写在「金三银四」之际的一些话—之二Notes on China's 'Golden March, Silver April' Hiring Season, Part 2: Let's Talk About Headhunters

"You want work, but try not to just 'clock in.' Don't work harder — work smarter."

Post #7

A Word Up Front

In most people's minds the job market has only two sides: the candidate and the employer. But there are actually three forces at play, and the third is the headhunter. The headhunter is the lever, the lubricant, and the seesaw between candidate and employer. Maybe you haven't started dealing with headhunters yet; maybe plenty of you have dealt with them but never really understood them. This time, let's talk about headhunters. My thinking here is incomplete — discussion welcome. Enjoy.

What Do Headhunters Actually Do

Just as accounting has the Big Four and consulting has MBB, the industry recognizes five big executive-search firms (note: big does not mean good):

a. Korn Ferry
b. Heidrick & Struggles
c. Egon Zehnder
d. Spencer Stuart
e. Russell Reynolds

A search firm helps companies — the employers — correctly assess a role they're hiring for and set reasonable, workable joining terms and compensation. The consultant gives the candidate timely, objective, honest feedback and gives the employer timely recommendations. The work includes, but isn't limited to: sourcing candidates, communicating, arranging interviews, interview coaching, scheduling, follow-ups, negotiating pay, negotiating the offer, reference checks, resignation coaching, and onboarding follow-through.

A classic industry case: long, long ago, Heidrick & Struggles was serving Google, and its most famous case for Google was luring Kai-Fu Lee to China — with Google stock agreed as commission. A few years later Google went public, Heidrick cashed in that stock and took home over $100 million, an industry record. And the most senior job in the venture world happens to have a little something to do with Sequoia too — but that's a story for another time; we'll set it aside for now.

Here's a question: don't companies all have their own recruiting departments? So why use headhunters? There are five uses, or advantages, to going with a headhunter:

1. Confidentiality. This mostly comes up when an incumbent is being quietly replaced, and it's awkward for the company's own people to front it; going through a search firm handles it more gracefully and with no worry about leaks.

2. Higher efficiency than the company's own effort, saving time. Search firms usually specialize in the industries where they hold an edge. Their consultants have spent years — anywhere from a few to well over a dozen — around the practitioners and senior ranks of those industries, and their networks run extremely wide.

3. They can give the company an objective read on the industry, plus recommendations.

4. They help with pay negotiation. A headhunter knows the going market rate for senior talent, can advise the company on paying a qualified candidate exactly what's appropriate, and can help the company handle the back-and-forth on employment terms.

5. Solid reference checks, ensuring quality.

Who's Cut Out for Headhunting

I've asked around, and I've thought about this myself. It's not a question you can settle in one go, but I can offer a way to assess it (a way of thinking, not a standard). Here's my own sense of it, summed up:

First: strong professional ethics and a fierce sense of confidentiality.

Why put this first? Because it's the basic bottom line of being a decent person. Without it, forget how capable you are at the job — you've already failed as a person. You've also betrayed the trust and expectation others placed in you. Many headhunters just want to "sell you off," so they're not actually thinking about you. For instance: you told only a couple of people you were open to looking, and before anything's even started the whole company somehow knows you're leaving. Or: you finally land, through a reliable headhunter, an interview at a company you love — only to be told they've already seen your resume, even though you never gave it to anyone but this one person, which means your personal information got leaked. Or: a friend told me a headhunter recommended him for an interview and, beforehand, told him the package range was 800K–1.2M; at the interview he found the company's ceiling was 800K. The candidate finished the process out of courtesy, then went back and asked the headhunter why they hadn't been straight with him and had inflated the range. A lot of headhunters today, chasing their KPI, will do anything to get candidates into interviews — dogged pestering aside, they'll keep inflating the pay range, trying to use money to bait the candidate through the door. It's the lowest and most incompetent move there is.

Second: powerful self-drive.

Clear internal goals, quick to grasp things, strong execution: give them the objective — from a boss or a client — and they'll exhaust every avenue to close the case. Proactively pushing clients for feedback, chasing the boss to learn the business process, and so on. How strong your internal drive is directly determines whether your conviction is firm enough.

Third: sound psychological makeup and stress tolerance.

