Modern personnel search through headhunting
Best Candidates
for Your Company's Success
The success of any company depends on its employees. Their personality, competence and motivation are the deciding factors in identifying potential, implementing ideas and achieving results. In short: people make the difference.
With over 7,000 successfully completed search projects and more than three decades of experience in personnel consulting and executive search, we find the best candidates for your company. You can meet TOPOS consultants in person at our offices in Hamburg, Nuremberg, Stuttgart and Munich – and for international searches we are available to our clients through our global network IESF.
Winning Candidates
Understanding Your Needs.
Finding the Best.
A search project starts with a thorough analysis of the client company and a detailed task and requirement profile, which we develop with our clients. On this basis, we identify candidates with the required experience, professional expertise and personal qualities that meet the company needs to develop its strategies. To do so, we design an individual search strategy, use our powerful network and work with the latest scientific diagnostic methods.
With our headhunting know-how, we identify the best-fit top executives, but also recruit them for our clients. In the fierce competition for specialists and executives, this ability is crucial. The best in their field are hardly looking for a new job, but must be convinced of the opportunities offered by a new position. The quality of the approach to candidates is therefore decisive for the search project’s success. Our consultants have many years of experience and industry knowledge from their own careers in specialist and management positions, which guarantee access to top personalities and ensure communication at eye level. In critical phases, they act as mediators and can remove any stumbling blocks to ensure that negotiations are successful.
Headhunting
Consulting Process
Nevertheless, there are some anchor points that should not be missing in any project to ensure a functioning and ultimately successful recruiting process:
Definition of task and requirement profile
The basis for a successful headhunting mandate is a detailed, open and trusting project discussion at the start of the search process. This begins with a detailed presentation of the company (e.g. key figures, product/service range, market situation, competition, corporate structure, organizational structure, corporate/management culture, etc.). At best, the company should provide the recruitment consultancy with an initial job description and all information about the vacant position and its history. A task and requirement profile for the position to be filled is then jointly developed and discussed.
The target company list
In the next step, the recruitment consultancy draws up an initial list of target companies, which contains all the potential companies in which potential candidates are to be identified and approached in the first step. For example, industry affiliations, company sizes and the geographical focus of the search should be taken into account. This list should also be approved by the commissioning company, whereby it is also important to define the so-called “no-touch companies” in which the personnel consultancy should not approach as part of the headhunting project.
Search strategy
Once the requirements profile and target company list have been approved, the recruitment consultant and the research team begin the operational search, i.e. potential candidates are identified, briefly contacted by telephone at the workplace and contact is then gradually intensified outside working hours, which should result in the CV being sent after initial questions have been clarified in both directions.
On this basis, the personnel consultancy checks the basic suitability of the candidate and whether an invitation to a personal interview is extended. In today’s tight labor markets, this demonstrates the consultant’s ability to win people over for a position and actively support them in their step-by-step decision-making process.
In addition to direct approaches, consultants should also use other channels, such as structured recommendations via the network, internal and external databases and social media. This ensures that all suitable candidates can be contacted during the headhunting process.
Interviews and reports from the consultants
In this phase of the search process, the recruitment consultant interviews the potential candidates. An experienced consultant will use a structured interview concept that is valid and allows more in-depth professional and personal statements to be made about a candidate than would be possible on the basis of their CV alone.
Interview in the company
Based on the reports from the recruitment consultancy, the company will then invite potentially suitable candidates in the next step to form their own impression. Job interviews are a reflection of the corporate culture and should therefore receive appropriate attention. Experienced recruitment consultancies also pay attention to small details in the selection process. This includes intensive preparation, an appreciative reception and sufficient time for the individual interviews. Qualified feedback also characterizes a good employer. After all, every applicant passes on their own personal experiences and thus influences the image of a company.
The written report that is created on this basis for suitable candidates and made available to the hiring company should, in addition to the hard facts (e.g. salary, notice period, etc.), also convey a clear picture of the candidate and explain why the person is suitable for the open position. The report should provide the HR department and other stakeholders within the hiring company with a good assessment and a vivid picture of the person applying.
Verification and contracts
Once the personnel decision has been made, the home stretch should also be completed without stumbling. This includes precise and prompt communication with the future employee. All relevant points of the collaboration are agreed in the contract negotiations and then legally formulated. It is worth going into these talks ready to compromise, but with clearly defined limits to the negotiating range. Only if both sides sign the employment contract with a smile on their faces are good conditions created for the start.
Onboarding
Welcome on board! This formula should not be an empty phrase for companies. Structured support for new employees is worthwhile at all levels. If the new team members feel supported during the difficult first weeks and months, they can contribute their skills and resources to the team much more quickly. Onboarding processes also deserve a great deal of attention from a business perspective. If a new recruitment process has to be started because an employee leaves the company during their probationary period, the costs can add up to three to five months’ salary. The employer image also suffers as a result of frequent fluctuation. Reason enough not to leave this initial situation to chance and to take advantage of the numerous benefits of systematic induction.
Further contact with companies and candidates
We stay in contact with the candidate and the company even after the headhunting project has been completed and the position successfully filled. If, contrary to expectations, it doesn’t work out, our replacement guarantee applies and we repeat the search without a fee. This is our commitment to joint headhunting success!
Modern recruiting through headhunting
More and more companies
rely on headhunters
Employees desperately wanted! That’s the current word in most industries and for almost all levels in companies. The now very tight candidate market and the new expectations of young employees are making the search for personnel an increasingly difficult task for companies. Even the most interesting positions can no longer be filled without active intervention.
Quite a few companies are increasingly despairing of the empty personnel market and their recruitment problems. Often, they lack the special methodological knowledge as well as the personnel resources to reach the sought-after candidates in a targeted and efficient manner and to win them for the job. In view of this challenge, the importance of using qualified external personnel consultancies is growing. With their networks, processes and methods, they offer the possibility of finding the right candidates from a few potential candidates by means of professional headhunting.
In addition to the core services – search, selection and recruitment of executives and experts – management diagnostics is becoming an increasingly important part of the consulting portfolio: Most of the personnel selection projects carried out today involve the use of aptitude diagnostics, as more and more companies are relying on the expertise of headhunters in this area in order to leave nothing to chance in the demanding process of personnel search.
Megatrends are changing the world of work
Digital Transformation requires
New Profiles and Search Paths
Digitalisation, globalisation and demographic change – these are some of the megatrends that have been shaping the world of work for some time now. The digital transformation places new and higher demands on employees. Established job and task profiles are changed, replaced or new ones are added. Candidates with appropriate profiles and digital fluency must be found and won over in a competitive market.
Against this background, search methods have also changed. Social media and countless online tools for recruiting and assessing people suggest speed, reach and objectivity. Automation and artificial intelligence also promise to take over the pre-selection of candidates. But which online and offline solutions lead to success? We use a variety of search paths and channels. Digital and analogue, not “either/or”, but “and”. We use the optimal tools for each project step – making the best decisions and finding the top candidates for our clients.