When looking for a top executive to come work for your company, one of the most common way to approach it is to go to a recruiting firm like Korn Ferry, which Gary D. Burnison works at. It may seem a very easy thing, but there are a lot of stuff that you need to know if you are to get the best out of them. Most of the recruiting firms are not in the business of finding the best or helping to get the best, and they are a channel through which you can get to have access a list of qualified candidates that you can select.
Looking at it from those looking for a job point of view, recruiters do not hold on to resumes of the best candidates. Those that apply for a job and at the time they applied for the job there is a vacancy, the recruiting firm will forward the names that they have easily available at that moment. What you realize is that you do not have access to all potential candidates but only to those names that were readily available at the time you requested for a list of potential candidates. Therefore, when looking for someone to fill an executive position at your company, it is good to maintain constant communication with the top recruiters in your area so that every time they have a candidate applying for such a position, they forward the names to your company.
When approaching a recruiter, there is two way to go about it. One approach is whereby you can approach an independent recruiter, mostly an individual that recruits people in a certain discipline. For instance, if you are looking for an executive person in the field of finance and accounting in Washington DC area, there are many names that you can choose from such as Tyler McLaren. He has specialized in finding the best talent in the field of accounting and finance, especially in Washington. He has helped several companies get top notch executives. If looking for IT executives, Chris Urban can be of great help. He describes himself as a senior technical recruiter based in Washington Metropolitan area.
Another approach is to go for corporate recruiting agencies. The advantage is they have a broad range to choose from. They are also slightly cheaper that individual recruiters. Some of the firms you can check in Washington DC area include Lucas Group and JDG Associates.
