International searches and those involving scarce experience or skills still require the services of executive search firms but headhunters should also learn to unearth ‘non-standard’ talent in the UK market.

This was the advice given by two human resources directors at a Recruitment & Employment Confederation discussion group of headhunters in London this week.

Too few headhunters take the ‘out of the box’ approach to search, meaning that the lists of candidates they will be shown for certain jobs will be predictable round-ups of usual suspects.

Quintin Heath, HR director, British Sugar Group, said: “Show me the people I expect to be shown — and then show me the next group.”

BSkyB HR director Ralph Tribe, whose company runs a significant in-house recruiting team, added: “What we definitely still pay for is international search. The language barriers just stop us.” 

Tribe suggested that an additional critical role that external executive search practitioners could play was in senior level talent pool management. The future might bring senior level executives creating their own talent syndicates, he added.

Currently, however, he said “it annoys me” that executive search practitioners appeared to be interested only in assignments.

Sue O’Brien, chief executive of headhunting firm Norman Broadbent, said the toughest search underway in executive search was to find quality consultants. “It isn’t about how much you bill,” she said, the longevity of client relationships was more important.

O’Brien also contended that clients were too accepting of poor performance by headhunters. As an example, she cited results from a widespread survey her firm had carried out in which a user of executive search services acknowledged paying out £750k in cancelled assignments.

The gathering was sponsored by the Financial Times.