While there is a set of regulations which effectively govern how head-hunting should be conducted ethically, the gloves come off when one company has identified the kind of talent it has been missing all along on the payroll of an existing employer. The borders are tested to the very limits and if it was in any way acceptable, your new potential suitors would walk right into your office at your existing workplace and shower you with all manner of gifts to go with the PowerPoint presentation they have prepared to try and convince you to jump ship.

Operating within the set of ethical guidelines of course, the principles of head-hunting are:

Talent scouting and identification

Often when there is a position to fill at a certain business or company it needs to be filled as quickly as possible, which consequently means the absolute best talent might not be roped in to fill it. That’s why there are talent scouts and recruitment managers constantly on the lookout for new talent and talent can be identified in any way really, whether through referral or otherwise.

Matching the identified talent to the appropriate position

It’s a simple matter of an identified set of skills perfectly suiting a position which probably already exists, but this could also be a position which is created especially in preparation of the possibility of the identified talent deciding to join you. Some all-round re-shuffling may be in order, but either way, the talent gets matched to an appropriate position and this has to work for them as well.

Pursuing the identified talent

This simply entails making it clear that you want the identified talented individual to jump ship and come and join your ranks, but that will probably be followed by some required efforts to make them see things the way you do. You have to convince them.

Wooing the talent

If you’ve ever enjoyed the pleasure of being on the receiving end of the antics surrounding a company trying to recruit you by taking you away from the company at which you already work, I hate to spill the beans, but it doesn’t really cost the head-hunter all that much to shower you with all the gifts and perks to try and butter you up. It really shouldn’t matter though, because either way, you’re still getting more gifts than a teenage girl on Valentine’s Day!

The gifts you’re being showered with are usually obtained as a result of that company’s B2B network, so if for example the management knows a florist, the flowers they send may be a complimentary gift from that florist. When wooing becomes an art however is if the gifts with which they shower the potential new employee really make a significant impact on their lives going forward, such as how we might try to get LA immigration lawyer, Joshua L. Goldstein to handle the case of a talent who is from a foreign land and have them gaining permanent residence on the path to citizenship. Something of that significance however would probably come on condition that the identified individual actually completes the switch and crosses the floor.