Good news: the practices of headhunters have changed, reveals a survey by HR very complete group Oasys.
How to work with recruitment firms and hunting for head today ? What are the criteria think of the candidates ? In a very comprehensive study, carried out last year with 130 firms, the group Oasys, specializing in coaching executives and managers, lists the new practices of recruiters. Here are the broad lines, exclusively for the Express.
If the experience and personality are still the main selection criteria, international experience is playing an increasing role, so that this criterion had little importance, there are still ten years old. A framework will, in addition, more likely to be of interest to an employer if it is mobile geographically.
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“Think international” is not reserved only for adventurers and lovers of the great broad. You are looking for a marketing director to Rouen or to Melun ? You may need to go unhook it… in England ! “A large foreign group who is looking for a senior executive to its French subsidiary is not necessarily going to entrust the recruitment to a French cabinet,” explains Eric Beaudoin, leader-founder of the firm Oasys. Often, the mission will be conducted in London or Geneva. The applicants have therefore in their interest to circulate their CVS in the major firms across europe to be seen.”
To the dustbin, the graphologues !
When you apply, forget about the cover letters to be handwritten, even for leadership positions. Only 5% of recruitment professionals interviewed by Oasys admit that they still practice the handwriting (as opposed to 67% in 2007). A “mail motivation with CV attached will do the trick (but not of CV presented in a thematic way, showing by example his expertise, head hunters hate it). To note, in this regard, the increasing use of the Internet in the consultants and headhunters. For 70% of them, the study notes, the social networks, and especially LinkedIn, are the main tool for the identification of candidates. A recruiter on four look very closely at what they publish on the web… and what is said of them. Station, so, to your “e-reputation” !
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This increasing use of “big data” has not, unfortunately, changed the immoderate love of business for the cloning. If two consultants on three regularly provide “outsiders” to their customers (for example a candidate from another sector of activity), they are rarely sensitive. In three of four cases, they recruit “identical”.
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No outliers, therefore, and not senior citizens ! “Despite the legal prohibition to use this criterion in their selection, the age is in effect discriminating in 75% of the companies”, the study finds. The trend is worsening, since they were “only” 67%, in 2014, to sulk over 45 years.
Those who are unemployed and are hunted
A positive note, all the same. When they looked often to the candidates by post, head hunters are increasingly used by job seekers. The crisis has in fact trivialized the perception of companies on unemployment.
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Do not have a job may even be an asset ! The companies put in effect more time to recruit. Between a first interview and the signature of a contract, an applicant must now wait four months (two times more than before the 2008 crisis). “It frequently happens that a part that had decided to change employer, eventually retract, discouraged by the slowness of the process, note Eric Beaudoin.
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focus on the recruitment of executives
80% executives are satisfied with their professional situation, according to a poll by The recruitment of executives to their highest level in 2019 The business executives the most sought-after
suddenly, the recruiter must start at zero… It has, therefore, increasingly go looking for a framework of unemployment : it is indeed available immediately and is not likely to make him a false hope…”