From: shrdlu@willow.sdd.trw.com (Lynda L. True)
Subject: Re: Headhunter Fees ?
Organization: TRW Inc., Redondo Beach, CA
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 92 16:29:47 GMT

In article <1992Sep1.141127.7643@aio.jsc.nasa.gov>
   pettengi@ial3.jsc.nasa.gov (James B. Pettengill) writes:
>My wife is considering using a headhunter to assist her in finding
>employment in the Houston area. She's been looking for a job for the
>past 18 months, and lately she's been getting very discouraged.

You don't say what it is that your wife used to do, but I'm assuming
that it was something technical.

>Anyway, she had an interview with a headhunter and they gave her
>some contracts to sign.  [...] The headhunter company
>says 99.9% of the time the hiring company pick up the fee (yea
>right).

Well, this doesn't sound like a headhunter to me. A headhunter is
someone that works on commissions gained from companies, not from
employees. When a company is looking for a difficult to find skill, or
just needs lots of experienced people NOW, they turn to agencies that
specialize in those types of skills. They don't use agencies to find
skills that are currently flooding the marketplace (e.g. mid-level
managers, FORTRAN/mainframe programmers), nor do they use them to find
people without experience (the dreaded entry-level person).

Agencies (reputable ones anyway) do not take fees from people looking
for jobs, since they expect to get those fees from the employer. If
this agency is asking for a fee, then your wife should be looking for
guarantees of employment, and it sounds to me like those contracts do
nothing but favor the agency.

>I really don't understand how a company would be willing to pay a
>20-35% fee for >an unknown employee.  Does this fee usually come out
>of the employees first >years salary? If it does, what happens if
>she's laid off or fired in the first year?  I read in the headhunter
>contract that refunds will be given only if my wife terminates
>employment within 30 days after accepting the job offer.  Needless to
>say, I don't have $4000 laying around to bail my wife out if
>everything craps out.

This is not, repeat NOT, a good thing to sign. This contract is just
written to take advantage of people out of work. It sounds as though
your wife needs to go to an agency that is straightforward and honest
about the fees being paid (and if she has skills she should find an
agency that expects to collect from the company, not her).

>Another issue I don't like is that my wife is liable for the fee
>through indirect assistance by the headhunter company.

BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD!!! They can lay claim (just as you fear in
your [deleted] scenario) to any job she might land, including a
full-time position that is at the same place as her part-time position
now. Don't sign anything.

>I've rambled enough, am I being paranoid, should my wife just sit
>back and let the headhunters to all the work?

Hah! What work do you think that they are going to do? Who is calling
them headhunters anyway? If that is how they refer to themselves, I'd
be interested in their name. Come to think of it, we all would like to
know who they are, so that they can be avoided in future.

Lynda
-- 
Of course I don't SPEAK for TRW; they pay me to THINK for them.

shrdlu@rowan.sdd.trw.com (Lynda L. True)
Work Phone - (310) 812-1660 or (310) 812-1570
Newsgroups: misc.jobs.misc,talk.politics.misc,soc.culture.usa