ThinkToday said:
The HHs I've worked with don't "know" my field, but they know enough to look at a CV and see if the correct content is there. Then they contact past employers, contact references, check into your certifications, and then HH does a phone interview with you to decide if they want to present your CV to a client.
Just curious what field that you are in? My field is finance and software development in central Texas and NYC.
In those areas, no one will ever contact a past employer or contact references. People move a lot from company to company, and sometimes you just don't get along with your old company. Certifications are assumed to be accurate. They will do a through background check when they are ready to make the offer. It's rather expensive to do a background check (and they will look into criminal history and credit reports), and it makes more sense to do it when you are about ready to make an offer.
Also, you may be asked to sign waivers giving the company the right to get personal information and you may also be asked to pee into a cup for a drug test. Now, I'm not willing to drop my trousers just to get my resume looked at, but if they are about to give me an offer, then they can take my urine.
The HH will talk to you for about an hour but they usually won't go into technical questions.
In my field, the HH gets paid equal to 30% of your annual salary, so they are expected to do more than gather CVs.
That's about how much HH in my field get paid. There is also a game of "tag". If HH#1 doesn't forward your resume, and HH#2 does, then HH#2 gets the cash if the candidate gets hired.
The other issues is that (with one or two exceptions), HH's don't have the technical ability to do in depth screening. In order to really evaluate a physics Ph.D.'s resume, you need another Ph.D., and if you have a Ph.D., you can usually find something to do that pays more than working as a HH. There are a few exceptions to this.
No HH wants to look bad sending in substandard candidates. By substandard, I don't mean bad people, rather people that don't meet the requirements of the client as to knowledge, experience, personal skills, etc. HH rely on repeat business, so they aren't going to send unqualified candidates or bad attitudes to a client.
It's a deep market. If you take 1000 resumes, you can get usually get 30 qualified people. Also there is a trade-off between technical brilliance and bad attitude. I know of one person that is horrifically bad at interpersonal relations, but he is so freaking brilliant that it doesn't matter.
Since the HH only gets paid for placements, I've ALWAYS found them helpful in identifying fields that need staffing. They see you as potential revenue.
On the other hand, the company is also revenue and one purpose of having HH do the review is so that the company doesn't have to let people know what is going on.
You can use more than one HH, but keep it to yourself.
The last time I looked for work, I must have talked to about thirty HH's, and then sent my resume to over a hundred. Once you figure out who is good, then you can work through those, but when I started out, I didn't know who is good.
One of the reasons to use a HH, is that you get more honest feedback from the company. One thing that happens a lot is that you send a resume, and nothing happens. It doesn't get approved but it doesn't get rejected, and nothing happens. A HH prevents that from happening. Once a HH forwards a resume, you'll need to tell a HH that a resume has been rejected and why to keep him from calling you about it.