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Headhunters advertise. It's the only way they can find lots of potential candidates and justify getting paid. There are very few that don't advertise. Some of them want to be discrete and don't use their firm names in their ads, while others want to build name recognition among both candidates and hiring managers at companies to show that they are active in the market.
You used the term employment agency and I responded to that. If a firm has employment agency or personnel in their title, they probably do mostly low end jobs, but many hi end firms do post thru careerbuilder these days.
There are national firms like Michael Page and Robert Half (mostly accounting) and there are many small local shops. Almost everyone I know has gotten a job at some point in time thru a headhunter. You just have to watch out because some are slimier than others. If they'll send you out for an interview without actually meeting with you first, and just do it based on a resume and phone conversation, that's a bad sign. The only exception is that sometimes a headhunter will have a relationship with a company that has offices all over but a centralized HR, and may be asked to find candidates in a geographic area which makes it infeasible to meet. If a headhunter gets back to me who is based in NYC for a job here in NYC and is not interested in meeting, I'm usually very cautious about proceeding.
There are 2 basic types of headhunters (HHs): Contingent and retained.
Contingent based headhunters only get paid if they find a candidate. Typically a company will have perhaps 2-5 HHs that they work with for a given field (ie a bank may work with one group of firms for IT, another for traders, another for bankers, etc.). They give the firms the positions, the firms screen candidates and send in resumes, and perhaps the firm may itself advertise. if they hire a candidate sourced by the HH then the HH gets paid.
Retained is different. In this situation a contract is signed with the HH giving them the exclusive rights to market the position GUARANTEEING a fee that they will get paid, even if the job ends up getting filled internally. These types of HH are much less common. You may see this for more specialized positions. For example I had responded a coupe fo months ago to a position for a VP/relationship manager and went in and met with the HH. It turned out that they were a retained firm, and the 2 principals were former bankers who had a better understanding of the industry and the specific needs of the position than other generic HHs would have. They had good relationships with a number of large institutions and based on theri past performance they were used for select position son this retained basis. (They submitted my resume but I didn't get the interview even tho they liked me and pushed because my background was large corp lending and they wanted middle market with local contacts).
In many cases companies will start out trying to fill a position and after having no success will give it to HHs. This happens becaause the HHs will have built up a database of people whi've responded to ads, that they've met with in the past, etc. and may know of people that they can reach out to who may not have been looking and might be open to considering the position if the HH picks up the phone and calls them.
For example, Fitch training has been looking for trainers (heavy experience) for MONTHS and has been unsuccessful filling these positions (I interviewed for one of them but passed early on). Now my default search is showing the exact same position, but with no company name being listed by a HH. I know for a fact it is the exact same position. Clearly becuase they need to fill these spots to meet their calender of scheduled courses and client requests for inhouse seminaars they went to HH to try and get help filling the spots.
So, this is my long winded way of saying that there is absolutely no reason not to consider postions posted by HHs on Careerbuilder. It's a bit of a caveat emptor, and I would look to see if the HH has a real website, and ask around to see if anyone you know has heard of them but you have very little to lose. If its a firm in the NY market, then feel free to e-mail me at
[email protected] and I'll tell you if i know of them. Note that i rarely check that e-mail address because its almost pure spam these days, but if you post on here that you e-mailed me I'll find your e-mail and get back to you via my real e-mail address (it's my full name so I don't want to post it here).
Hope this long winded response is helpful