Put more plainly: thick-skinned and hard-wearing. A lot of people think headhunting is easy — just making calls and chatting with people all day. It's nothing of the sort. You have to withstand your boss's pushing, your client's challenges, and the candidate's skepticism. Say a consultant closes one case a month (which is already very hard). Over that month a headhunter has to clear these numbers: several hundred rejections a month (critical hits), at least ten rejections a day. And the actual process is riddled with uncertainty:

a. The candidate is willing to consider it but may not get an interview.
b. The candidate interviews but may not pass.
c. The interview passes but the offer may not come together.
d. The offer is signed but they may not resign smoothly.
e. They onboard smoothly but may not clear the probation period.
f. They pass probation but the commission may not arrive on schedule.
g. The payment comes in and you still may not get your performance bonus.

A dozen-odd steps, every one a risk point, and any risk point you fail to head off in advance sinks the case. Which is to say, a headhunter spends the vast majority of the year being rejected.

Fourth: communication ability.

Communicative influence is the single most important dimension of a headhunter's work. It breaks into three levels:

a. Earning trust — McKinsey's famous trust equation: trust = credibility × capability × intimacy / self-orientation. The very first exchange is critical; you need to win the other person's basic trust within roughly ten minutes. There's no real trick to earning trust — nothing but this, summed up: politeness, candor, sincerity, and professionalism. Leading with nothing but a "sales pitch" dooms everything that follows: I've got an opening at Company XX, want to hear about it? This is exactly the thing so many people rag on this industry for. A lot of the time you're worse than the vendor selling vegetables at the wet market.

b. Objective communication — on a base of basic trust, you build an equal, objective, honest exchange with the other person. The candidate then voluntarily and truthfully lays out their background, thoughts, and needs, minimizing risk points and communication blind spots as much as possible. I have two "nevers": I never ask people for their resume out of the blue; and I never ask for a resume before I've clearly explained the role. That's how I do it, and it's what I tell the friends around me.

c. Professional influence — this influence is deeper and the hardest step of all. It includes, but isn't limited to: an objective evaluation and judgment of the candidate, relevant interview coaching and reminders, thoughts on their future career plan, and the negotiation and choice of an offer. Few people can do this — which is exactly what makes it precious.

By the time you hit the "career-plateau" stage, you've usually been working at least four years or so. Look up and there's no leap in sight; below you, juniors keep pouring in — younger people are "cheaper," have more energy, do more work — and you're squarely in the awkward spot of "old folks above, young kids below." At the same time you may be sick of the unchanging work, the unchanging environment, the unchanging colleagues, and you start to doubt your responsibilities, even your whole life — the moment a person hits a plateau, they start doubting everything.

At this point the use and value of a competent, reliable headhunter lies in this: reassuring you, reminding you, offering you a solution. I've seen plenty of people in this spot, because when you hit a career plateau the fix most people reach for first is switching jobs. But that fix doesn't generalize. A lot of the time, what wears us down isn't the physical or mental labor — it's the feeling of being endlessly driven, endlessly asked for more, of plans you can't control, of sudden last-minute overtime. Passivity is the most exhausting thing of all. I've always believed the environment is very likely not the original sin behind a plateau. Beyond carrying more risk, changing environments won't, for most people, change the essential problem. But at the same time, if a headhunter has in hand a role that could make your name overnight, then giving it a shot is completely fine — just be prepared mentally: good roles are never short of candidates.

If the candidate doesn't switch, a good headhunter will help you plan — for instance, whether there's better room to be promoted in your current role, or, if you want to grow further, which areas you need to strengthen, or which rival you have to beat to seize a once-in-a-lifetime promotion. I've always believed a good headhunter is very loyal, because they'll only ever think from your side. A good headhunter can tell you:

a. What your future company is like / what your future boss's style is.
b. What your KPI is and how to hit it more efficiently.
c. What the style of your competitor's company/team is.
d. What the landmines are in the industry, the company, the role.

The Differences from Buy Side and Sell Side

This industry is fundamentally two-sided selling — but it has aspects that resemble the buy side and aspects that resemble the sell side.

