the GCC – it could be the bank itself in disguise.
EFG-Hermes, a Middle Eastern investment bank, has revealed that it has its own in-house team of headhunters, which it claims is both a cheaper and a safer option.
Declan Ball, global head of corporate human resources at EFG-Hermes, says: “Dubai is full of cowboys. People who call themselves headhunters should in fact be selling double glazing.”
He claims that since the firm employed an in-house team of three headhunters last year, they have saved the company $908k.
And EFG-Hermes isn’t the only one. Dubai Bank, which has re-invented itself as an Islamic bank and expanded rapidly since 2006, also has a team of internal headhunters.
Clearly there are hefty savings to be made. Costa Papadopoulas, human resources manager at Dubai Bank, says that the firm has employed 460 people through its internal headhunting team – in mainly retail roles – and has saved the company some AED2.4m ($653k).
Generally speaking, a headhunter will charge 33% of the candidate’s salary at each stage of the recruitment process – taking on the mandate, conducting the search, and making the eventual appointment.
Ball says that the headhunting team at EFG-Hermes is currently looking for 46 roles: “It can be anything from executive committee members to PAs.”
But what would sway a headhunter away from the notoriously lucrative exec search sector to work for a bank’s HR department?
Ball says: “They want more responsibility on the corporate side. You can make a lot of money at a headhunter, but with our roles they have total control of management of talent, recruitment policy, requisition process, and they address the executive committee too. It’s much more responsibility.”
I dont believe in in house recruiters for the following reasons:
1.Reputational risk - how is the bank/firm perceived if they are poaching from their competitors directly?
2.Candidate management: in house roles are one dimensional - will candidates give the client feedback on poor interview processes/no feedback from their staff? Will they let the in house rectuiter know they are interivewing else where?
3.Market feedback - external recruiters have their fingers on the pulse of what is happening re: trends, salary surveys, mergers.
4.Market volitality - what happens to the inhouse team in down times? If the organisation stops recruiting - they will be the first to go as they then become a cost centre.
5Culture: Recruiters are trail blazers, they are pursasive, ambitious and driven by the deal - this is not the nature of HR teams where recruitment is 15% of their function - which generally is not their fav ourite part of their job.
Companies should be looking at their core business and how to unleash staff potential once they are employed so that recruiters can assist in the companies growth and have less work in filling roles disgruntled staff have left.
Leonie Ellis 02 May 2008
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