Lateral hiring is something that everyone does or gets offered. However, if you were ever to get headhunted, it’s something that can be difficult to understand if you’ve never even met the company before or had dealings with the person who is offering you an interview for the role. You may get headhunted through a platform like LinkedIn, or you could get approached directly over email. Whatever way it happens, there are a few things that you may want to think about and consider before taking this offer seriously. Here’s some advice on what to do when you’ve been headhunted for a job.
Check That It’s Genuine
To receive an offer of a job or an interview straight off the bat, without you having to do anything, is pretty impressive. However, when you’re being headhunted, you want to check that it’s genuine and it’s not just some agency trying to do outreach to gain new individuals on their database. When it comes to getting headhunted, you are like to be contacted by a member of the company like the CEO or HR Executive. When you receive this email or message, you want to check that it’s legitimate before doing anything. Emails can be faked and so can LinkedIn profiles and on other various job-themed websites. Firstly check that it’s a company that exists and that the person emailing is someone who works at that business. A good thing to do would be to call the company directly, using the phone details that you find via Google, rather than what you were given in the message. It’s always beneficial anyway to have a brief chat with them to make sure that it’s something they’ve sent.
Once you’ve established the legitimacy of the offer, it’s then time to get something set up so that you can meet those involved in the recruitment.
Go For A Meeting First To Know More
You might be expected to go into an interview or depending on your knowledge and experience, they may choose to hire you on the spot. However, it’s important that you go in for a meeting first to get to know more about the company, such as whether they take good care of their employees by providing workplace chaplains, free break snacks, plenty of vacation days, and so on, the details of what the job involves and the salary. It’s not a decision that you want to make simply off a quick phone call or an email. If they’re serious about hiring you straight away, then they’ll very likely want to meet you in person first before going through all the formalities. After all, you could be perfect for the role, but you might not be a good fit for their company and vice versa.
Check That It’s The Right Move For You
Being headhunted is something that’s very humbling and will certainly make you feel flattered about being handpicked for a role. However, you don’t want that feeling of flattery to talk you into a role that isn’t right for you. The idea of being headhunted is nice, but if the role is completely out of your comfort zone or is a position where you are taking a pay cut or a step down in position, then it might not be the right move for you. There may come a time where that would be relevant, but ideally you want to be leaving for better work prospects and more money. Don’t be afraid to turn it down if it’s not something that’s going to suit where you want to go in your career. The meeting where you speak with the company is going to be the opportunity to find out more about the role, so you can make your decision depending on the outcome of that discussion.
Don’t Tell Your Employer Until It’s Confirmed
Just like you would with any job, it’s not worth telling your employer until you’ve either confirmed the job or received a contract that you’ve signed and they’ve processed and given you an ideal starting date. It’s a good idea to know your notice period and when you can leave but it’s also worth chatting to your current employment to see if there’s any way that they can reduce the notice period if the new company wants you sooner.
Be Careful When Turning It Down
And if it’s a role that’s not for you, then you can simply say no. However, it’s always good to be polite and professional so decline but explain your reasons as to why you don’t want the job.
Either way, to get headhunted is an exciting thing to receive and a nod to your hard work as an individual to receive one in the first place.
I have had dozens of head hunter calls about jobs, I still get them even though I retired four years ago because my field of expertise is in short supply. What I did with those calls was to pin down the range or sometimes even the exact compensation details for this other job and then tell my boss how much another company was offering to pay for work similar to what I was doing. That always worked to get me nice raises and saved me the hassle of changing jobs. To keep the headhunters calling I would give them names of other good prospects out of the network I developed going to technical conferences and making friends in our industry. It was a win for them, because they placed several of the engineers I referred them to and a win for me because I always felt overpaid. Of course it only works if you are in a high demand field where there is a lot of job churn, and while you can shoot for that type of career the high demand fields change over time and it also is a matter of guessing correctly, or just dumb luck.