Similarities and differences with the buy side:

a. In investing you spend most of the year rejecting others; in headhunting you spend most of the year being rejected.

b. The essence of headhunting isn't sourcing — it's judgment. That part's the same as investing. But here's a catch: a lot of the time your judgment isn't decisive; in other words, you can't actually pull the trigger and make it happen.

c. In investing, much of your experience is reusable; in headhunting it isn't.

d. Both involve rejecting others, but investing has a powerful brand effect: as long as the fund's branding is good enough, it will never miss a big name. Even if it misses at first, it gets another chance to pull the trigger.

e. In investing, the fund is the sugar daddy — money talks. Plenty of companies wear it as a badge of honor to have taken angel money from ZhenFund, a Series A from GSR, a Series B from Sequoia. In headhunting — in the hiring market — there's no user loyalty, and a lot of the time it's a thankless job: most people don't care which search firm you're from; give me a good opportunity and that's enough. If the interview succeeds and the candidate joins, they'll credit their own ability and won't feel much gratitude toward you; if they don't get in, they'll blame the headhunter for dropping the ball. And you won't build any deep connection. There was a case once: a mentor of mine, along with his team, helped an outstanding leader build out an entire China business team, and to this day the candidate and the headhunter keep up a genuine comrades-in-arms bond. But that's exceedingly rare.

Similarities and differences with the sell side:

a. Headhunters actually aren't Party B — they're Party C. That's the first thing setting them apart from every other Party-B trade.

b. Accounting has the Big Four, consulting has MBB. But headhunting is a trade — an industry — with a category and no brand. There may be some brand effect on the B2B side, used to win clients, but on the C-end it's very faint.

c. Many Party-B trades can "open shop once and eat for three years, then not open shop for three years" — or ride a single case for a long time — but headhunting can't. Headhunting is fundamentally a volume model. Back in '08, everyone in the trade had ten-plus years of experience; professional caliber was their livelihood. They had to write detailed recommendation write-ups and interview candidates, and a candidate getting a headhunter's call was often thrilled — headhunters commanded enormous respect. The bar to entry was high back then, but frankly, becoming a headhunter billing a million, even several million, wasn't especially hard. A decade later, more and more young practitioners have poured in, and after ten-odd years of relentless growth and a shakeout, things have gotten messier — the trajectory is still unclear. Countless small and midsize search firms, angling for a slice of the pie, keep cutting fees and service standards, and the upshot is the whole industry has slid into a bind.

Even among big companies, "big" means something different for a search firm than for other Party-B trades. The value of "big" is that it's the most effective way to raise the difficulty of a consultant splitting off to start their own shop, and to blunt the impact on the firm's business when someone does. The core point of "big" is to lift the company's brand — thereby lowering the cost of winning clients and raising the firm's ability to attract and retain consultants — because apart from the brand, people are the most important asset. The core of big is brand: not scale, not resources, not systems. Using systems to prevent resource leakage, using non-competes to guard against a former employee's unfair competition, carving up the division of labor so that losing one consultant doesn't cost you a slice of business — these are all techniques for getting "big," but they aren't solutions to the problem, because every advantage other than brand is easily copied.

Headhunters and HR: Please Recruit the Way You Run a Business

In years past, March and April have been dubbed "golden March, silver April" — the peak of the peak in the hiring calendar. In 2020 every swan is black, and the hiring and job season lurches forward amid hesitation, unease, tension, and turbulence. This year's hiring market is smaller, but more complex and more baffling. For example: demand that was on the table in March may get canceled, with no telling whether it comes back; companies' hiring bars have shot up overnight; some companies may have no hiring need at all and are merely testing the market; or, will a company extend an offer when it can't meet anyone face-to-face at all; and candidates weighing a move have turned more "conservative," pickier about which company to choose — after all, choice outweighs effort in what comes next. On top of that, this year's grad-school expansion means those planning to study abroad will very likely have to defer, and current students have all gone online (the class of 2019 MBAs weeping in the storm).

In this climate, how can headhunters and HR best fulfill their mission? The answer: recruit the way you run a business. In three parts:

One: like a salesperson, know your product.

Every salesperson knows their own product cold. So what is HR's product? The company. What are the company's selling points? What are its core business and core competitiveness? Does it have a corporate culture? What are its culture and values? The company's org structure and future direction — do the headhunters and HR know all of this clearly? Can they tailor the pitch to different candidates? Headhunters and HR are the first person a candidate faces on behalf of the company; how well they understand the company can directly determine and shape the applicant's enthusiasm, impression, and attitude toward it. Picture it: if, through the process, an applicant meets HR and headhunters who speak of the company with fluency and command every detail, answering every question fast, firmly, and forcefully — how does the candidate feel? This is exactly why, at a startup or a big company alike, what truly matters is hiring.

