How to find a good Digital Marketing headhunter
To meet the digital industry's growing demand, the market has been witnessing in recent years an increasing number of profiles focused on the recruitment of digital talent. Among them, we can highlight three different types of headhunters, all of them focused on the search of digital profiles: generalist headhunting agencies, specialist headhunting agencies, and finally freelance headhunters. In this post, we propose to analyse the pros and cons of each of them.
Generalist headhunting agencies
The big names of the headhunting industry are of course an option to take into account when considering outsourcing a company's staff recruitment. Among the advantages of resorting to well-known names in the industry, there is of course the scope of the database of candidates available to bigger companies, and also the prices of their services that may be cheaper due to the business volume that headhunting multinationals typically handle.
However, let's not forget that often these headhunting giants rely on recruiters who may not be digital marketing experts. And it's a known fact that there is nothing better than an expert in a certain discipline to spot another expert of the same discipline. Hence, although it is true that a generalist company may be able to refer a large number of candidates within a short time frame, many of these candidates may not be sufficiently prepared to respond to the client's needs, and the selection process may end up getting delayed due to a lack of efficient filtering.
Headhunting agencies specialised in digital profiles
As in other sectors of the business world, the digital sector has also witnessed the arrival of a specialised niche in the outsourcing of recruitment processes. Headhunting agencies specialised in the selection of digital profiles rely on headhunters with a greater knowledge of the digital sector than your average recruiter.
These companies usually have a much smaller size compared to large generalist recruitment companies. This often means that they do not have the same resources as the big headhunting names out there, and that their candidate database may have a somewhat more limited scope.
Typically this type of headhunting companies refer a smaller volume of candidates per project, however their success rates tend to be higher since they are able to identify the best candidates very effectively due to their deep knowledge of the digital world. This is a factor to take into account when choosing a headhunting partner for the selection of senior digital marketing profiles, in order to ensure that the hiring processes are carried out in a timely and and efficient manner.
Freelance headhunters
With the spread of the internet, the recruitment industry has seen a significant increase in the number of freelance headhunters. That's because, for many headhunting tasks, a computer, an internet connection and a LinkedIn Premium account are enough.
Freelance headhunters can be a good solution for companies that need to hire a specialised digital marketing profile in a timely manner. However, in order to respond to the needs of companies with a higher turnover in their staff, a self-employed person may not have sufficient technological resources such as CRM-type database systems. Recruitment companies typically rely on a CRM strategy that allows potential candidates to be located very efficiently according to segmented search criteria, and this type of tool requires an infrastructure that is usually not available to a freelance person.
In short, the choice of the ideal partner to outsource the processes of recruiting digital profiles depends a lot on the requirements of each company. While it is true that companies looking for junior digital profiles will be able to fulfil their needs by going to generalist recruitment agencies, for more senior profiles it is advisable to rely on specialised digital headhunters due to their broader knowledge of the sector.
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