I am commonly asked in my one-on-one career coaching sessions questions regarding how to engage with Executive Recruiters and what the protocol is around loyalty, payment, and what it means if a conversation takes place.

You must know the background of the recruiting industry in order to understand how to effectively work with Executive Recruiters to advance your career.

Once these basics are covered, we’ll share where Executive Recruiters find candidates and where they may find you. We’ll conclude with important tips and techniques to follow the next time an Executive Recruiter reaches out to you asking, “Are you interested in learning more about this opportunity?”

There are three general recruitment business models utilized by employers.

1. The first is an in-house model, which consists of employees of the organization doing the hiring. They may have titles of corporate recruiters, HR generalist, or simply the Hiring Manager. In an in-house model, the corporation does all of the marketing activities to generate applicants, reviews the applicants, conducts passive sourcing efforts, and tracks it all in some type of applicant tracking systems commonly referred to as an ATS. Corporate recruiters commonly work 25 requisitions at any one time.


2. The second model is called RPO which stands for Recruitment Process Outsourcing. This is where the corporation or organization outsources part or all of their recruitment efforts to an organization that specializes in talent acquisition. These RPO firms like Manpower, Right Management, and Cielo Talent are generally contracted to hire high volumes of full-time employees and to the public, appear to work for the corporation doing the hiring. The RPO arrangement is covered under a contract and may include fixed or variable fees per hire or both.


3. The third model is agency. Agency recruiters are often times called contractors, contingent recruiters, head-hunters, and executive recruiters. Small companies may utilize agencies for all of their recruitment efforts whereas large corporations may utilize them for specialty areas, high volume roles, confidential searches, and executive levels.

Taura Prosek is Director of Career Management for Evening & Executive MBA Programs at the Wisconsin School of Business. She is responsible for providing career services for MBA students and alumni, which consists of one to one coaching, workshops, speaker events, networking events, and virtual career offerings. Taura joined the UW-Madison in 2013 after spending over 20 years in the corporate sector, including 6 years in various recruitment and talent management roles. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1993 and her Master’s degree from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in 2000.