Second: like a salesperson, know your market.

The talent market is a stock market, not a growth market — and that will only become more pronounced over the next decade. Every company, the leading players especially, fights for talent with everything it's got. So HR must have a very clear read on the corresponding talent and hiring market. In the market: the pay, responsibilities, and promotion tracks of comparable roles at the "competing products"; where your own company stands in the hiring market, its strengths and weaknesses versus rivals, and how to play to strengths and hide weaknesses when hiring — these are the things candidates care about most, and HR and headhunters need the "numbers" in hand to keep their nerve. No company is perfect, whether it's BAT or Sequoia and Hillhouse, Ogilvy, BBDO, or the top law firms (King & Wood, Jun He, Fangda, Haiwen, Zhong Lun). Companies shouldn't be high-minded and low-handed, and applicants shouldn't set their sights beyond their reach. Between company and candidate it's a mutual intent — like dating and marriage, a fit on both sides is what wins. Know yourself and know the other, and you'll never lose a hundred battles.

Third: like a salesperson, hit your target.

HR is a support function, so a lot of HR people think in terms of tasks rather than goals. Task-thinking says: I finish this thing and I'm done; as for why, and how far, that's not my business. Goal-thinking is the opposite: what to do, to what standard, and never giving up or compromising easily. Rather than agonizing over not getting enough understanding and support from the company, HR would do far better to shift perspective and operate from a business standpoint — the effect won't even be in the same league. The reason the business always gets attention and priority is that it keeps creating value and profit for the company. And HR's value, of course, is to keep optimizing and iterating the company's human resources and to maximize workforce efficiency. To recruit the way you run a business: keep your eye locked on the candidate, build a database, keep the communication timely, and let every step be guided by a goal and a result. Under the pandemic, plenty of companies are trimming and laying off; everyone should ask what value they can genuinely deliver at work, so they can face what may be harder times ahead with composure. HR has to be able to "sell" their own company, to know its business processes and pain points cold, and to maximize the person-role fit — only then do they power the company's growth, and only then do they shed the image of being merely a spending department. Which is why HR people who've done it long enough, who've settled into it, are the ones who understand product, business, management, and people.

How to Negotiate Pay

Lately I've noticed friends asking a lot of questions — career planning, switching jobs, changing industries, resumes, interviews, pay, and so on. Let me flag one key point on pay negotiation. When you're negotiating pay with a company's boss, if the number they offer doesn't satisfy you, always say you'll go back and think it over — don't reject it on the spot, or you leave yourself zero room to recover. For a sensitive matter like this, tell the headhunter your expectation and let them negotiate in the middle; that way it's harder for things to turn sour. If you haggle pay directly with the entrepreneur, tugging the number back and forth, then even if you end up joining, both sides feel awkward about it. If the number they offer on the spot does satisfy you, say yes then and there — don't give them a chance to change their mind, or they might turn around, interview someone who asks for less, and pass you over, costing you more than you gained. Negotiating pay is a technique, and even more an art; how well you do it can sometimes be the difference of a whole car.

I once heard of a case where a 30-year-old candidate was helped to beat out a more senior 38-year-old, ended up taking equity too, and now, with the company about to go public, is riding high. So think it through carefully: how to negotiate, where you can give ground, where you won't, and what it is you actually want.

A Closing Word

Quite a lot of people, even at 30 or 40, still haven't found — or don't understand — what they truly love and are truly good at. Here are two questions to sit with:

1. Do you actually love the auto industry, or do you just love cars (tinkering with cars)?

2. Do you actually love the entertainment industry, or do you just love variety shows and binging dramas?

By the same token, truly loving to do something, and doing something to briefly escape your real anxieties and troubles, are two different things. The decisions you make — are they in pursuit of what you want more? Or in flight from what you don't want?

Two last questions to think over and discuss:

1. Is recruiting (headhunting included) a to-C or a to-B industry?

2. What's a major change you think will very likely happen in the next five years? And if you believe it's very likely to happen within five years, are you doing anything about it? Note the qualifiers: within five years, very likely, a major change.