Making Sense of Recruitment Consulting Terminology

Dipping your toes into recruitment consulting can sometimes feel like you’re learning a whole other language. With a wealth of opportunities with foreign sounding names, it can be difficult to know which recruitment consulting opportunity is right for you. To help make more sense of things, read on to learn the definitions of some of the most commonly used recruitment consulting terminology.

Recruitment Consultant

Let’s start with the most common term of all. The recruitment consultant. Recruitment consultants are used by business to help them fill any vacancies in their company. They are responsible for placing job notices and attracting the right client for the job. In some cases, they can assist in interviewing the staff, too.

In order to be a recruitment consultant, you should have fantastic interpersonal skills. Building client relationships is one of the most important aspects of this jobs, so this is an absolutely essential skill quality.

The term recruitment consultant can also be used as an umbrella term for the following definitions.

Executive Search Consultant

Executive search consultants typically help firms hire staff at an executive level. Much like any other recruitment consultant, their main responsibilities are defining their client’s corporate needs and recruiting the most suitable candidate. However, executive search consultants specialize at finding executive level staff.

Typically, to qualify as an executive search consultant, you should have a wealth of experience in the recruitment consulting industry.

External Recruiter

Recruitment consultants can either work internally or externally. An internal recruitment consultant helps their employer find staff for the company that they work at.

An external recruiter, on the other hand, is a recruitment consultant who is outsourced from an agency to another company looking to find staff. Most externals recruiters have various clients at a wide range of companies. Although, some do specialize in a particular field; for example IT or business development.

Headhunter

Much like an executive search consultant, a headhunter is often used to find talent at a corporate level. However, a headhunter often directs its searches towards candidates who are not actively seeking employment.

Headhunters, therefore, have to find the best talent around and actively approach them. In most cases, when they have found the best candidate for the job, they then pass the candidates details to the employer.

This is usually where the headhunter’s responsibilities end. Rather than placing ads, conducting interviews and checking CVs, headhunters are concerned purely with finding talent and presenting it to their client.

So, there’s an overview of some of the most commonly used terminology in recruitment consulting. We hope that this handy guide has helped you make sense of some of the jargon that you’re bound to hear in this exciting and dynamic industry.