Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: A Mixed‐method Study on Headhunter‐intermediated Recruitment Practices

Abstract

AbstractWhile organizations increasingly rely on headhunters, little research has focused on what kinds of employees are contacted by headhunters and how these contacts are related to turnover. This study uses an exploratory sequential mixed‐method design to examine what kinds of employees contingency headhunters contact and why some of them leave. Using the case of Japan, where foreign subsidiaries use headhunters extensively to recruit host country nationals (HCNs), we first conducted interviews with 131 clients, headhunters and HCNs (candidates). The findings indicated that the contacts made by headhunters were guided by the HCNs’ age, gender, education level, English proficiency, tenure and prior placement by headhunters. The findings also showed that headhunter contacts drive up turnover, and that job alternatives and job embeddedness moderate the relationship between headhunter contacts and turnover. We used these findings and research on the unfolding model and headhunters to develop an abductively derived research model and hypotheses. In another study, we tested these hypotheses by time‐lagged survey data from 456 HCNs in foreign subsidiaries. The survey findings showed that headhunter contacts mediate the relationships between English proficiency, tenure and prior placement by headhunters, and that job alternatives and job embeddedness moderate the positive relationship between headhunter contacts and turnover.